The most recommended Martin Heidegger books

Who picked these books? Meet our 13 experts.

13 authors created a book list connected to Martin Heidegger, and here are their favorite Martin Heidegger books.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

What type of Martin Heidegger book?

Loading...

Book cover of The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader

Richard Wolin Author Of Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology

From my list on intellectuals and fascism.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a graduate student during the late 1970s, my mentor, Martin Jay, generously introduced me to two members of the Frankfurt School: Herbert Marcuse and Leo Lowenthal. These memorable personal encounters inspired me to write a dissertation on Walter Benjamin, who was closely allied with the Frankfurt School. The completed dissertation, Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption, became the first book on Benjamin in English and is still in print. The Frankfurt School thinkers published a series of pioneering socio-psychological treatises on political authoritarianism: The Authoritarian Personality, Prophets of Deceit, and One-Dimensional Man. These studies continue to provide an indispensable conceptual framework for understanding the contemporary reemergence of fascist political forms.

Richard's book list on intellectuals and fascism

Richard Wolin Why did Richard love this book?

The ever-contentious debate about Heidegger’s filiations with Nazism was re-enlivened with the appearance of the so-called “Black Notebooks” in 2014.

However, unless one closely heeds the existential verbiage of Heidegger’s commitment to Nazism, one risks tilting at windmills; hence, succumbing to a plethora of misconceptions and misunderstandings.

This invaluable collection of original texts – which, in addition to Heidegger political speeches of 1933-34, contains the indispensable Der Spiegel interview, “Only a God Can Save Us!” – has taken on an entirely new meaning and importance in light of the “Black Notebooks’” publication. 

By Richard Wolin (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Heidegger Controversy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This anthology is a significant contribution to the debate over the relevance of Martin Heidegger's Nazi ties to the interpretation and evaluation of his philosophical work. Included are a selection of basic documents by Heidegger, essays and letters by Heidegger's colleagues that offer contemporary context and testimony, and interpretive evaluations by Heidegger's heirs and critics in France and Germany.In his new introduction, "Note on a Missing Text," Richard Wolin uses the absence from this edition of an interview with Jacques Derrida as a springboard for examining questions about the nature of authorship and personal responsibility that are at the heart…


Book cover of Memoirs: Hans Jonas

Ori Yehudai Author Of Leaving Zion: Jewish Emigration from Palestine and Israel after World War II

From my list on modern Jewish migration and displacement.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian at The Ohio State University. When I started my academic studies in Israel, I was initially interested in European history and only later began focusing on Jewish and Israeli history. I’m not exactly sure what attracted me to this career, but it’s probably the desire to better understand my own society and identity. I enjoy studying migration because it has played such an important role in Israeli and Jewish history, and even in my own life as an “academic wanderer.” Migration also provides a fascinating perspective on the links between large-scale historical events and the lives of individuals, and on the relationships between physical place, movement, and identity. 

Ori's book list on modern Jewish migration and displacement

Ori Yehudai Why did Ori love this book?

Hans Jonas was born in 1903 in Mönchengladbach, studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger in the 1920s, and after Hitler’s rise to power left Germany for British Mandate Palestine, where he enlisted in the Zionist Haganah militia. During World War II he served in the British Army’s Jewish Brigade and then fought in the 1948 Arab-Jewish war in Palestine. After demobilization, he could not secure a permanent academic position in newly established Israel, and moved to Canada and then to the United States, where in 1955, he accepted a professorship at the New School of Social Research in New York, eventually becoming a prominent philosopher and public intellectual. His beautifully written memoir illuminates the impact of migration and the upheavals of the 20th century on the life of a Jewish intellectual. 

By Hans Jonas, Christian Wiese (editor), Krishna Winston (translator)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Memoirs as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When Hans Jonas died in 1993 at the age of 89, he was revered among American scholars specializing in European philosophy, but his thought had not yet made great inroads among a wider public. In Germany, conversely, during the 1980s, when Jonas himself was an octogenarian, he became a veritable intellectual celebrity, owing to the runaway success of his 1979 book, The Imperative of Responsibility, a dense philosophical work that sold 200,000 copies. An extraordinarily timely work today, The Imperative of Responsibility focuses on the ever-widening gap between humankind's enormous technological capacities and its diminished moral sensibilities. The book became…


Book cover of Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich

Richard Wolin Author Of Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology

From my list on intellectuals and fascism.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a graduate student during the late 1970s, my mentor, Martin Jay, generously introduced me to two members of the Frankfurt School: Herbert Marcuse and Leo Lowenthal. These memorable personal encounters inspired me to write a dissertation on Walter Benjamin, who was closely allied with the Frankfurt School. The completed dissertation, Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption, became the first book on Benjamin in English and is still in print. The Frankfurt School thinkers published a series of pioneering socio-psychological treatises on political authoritarianism: The Authoritarian Personality, Prophets of Deceit, and One-Dimensional Man. These studies continue to provide an indispensable conceptual framework for understanding the contemporary reemergence of fascist political forms.

Richard's book list on intellectuals and fascism

Richard Wolin Why did Richard love this book?

When I first read Herf’s book during the 1990s, it totally transformed my understanding of National Socialism’s attitude toward technology and modernity.

Prior to its publication, Nazism was commonly perceived as anti-modern and anti-technological: as aspiring toward a vaguely defined pre-modern, martial-communitarian dystopia. Conversely, Herf shows that Nazism concertedly sought to integrate technological modernity within the movement’s militaristic, pan-German ideological framework. Here, the effusive expression employed by Goebbels to describe Nazism’s hypertrophic pro-technological enthusiasms, “steely romanticism,” says it all!

In this respect, Ernst Jünger’s allegorical glorification of totalitarian militarism in The Worker (Der Arbeiter) was paradigmatic. 

By Jeffrey Herf,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Reactionary Modernism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In a unique application of critical theory to the study of the role of ideology in politics, Jeffrey Herf explores the paradox inherent in the German fascists' rejection of the rationalism of the Enlightenment while fully embracing modern technology. He documents evidence of a cultural tradition he calls 'reactionary modernism' found in the writings of German engineers and of the major intellectuals of the. Weimar right: Ernst Juenger, Oswald Spengler, Werner Sombart, Hans Freyer, Carl Schmitt, and Martin Heidegger. The book shows how German nationalism and later National Socialism created what Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, called the 'steel-like romanticism…


Book cover of Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam Author Of Is Artificial Intelligence Racist? The Ethics of AI and the Future of Humanity

From Arshin's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Not applicable

Arshin's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam Why did Arshin love this book?

I finally managed to read this book en route from Cambridge to London – my usual commute to the SOAS office, which has helped with reading the amount of books indicated above, especially during train strikes.

Okay, the book is Eurocentric like most Western philosophy, and yes, it should have had more exposure to other ‘magicians’ of thought.

But in entertaining and repeatedly hilarious prose, Eilenberger teases out some extremely interesting anecdotes of some of the most prominent minds of human history: philosophers such as Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Ernst Cassirer who shaped almost everything that we know. Their knowledge appears in places that you and I never expected. 

By Wolfram Eilenberger, Shaun Whiteside (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Time of the Magicians as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

AN ECONOMIST, GUARDIAN AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR

A gripping narrative of the intertwined lives of the four philosophers whose ideas reshaped the twentieth century

The year is 1919. Walter Benjamin flees his overbearing father to scrape a living as a critic. Ludwig Wittgenstein, scion of one of Europe's wealthiest families, signs away his inheritance, seeking spiritual clarity. Martin Heidegger renounces his faith and aligns his fortunes with Husserl's phenomenological school. Ernst Cassirer sketches a new schema of human culture on a cramped Berlin tram. The stage is set for a great intellectual drama. Over the next decade…


Book cover of The Principle of Reason

John D. Caputo Author Of What to Believe? Twelve Brief Lessons in Radical Theology

From my list on now that religion has made itself unbelievable.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in a world steeped in pre-Vatican II Catholicism including four years spent in a Catholic religious order. My theological training led me to philosophy, to question my theology, and to my life as a philosophy professor. There's a blaze of light in every word, Leonard Cohen says, so I've been seeking the blaze of light in the word God. My idea is that God is neither a real being nor an unreal illusion but the focus imaginarius of a desire beyond desire, and the “kingdom of God” is what the world would look like if the blaze of light in the name of God held sway, not the powers of darkness.

John's book list on now that religion has made itself unbelievable

John D. Caputo Why did John love this book?

This book contains a magisterial rendering of the mystical poet Angelus Silesius’s verse, “The Rose Is Without Why” as part of a critical analysis of the emergence of the modern idea of “reason.”

This book has never left me since I first encountered it in my doctoral dissertation on Heidegger back in the 1960s. It landed like a bombshell on a young Catholic like me, opening a poetic and mystical sense of life free from the creeds and authoritarianism of religion as well as from the doctrinaire dismissiveness of Enlightenment rationalism.

Written at the end of his career, it encapsulates everything Heidegger was getting at. We must never forget the horrible stain of Heidegger’s National Socialism, which I have analyzed (Demythologizing Heidegger), but there is more to Heidegger than that, and you can find it here.

By Martin Heidegger, Reginald Lilly (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Principle of Reason as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Principle of Reason, the text of an important and influential lecture course that Martin Heidegger gave in 1955-56, takes as its focal point Leibniz's principle: nothing is without reason. Heidegger shows here that the principle of reason is in fact a principle of being. Much of his discussion is aimed at bringing his readers to the "leap of thinking," which enables them to grasp the principle of reason as a principle of being. This text presents Heidegger's most extensive reflection on the notion of history and its essence, the Geschick of being, which is considered on of the most…


Book cover of The Beginning of Philosophy

Barry Sandywell Author Of Logological Investigations, Volume 1: Reflexivity and the Crisis of Western Reason

From my list on the beginnings of European theorizing.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm currently an Honorary Fellow in Social Theory at the University of York, U.K. For more than five decades I've been working to promote more reflexive perspectives in philosophy, sociology, social theory, and sociological research. I've written and edited many books in the field of social theory with particular emphasis on questions of culture and on work in the field of visual culture. Recently these have included Interpreting Visual Culture (with Ian Heywood), The Handbook of Visual Culture, and an edited multi-volume textbook of international scholars to be published by Bloomsbury, The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Visual Culture. My own position can be found in my Dictionary of Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon of Terms.

Barry's book list on the beginnings of European theorizing

Barry Sandywell Why did Barry love this book?

As a student of both sociology and philosophy I was profoundly influenced by the phenomenological tradition of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Alfred Schutz, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and others. One of these inspiring 'others’ was Hans-Georg Gadamer who promoted a radically interpretive or `hermeneutic’ approach to philosophical issues. While his major work is Truth and Method this collection of essays concerns itself with origins and 'beginnings,’ inviting readers to enter a dialogue with some of the key figures and problematics of Greek and thereby of Western European thought and culture. Plato was Gadamer’s great love and Gadamer rejects Heidegger’s reading of the Platonic Dialogues as the first phase of Western metaphysics and commends a reading of Platonic and Aristotelian thought as a spirited rejection of dogmatic thinking and a path toward a dialogical vision of thought and inquiry.

By Hans-Georg Gadamer, Rod Coltman (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Beginning of Philosophy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In The Beginning of Philosophy Gadamer explores the layers of interpretation and misinterpretation that have built up over 2500 years of Presocratic scholarship. Using Plato and Aristotle as his starting point his analysis moves effortlessly from Simplicius and Diogenes Laertius to the 19th-century German historicists right through to Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger. Gadamer shows us how some of the earliest philosophical concepts such as truth, equality, nature, spirit and being came to be and how our understanding of them today is deeply indebted to Presocratic thinkers. The book is based on a series of lectures delivered by Gadamer in 1967…


Book cover of The Consolations of Mortality: Making Sense of Death

Keith McWalter Author Of Lifers

From my list on challenge how you think about death.

Why am I passionate about this?

My mother’s death from an E. coli outbreak over a decade ago was my wake-up call to an awareness of my own mortality and was the emotional foundation of both my first novel and my latest. I’ve reached a point in my own life where advancing age is a lived experience, and I’ve read broadly about this phase of life that goes largely unexamined despite the fact that we’re all destined for it. My essays have appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News. I’m a graduate of Denison University and Columbia Law School.

Keith's book list on challenge how you think about death

Keith McWalter Why did Keith love this book?

The title itself is a consolation to me, and it turns out there really are several strong arguments for why we should be glad we don’t live forever, no matter how appealing that may seem. I found Stark’s whimsical tone throughout the book to be a pleasant departure from the leaden prose of most academic philosophers.

This book didn’t completely convince me that worrying about death is a waste of time, but it did get me part of the way there, and that was and is an enormous comfort to me.

By Andrew Stark,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Consolations of Mortality as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A penetrating and provocative exploration of human mortality, from Epicurus to Joan Didion

For those who don't believe in an afterlife, the wisdom of the ages offers four great consolations for mortality: that death is benign and good; that mortal life provides its own kind of immortality; that true immortality would be awful; and that we experience the kinds of losses in life that we will eventually face in death. Can any of these consolations honestly reconcile us to our inevitable demise?

In this timely book, Andrew Stark tests the psychological truth of these consolations and searches our collective literary,…


Book cover of Being and Time

Lee Braver Author Of Heidegger: Thinking of Being

From my list on everything you want to know on existentialism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a professor of philosophy because when I got to college, philosophy sounded like what Gandalf would study—the closest thing we have to the study of magic. It turns out, I wasn’t far from the mark. Philosophy shows you entire dimensions to the world that you never noticed because they exist at weird angles, and you have to change your way of thinking to see them. Entering them and seeing the world from those perspectives transforms everything. A great work of philosophy is like having the lights turn on in an annex of your mind you didn’t know was there, like an out-of-mind experience—or perhaps, an in-your-mind-for-the-first-time experience.

Lee's book list on everything you want to know on existentialism

Lee Braver Why did Lee love this book?

If aliens land and ask me what it’s like to be a human, I’ll give them Heidegger’s first book, Being and Time. Of course, that might prompt them to destroy all humans out of frustration at the difficulty of his writing, but if they persevere, they will find the best description of what it’s like to live out your time on this planet (One Hundred Years of Solitude comes in second).

By Martin Heidegger, John MacQuarrie (translator), Edward S. Robinson (translator)

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Being and Time as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A knowledge of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit is essential for anyone who wishes to understand a great deal of recent continental work in theology as well as philosophy. Yet until this translation first appeared in 1962, this fundamental work of one of the most influential European thinkers of the century remained inaccessible to English readers. In fact the difficulty of Heidegger's thought was considered to be almost insuperable in the medium of a foreign language, especially English. That this view was unduly pessimistic is proved by the impressive work of John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson who have succeeded in clothing…


Book cover of L’Art Magique

Nadia Choucha Author Of Surrealism and the Occult: Shamanism, Magic, Alchemy, and the Birth of an Artistic Movement

From my list on discovering magic through the arts.

Why am I passionate about this?

My fascination with magic and the occult emerged from growing up in Scotland, which has a long, rich history of witchcraft, fairies, and the 19th century Celtic Revival, which saw a relation between art and magic. For me, the occult is primarily about liberating the imagination and this is what surrealism does. I became enchanted by surrealist art as a teenager which then led me to study History of Art at university. After graduating in 1989, I wrote my book at a time when there was so little available on the relationship between surrealism and occultism, determined to share my passion with other readers. 

Nadia's book list on discovering magic through the arts

Nadia Choucha Why did Nadia love this book?

André Breton, the leader of the surrealist movement, wrote L’Art Magique in his later years, making explicit what was before then only hinted at, namely, the magical origins of art. This is a lavishly illustrated historical survey of art across different cultures and centuries and although the book has a French text and hasn’t been translated, its wonderful selection of images really conveys the surrealist perspective on what makes art magic. The book was first published in 1957 and a second edition in 1991, but was out of print for many years until this new and affordable edition which I would highly recommend.

By André Breton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked L’Art Magique as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Publi en 1957 tirage limit (rserv un cercle de bibliophiles), L'Art magique reprsentait aux yeux d'Andr Breton la somme de toute une vie : rien de moins qu'une histoire universelle de l'art, des origines prhistoriques jusqu' nos jours - mais une histoire de l'art revisite de fond en comble par le regard et la pense surralistes. Projet grandiose que cette chevauche travers les paysages de la Beaut, servi par la passion ttue d'un homme qui lui consacra, tout au long de son existence, ses recherches et le meilleur de ses intuitions. Projet exaltant surtout : car l'un des premiers crivains…


Book cover of The Jargon of Authenticity

Richard Wolin Author Of Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology

From my list on intellectuals and fascism.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a graduate student during the late 1970s, my mentor, Martin Jay, generously introduced me to two members of the Frankfurt School: Herbert Marcuse and Leo Lowenthal. These memorable personal encounters inspired me to write a dissertation on Walter Benjamin, who was closely allied with the Frankfurt School. The completed dissertation, Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption, became the first book on Benjamin in English and is still in print. The Frankfurt School thinkers published a series of pioneering socio-psychological treatises on political authoritarianism: The Authoritarian Personality, Prophets of Deceit, and One-Dimensional Man. These studies continue to provide an indispensable conceptual framework for understanding the contemporary reemergence of fascist political forms.

Richard's book list on intellectuals and fascism

Richard Wolin Why did Richard love this book?

To this day, Adorno’s pathbreaking Heidegger-critique, The Jargon of Authenticity, remains one of the most insightful and lucid exposés of fascist ideology ever written.

To begin with, Adorno wrote as an insider: as a scholar who had witnessed the implantation and criminality of German fascism firsthand. In Jargon, he used the Heideggerian's notion of “authenticity” as the point of departure for a brilliant semantic and rhetorical unmasking of the way that fascist linguistic habitudes suffuse the discourse of everyday life. After reading Adorno’s critique, it is impossible read Heidegger naïvely: that is, without careful attention to the ideological distortions of his Denkhabitus.

As Adorno deftly shows, Heidegger’s idiolect of “authentic” being-in-the-world masks a deep-seated longing for German geopolitical supremacy.

By Theodor Adorno,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Jargon of Authenticity as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Theodor Adorno was no stranger to controversy. In The Jargon of Authenticity he gives full expression to his hostility to the language employed by certain existentialist thinkers such as Martin Heidegger. With his customary alertness to the uses and abuses of language, he calls into question the jargon, or 'aura', as his colleague Walter Benjamin described it, which clouded existentialists' thought. He argued that its use undermined the very message for meaning and liberation that it sought to make authentic. Moreover, such language - claiming to address the issue of freedom - signally failed to reveal the lack of freedom…