This image is the cover for the book Ponderings II–VI, Studies in Continental Thought

Ponderings II–VI, Studies in Continental Thought

Ponderings II–VI begins the much-anticipated English translation of Martin Heidegger's "Black Notebooks." In a series of small notebooks with black covers, Heidegger confided sundry personal observations and ideas over the course of 40 years. The five notebooks in this volume were written between 1931 and 1938 and thus chronicle Heidegger's year as Rector of the University of Freiburg during the Nazi era. Published in German as volume 94 of the Complete Works, these challenging and fascinating journal entries shed light on Heidegger's philosophical development regarding his central question of what it means to be, but also on his relation to National Socialism and the revolutionary atmosphere of the 1930s in Germany. Readers previously familiar only with excerpts taken out of context may now determine for themselves whether the controversy and censure the "Black Notebooks" have received are deserved or not. This faithful translation by Richard Rojcewicz opens the texts in a way that captures their philosophical and political content while disentangling Heidegger's notoriously difficult language.

Martin Heidegger, Richard Rojcewicz

Heidegger’s contribution to the growth and development of National Socialism was immense. In this small anthology, Dr. Runes endeavors to point to the utter confusion Heidegger created by drawing, for political and social application of his own existentialism and metaphysics, upon the decadent and repulsive brutalization of Hitlerism.

Martin Heidegger was a philosopher most known for his contributions to German phenomenological and existential thought. Heidegger was born in rural Messkirch in 1889 to Catholic parents. While studying philosophy and mathematics at Albert-Ludwig University in Freiburg, Heidegger became the assistant for the philosopher Edmund Husserl. Influenced by Husserl, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, Heidegger wrote extensively on the quality of Being, including his Opus Being and Time. He served as professor of philosophy at Albert-Ludwig University and taught there during the war. In 1933, Heidegger joined the National Socialist German Worker’s (or Nazi) Party and expressed his support for Hitler in several articles and speeches. After the war, his support for the Nazi party came under attack, and he was tried as a sympathizer. He was able to return to Albert Ludwig University, however, and taught there until he retired. Heidegger continued to lecture until his death in 1973. 

Indiana University Press