Graeme Nicholson – författare

In these essays, appearing for the first time in English, Gadamer addresses practical questions about recent politics in Europe, about education and university reform, and about the role of poetry in the modern world. This book also includes a series of interviews that the editors conducted in 1986. Gadamer elaborates on his experiences in education and politics, touching on the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the early Frankfurt School, Heidegger and the Nazis, university life in East Germany, and the prospects for Europe in the coming years.Hans-Georg Gadamer was probably Heidegger's leading interpreter in Germany, and in the 1950s and 1960s he became the world's leading exponent of hermeneutics. His hermeneutical theory explains how it is that ancient art and philosophy still speak to us today. His influential idea of the "fusion of horizons" also shows how it is that we understand what is remote form our own culture.

In his magnum opus Being in Time (1927), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) argued that individuals have assumed that their existence is "a given," when in actual fact they simply have the ability to be. Justifying Our Existence examines the ways in which human beings attempt to calm their existential concerns by magnifying and proving their existence through phenomena such as self-righteousness, careerism, nationalism, and religion.Using remarkably accessible and concise writing, Graeme Nicholson provides a close reading of Heidegger's methods to indicate how his work has a practical application for existential concerns. Justifying Our Existence shows how phenomenology can be used to foreground existence, while also providing startling insights into human behaviour, the motivation behind many of our social systems, as well as one of the twentieth century's most important philosophers.

"What is truth?" This much-pondered question received a novel answer from Martin Heidegger, who was guided by the methods of phenomenology. Heidegger’s 1930 address "On the Essence of Truth" takes us on a pathway of thinking that starts from the standard "correspondence theory of truth" and moves into larger discussions on truth, along the way drawing in such timeless issues as the freedom of human conduct and choices. Heidegger on Truth is a close reading of this address, and of the essay that Heidegger published under the same title years later – first in 1943, and then in 1949. In Part I of this book, Nicholson explores Heidegger’s movements of thought as they are presented in the original address. In Part II, Nicholson compares this lecture with its subsequent versions, uncovering the changes and detours in Heidegger’s conceptualization of "truth." Part II also considers Heidegger’s interpretation of Plato, scholasticism, and the tradition of modern rationalism. Accessibly written, this book provides a thorough examination of Heidegger’s thoughts on the concept of "truth."