Heidegger's Phenomenology of Perception: An Introduction [Paperback]

This important new book offers an introduction to Heideggers phenomenology of perception, interpreting and explaining five key words, Sein, Dasein, Ereignis, Lichtung, and Geschick. David Kleinberg-Levin argues that, besides preparing the ground for a major critique of metaphysics and the Western world, Heideggers phenomenology of perception lays the groundwork for understanding perceptionin particular, seeing and hearing, as capacities the historical character of which is capable of overcoming and significantly ameliorating the most menacing, most devastating features of the Western world that Heidegger subjected to critique. He proposes that the development of these capacities is not only a question of learning certain skills, but also a question of learning new character and that Heideggers critique of the Western world suggests ways in which we might learn and develop new, more sensitive, poetic and mindful ways of relating to the perceived world.David Kleinberg-Levin is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Northwestern University. He is the author of ten books, most recently Becketts Words: The Promise of Happiness in a Time of Mourning (Bloomsbury, 2015), Redeeming Words: Language and the Promise of Happiness in the Stories of D?blin and Sebald (SUNY Press, 2013) and Redeeming Words and the Promise of Happiness: A Critical Theory Approach to Wallace Stevens and Vladimir Nabokov (Lexington Books, 2012).

The first volume (of two) of Heidegger's Phenomenology of Perception, this is an incredibly rich and clear introduction to Martin Heidegger's phenomenological approach to inquiry more generally. Even though the title specifies perception, Kleinberg-Levin (emer., Northwestern Univ.) notes that particular issues having to do with perception will be taken up in his second volume, and that one must understand Heidegger broadly before one approaches his account of perception. Therefore, this introduction will be of great use to first-time readers of lÓÏ