Versenyi, Laszlo. Heidegger, Being, and Truth. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965.

The author’s investigation follows the development of Heidegger’s thought from his rejection of traditional Western philosophy as too subjectivistic and humanistic, through his attempt to make his own philosophy less man-bound, to his success in formulating a balanced, uniform system. Heidegger’s philosophy is presented as firmly embedded in, rather than a departure from, the Western tradition, and as reviving and reformulating in contemporary idiom the problems philosophers have raised and kept alive throughout the history of human thought. In evaluating Heidegger’s work, Mr. Vesenyi asks whether a nonhumanistic transcendence of Being is a self-defeating illusion and whether Heidegger’s analysis is insufficiently humanistic. While carefully developing the unity of Heidegger’s thought, and showing that the beginning postulates and final pronouncements are not flat contradictions but complementary differences, Mr. Versenyi demonstrates Heidegger’s clear debts to Plato, Kant, and Hegel.

Online:
AbeBooks