Reviews for A passion for democracy

The average rating for A passion for democracy based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-12-18 00:00:00 Macarthur Williams This book makes a phenomenological engagement with two seminal texts in the founding of Western philosophy: Plato's cave allegory (Πολιτεία 514a–520a) and Plato's Theaetetus dialogue. It unfolds as a lecture, which means the whole discourse is very easy to follow and Heidegger is at his most lucid and straightforward here. His main thesis is that we need to understand how appearance and “presenc-ing” but also concealment are inextricably linked to Being in the originary Greek conception of things, rather than appearance's being a kind of concession or failure to engage with the real things in themselves (as though their truth lay somehow behind the veil of mere appearance and phenomenon). The Bloomsbury publishing version of this book was obviously OCR'ed from manuscripts of the translation, since there are numerous typos of ancient Greek (lambda is frequently confused for gamma, and vice versa). This won't be distracting for the non literate in Greek, since they'll probably be skipping over the Greek words but it's irritating for anyone who notices the mistakes.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-03-04 00:00:00 Linda Knabel This is a splendid translation of two of Heidegger's exegetical lectures on Plato. It follows his characteristic style of philological methods for pursing epistemology. In these two lectures, he seeks a deeper understanding of what truth is. The first begins by pondering the curious nature of how truth is portrayed in ancient Greek. The usual word for truth, ἀλήθεια, is curiously a linguistically negative term. It is more accurately translated as "unhiddenness." Considering this oddity, Heidegger embarks on a thorough reinterpretation of Plato's allegory of the cave. The second lecture focuses on a section of Plato's Theaetetus to inquire into the nature of untruth (or, in Greek, ψεῦδος, which bears no linguistic relation to ἀλήθεια). Heidegger's ideas are tremendously insightful, though complex and, at times, difficult to comprehend. Understanding these arguments is aided by the clarity of this translation, thanks to the painstaking efforts of the translator, Ted Sadler. Knowing ancient Greek is not really required to read this in full. However, Heidegger refers to many ancient Greek terms constantly and, despite Sadler's helpful addition of a glossary for these and other German terms, it may be difficult to keep up with for some. Nevertheless, it is an excellent book to read, especially at a time that is so often proclaimed to be the "post-truth" era. Most of all, it reminds us that there is not merely a simple binary relationship between truth and falsity. Rather, there are frequently many shades of grey between the two or, at times, no relation between them at all.