Martin Heidegger did not like small thoughts. He was fascinated by the most expansive questions humans can ask themselves. Questions like: Why are we here at all? Why do things exist as they do? What does it mean to be in the world?
Heidegger came to believe that many of the modern answers to these questions were based on old, unexamined assumptions. Instead of accepting those assumptions, Heidegger wanted to return to the great philosophical texts of the past and see if he could recover and reveal deep truths that had been obscured or forgotten. The result of this intellectual treasure-hunting is his most well known work, Being and Time, published in 1927. Despite its dark context, Being and Time remains essential reading for engaging with the vexing challenges presented by modernity.
Peter Gordon is the Amabel B. James Professor of History, Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. He is a critical theorist and an historian of modern European philosophy and social thought, specializing in Frankfurt School critical theory, phenomenology, existentialism, and Western Marxism.
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Waiting for Godot
Hamlet
Don Quixote
In Search of Lost Time
Candide
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Ulysses
The Legitimacy of the Modern Age
Mrs Dalloway
Genesis
1001 Nights
The Fire Next Time
Jane Eyre
A Theory of Justice
Divine Comedy
The Wretched of the Earth
1984
Middlemarch
The Mahābhārata
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