Heidegger's Ontological Logic

Abstract

This essay is both a review and a critical engagement with Heidegger's Heraclitus: The Inception of Occidental Thinking and Logic: Heraclitus's Doctrine of the Logos (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018). The ancient Greek term logos and the modern philosophical concept of logic are found throughout Heidegger's work. This work situates him at a middle period of his thinking on these terms, through lectures given in 1943 and 1944. The text marks the first English translation of these lectures, based on Volume 55 of Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe, published by Vittorio Klostermann in 1979. This review asserts that while Heidegger aims for a return to "originary” Heraclitean thinking, his principle concern is in advancing his own ontological concepts. The text, itself a translation of translations, is therefore a work of meta-interpretation that functions at multiple discursive and historical levels.