What Is Called Thinking? (Harper Perennial Modern Thought) Paperback – March 12, 1976

Heidegger is my favorite philosopher. This compiles some of his lectures with the initial speech and then moves into notes. Lots of short anecdotes, easy to follow and a lot to think about.

I am working my way through this series of lectures the Professor gave in the 1950's. His work in the area of metaphysics and his commitment to this philosophy is breathtaking. I am a novice with respect to philosophy and I read Prof. Heidegger's thought humbly, recognizing his immense intellect and his treatment of philosophic thought. According to this books introduction, as a lecturer and teacher, Professor Heidegger naturally approaches this profession as a vocation. Academic freedom afforded him as a scholar and lecturer provides him full reign of thoughtful literature which he has studied and then interprets for us, his students. His efforts at making metaphysics applicable to ordinary life moves and inspires me. The connections he makes between notable thinkers is impassioned and reading through this work is something of a mosaic, as he maintains his life long focus, metaphysics, and relates it to the great thinkers he contemplates

MH has a lot to say about our post-modern, high-technology lives. These essays are not that difficult to read -- once you understand these are translations from German, Heidegger does not know English and uses a lot of German colloquial phrases, and he's a fanatic, in a good way, about the etymology of words that we throw around with careless ease. Approach it a bit like poetry, take a couple of days to get used to the pace and repetition, and you're off to quite a thoughtful experience.

I didn't know what to expect from a collection of lectures from an ex-nazi on the topic of "think more, do less"-- seemed ripe for hypocrisy. But I thought it was one of Heidegger's best works. Insightful and thought-provoking. I am now leaning to the side of those who believe the nazism thing was a means of self-preservation. Not that that matters at all.

I read the essay version found in Basic Writings of Heidegger several years ago. But that version is nothing like the full text here of Heidegger's seminar. It is one of his clearest reads and, in a reader who has some background in Greek philosophy, unfolds as a profound meditation on one's engagement with thought.

Though I haven't read "Being and Time" in its entirety, I can confidently say Heidegger's "What is Called Thinking?", read without reference to the former, provides a lucid, albeit general, exposition of his ontology. It is, for a lack of better words, "thought-provoking."

This book is a departure from the common views of thinking and the opportunity to actually think from a new context and with new content. It has already altered the reality I share with the universe!

Brilliant! Eye opening! Read carefully and thoughtfully!