Heidegger in America by Martin Woessner (review)

There are very few modern Continental philosophers whom Woessner could have chosen for a study of their influence and reception in America. Among those, Heidegger is not only the most difficult but also the most profound, that is, the most significant in bringing us all to “see the world differently.” Without comparing him to Wittgenstein or Dewey, and reflecting only on how devoted and strenuous have been the efforts to translate his work properly, we can say that Heidegger is unique among philosophers of the twentieth century. Translating his work into English, as also into other languages, has become a philosophical problem in itself, absorbing the attention of distinguished scholars for many years. Those efforts comprise not only a service to the English-speaking philosophical community but also an invitation to philosophize together with Heidegger—to focus on the existential and ontological features that ought to characterize philosophy always.

“We won’t be able,” as Richard Rorty said, “to write the intellectual history of [the twentieth] century without reading Heidegger.” Thus, there is no need to justify Woessner’s choice of subject further. It is important, though, to observe how well he has managed to narrate the reception of Heidegger beyond the philosophy faculties of the United States. He deals with Heidegger’s relationship to Hannah Arendt, with Jerzy Kosinski’s novel Being There, and moreover with Daniel Libeskind, who has urged exploration of “the hermeneutic dimension of architecture.” These facets and many others are studied in the nine chapters comprising a book that should be required reading—and not merely for those who cannot get enough of Heidegger. As one of those myself, I find particularly interesting Woessner’s treatment of the careers of Heidegger specialists. He deals with Marjorie Grene, “one of the first” (in 1957) to write a book in English dealing “exclusively with the work of the Freiburg philosopher,” and Woessner devotes a full chapter to J. Glenn Gray, who handled the translation of Heidegger into English. Gray did not translate the books himself but managed the project for Harper and Row, which published John Macquarrie and Edward S. Robinson’s translation of Being and Time in 1962. What unites Grene and Gray was not their admiration for Heidegger so much as their rigorous critique of his character. As others too have told us, the man was not easy to get along with, and many colleagues and students distanced themselves from him personally or rejected his philosophy. That was not the case with William Richardson, who found a four-hour conversation with Heidegger to be among the most “memorable intellectual experiences” of his life. Richardson is particularly important not only because his dissertation was published (in 1963) with a foreword by Heidegger but also because it provided, as Woessner explains, “for the first time in English a unified presentation of Heidegger’s work.” Until then, Heideggerian philosophy had been discussed by “American philosophers only in relation to other contemporary thinkers and topics.”

Although it is said that Heidegger was shocked to discover that, “after so many misreadings” of his work, it was possible for an “American to get it right,” he would probably be even more surprised to learn now that his texts have undergone repeated translation in America. The second translation of Die Beiträge zur Philosophie, this one by Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu, has just appeared. “Getting it right” is said to be an American (pragmatist) virtue. If so, Heidegger in America is an exceptionally virtuous book.