The Irony of Heidegger: An Essay

<div>This important new book offers the first full-length interpretation of the thought of Martin Heidegger with respect to irony. In a radical reading of Heidegger's major works (from <em>Being and </em><i>Time</i> through the ‘Rector's Address' and the ‘Letter on Humanism' to ‘The Origin of the Work of Art' and the <i>Spiegel</i> interview), Andrew Haas does not claim that Heidegger is simply being ironic. Rather he argues that Heidegger's writings make such an interpretation possible - perhaps even necessary. <br/><p>Heidegger begins <em>Being and Time</em> with a quote from Plato, a thinker famous for his insistence upon Socratic irony. <em>The Irony of Heidegger </em>takes seriously the apparently curious decision to introduce the threat of irony even as philosophy begins in earnest to raise the question of the meaning of being. Through a detailed and thorough reading of Heidegger's major texts and the fundamental questions they raise, Haas reveals that one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century can be read with as much irony as earnestness.<em> The Irony of Heidegger</em> attempts to show that the essence of this irony lies in uncertainty, and that the entire project of onto-heno-chrono-phenomenology, therefore needs to be called into question. </p></div>>

Andrew Haas teaches Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA. He is the author of Hegel and the Problem of Multiplicity (Northwestern University Press, 2000) and has published widely on Heidegger and European philosophy.