Heraclitus SeminarIn the winter semester of 1966-67 at the University of Freiburg, Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink conducted an extraordinary seminar on the fragments of Heraclitus. This book records those conversations, documenting the imaginative and experimental character of the multiplicity of interpretations offered and providing an invaluable portriat of Heidegger involved in active discussion and explication.
Heidegger's remarks in this seminar illuminate his interpretations not only of pre-Socratic philosophy, but also of figures such as Hegel and Holderlin. At the same time, Heidegger clarifies many late developments in his own understanding of truth, Being, and understanding. Heidegger and Fink, both deeply rooted in the Freiburg phenomenological reading of the ancient text --- a kind of reading that, as Fink says, is "not so much concerned with the philological probelmatic... as with advancing into the matter itself, that is, toward the matter that must have stood before Heraclitus's spiritual view."
Students of ancient philosophy will also find much interest in these competing interpretations. As Heidegger's and Fink's views deepen in response to each other and to participants' remarks, Heraclitus's enigmatic fragments reveal their richness. The seminar's prevading theme of the relatedness of "the one" and "the many" is reflected not only in the content of the discussions but in the fact of the conversations themselves, so that this commonplace of Greek philosophy proves surprisingly fresh. With its mixture of premeditated consideration of the text and extemporaneous response, Heraclitus Seminar is stimulating and facinating reading for scholars of both ancient and modern philosophy.
