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Heidegger as Mediterraneanist

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Critically Mediterranean

Part of the book series: Mediterranean Perspectives ((MEPERS))

Abstract

Western philosophy has often been permeated by Mediterranean imagery. Even so, the writings of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger might not seem the obvious place for a Mediterranean that is more than an occasional simile. We argue, however, that, especially in his writings on art, Heidegger does articulate a vision of the Mediterranean that is fundamental to his thought. It takes in Provence, Heidegger’s adoptive homeland, seen through the paintings executed there by Paul Cézanne; Greece, the homeland of philosophy; and the Mediterranean Sea as the link between the two areas. To those interpreters of Heidegger who have seen him as rooted in German soil, we offer an alternative reading, in which he is philosophically most at home on the shores of the Mediterranean.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In Bernard Williams’s words, “The legacy of Greece to Western philosophy is Western philosophy” (2006: 3).

  2. 2.

    For a modern view of the networks of “ants and frogs” in Greek colonization, see Malkin (2011).

  3. 3.

    See, for example, among a vast literature Harris; Dabag and Halle; Catlos and Kinoshita.

  4. 4.

    In what follows, generally agreed facts and ideas about Heidegger’s life and writings are, for concision, left unreferenced. Among recent introductions in English with abundant further bibliography we have found useful: Watts; Inwood; Guignon; Dreyfus and Wrathall.

  5. 5.

    Julian Young, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art (2001) is the major study on this point. See also Iain Thomson (2011: 40–119).

  6. 6.

    In English, OWA is best read in Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes’s translation (Heidegger 2002).

  7. 7.

    Compare his assertion in the volume known in English as Pathmarks to the effect that art will not be at an end if we get out of aesthetic experience and into Dasein (Heidegger 1998: 50 note b).

  8. 8.

    See Schapiro “The Still Life as Personal Object—A Note on Heidegger and Van Gogh,” and “Further Notes on Heidegger and Van Gogh” (1994: 135–51). See also Derrida (1987: 255–383); Thomson (2011: 106–19).

  9. 9.

    “While the plant springs up, and spreads itself into the open, it goes at the same time back into its roots” (Heidegger 1976: 254).

  10. 10.

    Heidegger (1983: 223).

  11. 11.

    Translated, each slightly differently, in Jamme (1994: 146–47) and Young (2001: 152). We have followed them but with some modification.

  12. 12.

    For the setting, see Athanassoglou-Kalymer (2003).

  13. 13.

    See also Rutherglen (2004).

  14. 14.

    We have used but not always followed the translation in Figal (2009: 310–11). This longer version, scarcely noticed by scholarship, deserves fuller attention than we can give it here.

  15. 15.

    Beaufret invokes Heraclitus fragment 18 in the established Diels-Kranz numeration. See Danchev (2012: 356–67).

  16. 16.

    Not included in the English translation by Raffoul and Pettigrew.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Annika Döring

  2. Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

    Peregrine Horden

  3. All Souls College, Oxford University, Oxford, UK

    Peregrine Horden

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  1. Annika Döring
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  2. Peregrine Horden
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

    yasser elhariry

  2. Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Edwige Tamalet Talbayev

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Döring, A., Horden, P. (2018). Heidegger as Mediterraneanist. In: elhariry, y., Talbayev, E. (eds) Critically Mediterranean. Mediterranean Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71764-7_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71764-7_2

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