Timely Meditations: Martin Heidegger and Postmodern Politics (Princeton Legacy Library, 298) - Hardcover

"This book is a thoughtful contribution to recent debates regarding the political dimension of Martin Heidegger's thought. Leslie Paul Thiele, an American political philosopher, looks carefully not only at Heidegger's support for the politics of the Third Reich, but at his call for a freedom which might be at one with the powers of the universe, with the primal elements of Being as such, under the direction of the Nazi Party."--Dalhousie Review

Focusing on the concept of freedom, Leslie Paul Thiele makes Heidegger's philosophical works speak directly to politics in a postmodern world. Neither excusing Heidegger for his political sins nor ignoring their lesson, Thiele nonetheless refrains from polemic in order creatively to engage one of the greatest philosophers of our time. The product of this engagement is a vindication of a democratic and ecological politics firmly grounded in philosophic inquiry.

Using Heidegger's understanding of freedom as a point of departure, Timely Meditations lays out the philosophic and political nature and potential of freedom in thought, speech, and deed. This disclosive freedom is contrasted to both modern (positive and negative) and postmodern (Nietzschean and Foucaultian) variations. The result is an original and provocative study that challenges our present understanding of liberty while underlining dangerous collusion with the contemporary forces of technology.

Timely Meditations marks an increasingly rare achievement today. For unlike many theorists who attempt to steer a course into the world of postmodern politics, Thiele does so without forsaking philosophic foundations and without abandoning practical hopes and tasks for rhetorical diversions.

Originally published in 1995.

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