Heidegger in America

Martin Woessner is Assistant Professor of History and Society at The City College of New York (CUNY), Center for Worker Education.

• Introduction - being here: Heidegger and reception history; Preface; 1. Freiburg bound: the early years of American Heidegger scholarship; 2. Exiles and emissaries: Heidegger's stepchildren in the United States; 3. Nihilism, nothingness, and God: Heidegger and American theology; 4. An officer and a philosopher: J. Glenn Gray and the postwar introduction of Heidegger into American thought; 5. Dasein and das Man: Heidegger and American popular culture; 6. The continental divide: Heidegger between the analytic and continental traditions in American philosophy; 7. Richard Rorty and the riddle of the book that never was; 8. Ethics, technology, and memory: Heidegger and American architecture; 9. Culture wars: Heidegger and the politics of postmodernism; Conclusion - being there: Heidegger and the history of ideas.

'Admire him or loathe him, Martin Heidegger remains one of the inescapable presences of modern intellectual history. But it has been hard to take an adequate measure of his ideas, particularly as they were received in the United States, given the many academic disciplines and fields of expression in which his influence has been felt and the diffuse forms and diverse intermediaries through which his insights passed. It is the great contribution of Martin Woessner's lively and engaging study to begin tracking down those lines of force, a task he accomplishes with intelligence and verve, bringing a critical eye, a broadly cultural sensibility, a crisp prose style, and a wry wit to bear on a subject that too often becomes mired in its own vatic solemnities. Readers in a wide variety of disciplines will derive both pleasure and instruction from this exemplary work of intellectual history.' Wilfred M. McClay, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga