Continental Philosophy Review 31: 221–224, 1998.

221

Book review

Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected “Problems” of “Logic”, by Martin

Heidegger [translated by Richard Rojcewicz & André Schuwer] (Blooming-
ton & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994). 160 pp. $29.95 (cloth).

Basic Concepts, by Martin Heidegger [translated by Gary Aylesworth] (Bloom-

ington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993). 110 pp. $25.00
(cloth).

These two volumes in the Indiana University Press series of Heidegger trans-
lations are both well worth investigating. Both books translate transcriptions
of Heidegger’s lecture courses that have appeared in the Gesamtausgabe.
The earliest text is Basic questions of Philosophy: Selected “Problems” of
“Logic”, a translation of a lecture course from 1937–38 [Grundfragen der
Philosophie. Ausgewählte “Probleme” der “Logik”: Gesamtausgabe, Bd.
45]. As we might guess from the use of quotation marks in the subtitle, this
is far from a conventional treatise on logic. Instead, Heidegger investigates
the “logical” problem of truth. He attempts to undermine the traditional view
of truth as correctness by enquiring about the essence of truth. Heidegger has
provided us with several other reflections on the essence of truth, but this text
is distinctive in its attempt to address the question historically, in terms of the
ancient Greeks’ basic encounter with truth as unconcealment.
Heidegger’s thinking has always been concerned with how, despite the
greatness of the “first beginning” of philosophy with the Greeks, the question
of Being was not raised properly by them in that they did not enquire into
the truth of Being, but only of beings. This failure is inevitably linked with
Aristotle’s founding of the metaphysical tradition that claims that it is self-
evident that truth is correctness. But when we seek the foundation of this
view, it would appear that the problem is bound up with how we can represent
the essence of the being. Thus the question of the essence of truth turns
into a question about the truth of essence. The discussion thereby gives us a
tantalizing glimpse of what Heidegger might have intended for the content of
the unwritten lecture “On the Truth of Essence”.
222 BOOK REVIEW

For the Greeks, unconcealment is always unconcealment of a being, and is

specifically unconcealment of what the being is. By confining essence to the
“what” of beings to the exclusion of their “that” (actuality), the question of
Being becomes oriented to what is constantly present in beings. We see here
how the Greek question of Being had to remain limited to the beingness of
beings, how they failed to interrogate unconcealment itself, and thus how the
question of truth for them became necessarily a question of ousia and idea.
Heidegger believes that the metaphysical tradition has become exhausted,
and we stand in need of “another beginning” of philosophy. But this need
must not merely be acknowledged in the abstract, but must be experienced.
Heidegger contends that the need of philosophy is experienced as a disposition
or mood [Stimmung]. We must experience the need of the new beginning,
whose basic disposition is restraint [Verhaltenheit]. But bringing ourselves
to this disposition requires again the historical investigation of the basic
disposition of the first beginning, namely wonder (thaumazein).
It has long been obvious to any reader of Plato and Aristotle that philosophy
begins in wonder, but Heidegger is always ready to question the obviousness
of the obvious. It is one of the great virtues of this volume that, in order to bring
us closer to wonder, Heidegger gives us an intensive analysis of wonder and
seemingly related dispositions. Rather than being a kind of curiosity about
the unusual, wonder focuses precisely on what is most unusual in what is
most usual: the fact that beings are. It is this basic mood that allows openness
to beings.
The translation is generally excellent, so much so that I am reluctant to
complain about the occurrence of a common error in Heidegger translations:
the translation of ‘Wirklichkeit’ as ‘reality’. Given Heidegger’s insistence on
the strict distinction between ‘Wirklichkeit’ and ‘Realität’, translators should
make a point of avoiding this confusion.

Our second volume, Basic Concepts, is a translation of a lecture course

from 1941 [Grundbegriffe: Gesamtausgabe, Bd. 51]. Like Basic Questions
of Philosophy, it attempts to enter into the first beginning (translated as “first
inception” here). Here, however, the focus is not on truth, but on the “ground”
and its corresponding basic concepts (“ground-concepts”). The most basic
concepts are those that address the ground of beings as a whole. This whole
is not the totality of a being or even of all beings, but indicates precisely the
Being of the being. This launches a discussion of the “ontological difference”
between Being and beings.
The discussion of the ontological difference crops up frequently in Heideg-
ger’s writings, but this text is distinctive in that proceeds in terms of a set of
basic guidewords for reflection on Being. These are presented as paradoxes:
 BOOK REVIEW 223
 Being is the emptiest and at the same time a surplus
 Being is the most common and at the same time unique
 Being is the most intelligible and at the same time concealment
 Being is the most worn-out and at the same time the origin
 Being is the most reliable and at the same time the non-ground
 Being is the most said and at the same time a keeping silent
 Being is the most forgotten and at the same time remembrance
 Being is the most constraining and at the same time liberation
These paradoxes are developed so as to sharpen their paradoxical nature.
Heidegger wants us to experience the strangeness of Being with a view to
forcing us to experience the need to rethink Being out of another beginning.
As with Basic Questions of Philosophy, the strategy for pushing us towards
the other beginning is to attempt to think the first beginning more originally.
To this end, Heidegger gives a close analysis of a fragment by Anaximander.
This is the same fragment discussed five years later in “The Anaximander
Fragment”, but the discussion is conducted differently. To begin with, in the
lecture course, Heidegger accepts the whole fragment as given by Diels, while
in the essay he truncates it for philological reasons. This makes for a rather
different interpretation. Nonetheless, the version from the lecture course is
a valuable resource for those investigating Heidegger’s interpretation of the
Pre-Socratic philosophers.
The translation is again excellent, but reading these two volumes together,
it becomes all the more apparent that we need agreement on how two of Hei-
degger’s key terms should be translated. The first, ‘Ereignis’, sits at the very
centre of Heidegger’s thinking. It is variously translated as “appropriation,”
“event”, “appropriative event” and “happening”, among others. It is unfortu-
nate that readers moving from text to text should miss out on the recurrence
of this term.
The second term is ‘wesen’, which as a noun is normally translated as
“essence”, but which is also used by Heidegger as a verb. This verb gets
translated as “presencing”, “coming to presence”, “coming to pass” and in
other ways. Because of the oddness of Heidegger’s use of the term, it is espe-
cially susceptible to being translated variously in the same volume, which of
course leads to confusion. I believe that this term is best served by employing
the obscure English verb “to essence”. Awkward as it may sound, it preserves
the all-important link to ‘essence’ as a noun.
Both texts are recommendable, but for different reasons. Basic Questions
of Philosophy is perhaps the most intriguing text for Heidegger scholars. Both
in its investigation of disposition and in its discussion of the truth of essence
it provides a valuable resource that is not duplicated elsewhere. In pursuing
224 BOOK REVIEW

these topics, it provides an indispensable prelude to the concerns of that major

treatise contemporary with it, Beiträge zur Philosophie.
Basic Concepts is not nearly so distinctive in its thinking, since it reworks
much familiar material. However, its great virtue is in the succinctness of the
presentation of that material. Since it presents many of Heidegger’s concerns
in a little over a hundred pages, it may well serve as a useful textbook. Without
the length or the digressions that make most of Heidegger’s books too much
for undergraduates to handle, it could be a very useful introduction to his
thought.

East Stroudsburg University, PA, USA Martin Weatherston

(e.mail: mweather@esu.edu)