Heidegger’s philosophy has ties of various sorts with many of the philosophers you have read; but, as far as the content of the material you will read goes, the most apparent connection is with Aristotle (in this assignment) and Hegel (in the next). The editors’ introduction to Heidegger says something about the connection with Hegel and also will help provide a context for what you will read by discussing the concerns of Heidegger’s body of work as a whole and the specific concerns of this particular work.
You should be a little wary as you read this first section. Heidegger’s aim is to criticize certain views taken for granted in previous philosophers. In the course of doing so he explores the rationales for a number of views that are not his own, and the places where he goes on to criticize these views may not be as obvious, so he can seem to be advancing positions that he really doesn’t agree with.
Heidegger is not easy to read: on my own scale, he is the hardest apart from Schelling. My assignments are designed to enable you to read the whole work, so they are not short. But our discussions will focus on only certain portions of the reading. In the case of this assignment, we will focus on the final two of the segments identified below (HK 662-668); this is probably the best known part of the whole work.
• The first few pages (HK 650-653) form an introduction. Take what Heidegger says about circling (HK 651) seriously since it is reflected in some of the organization of what you’ll read: the goals of his discussions are sometimes reached by what initially appears to be a digression. (See below for the reference on HK 651 to a painting by Van Gogh.)
• The section “Thing and Work” (HK 653-668), which forms the bulk of this assignment, begins with an abstract discussion of what a “thing” is but, by the end, Heidegger has offered an initial characterization of art and the work of art.
• Things (HK 653-662). In a way, this is a survey of metaphysics since Plato, but don’t think of it chronologically. Heidegger’s descriptions of both the first and the last of the three thing-concepts use key terminology from Aristotle while his description of the second uses terminology from Kant.
• Substance/accident and subject/predicate (HK 654-657) Heidegger’s comments on the translation of Greek into Latin (HK 655) are more than an interesting digression; they raise a broader issue about history that Heidegger will return to later in the case of art works.
• Unity of a manifold of sensation (HK 657-658). Heidegger doesn’t speak of art in this brief discussion but the appearance of the term aistheton (HK 657) might suggest that there could be a connection between this thing-concept and certain aesthetic theories.
• Formed matter (HK 658-661). You’ve seen this idea used in discussions of art by Aristotle and others. The ideas of usefulness and equipment that are introduced beginning on HK 659 will be developed in their own right in the next part of the discussion.
• Equipment (HK 662-665). Pay special attention to the two somewhat poetic paragraphs on HK 664. Not only are they crucial for the next stage of Heidegger’s discussion, they introduce and foreshadow ideas (especially the ideas of “world” and “earth”) that will be central topics in the next two assignments.
• Truth at work (HK 665-668) Think about the idea of truth setting itself to work (HK 666); it is perhaps the most central idea in the piece and will reappear a number of times. Notice that Heidegger summarizes his discussion up to this point beginning at the middle of HK 667. (One view Heidegger presents but does not accept is the idea that art reproduces a general essence, HK 666f; this might remind you of things Ficino says or, in another way, of Schopenhauer.)
Heidegger mentions (on HK 651) a painting (“the one by Van Gogh that represents a pair of peasant shoes”) and such a painting is discussed at some length at a crucial point later (HK 663-666). Although Heidegger speaks as if he had a specific painting in mind, it isn’t entirely clear which one it is (since, as he notes, Van Gogh produced many paintings of old shoes). The best candidate is the one reproduced at this URL:
http://sorrel.humboldt.edu/%7Erwj1/van/097.html
This painting was in an exhibition (in 1930) where Heidegger said he had seen the painting that he wrote about five years later. However, it has been argued that this is not a painting of peasant shoes at all but rather of Van Gogh’s own.