Making Sense of Heidegger: A Paradigm Shift

Making Sense of Heidegger presents a radically new reading of Heidegger's notoriously difficult oeuvre. Clearly written and rigorously grounded in the whole of Heidegger's works, Thomas Sheehan's latest book argues for the unity of Heidegger's thought on the basis of three theses: that his work was phenomenological from beginning to the end; that 'being' refers to the meaningful presence of things in the world of human concerns; and that what makes such intelligibility possible is the existential structure of human being as the thrown open or appropriated 'clearing'. Sheehan offers a compelling alternative to the classical paradigm that has dominated Heidegger research in the last half-century, as well as a valuable retranslation of the key terms in Heidegger's lexicon. This important book opens a new path in phenomenology that will stimulate dialogue within Heidegger Studies, with philosophers outside the phenomenological tradition, and with scholars in theology, literary criticism and existential psychiatry.