Heidegger: An Essential Guide For Complete Beginners
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Heidegger: An Essential Guide For Complete Beginners
Short extracts from reviews of Heidegger: A Beginner’s Guide
“The merit of Michael Watts work – what I find particularly appealing about it – is his ability to grasp the abstruse and abstract nature of someone’s thought, and render it in clear, concise, and concrete terms. He is a master at this!†(Roy Martinez, Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Spelman College, Atlanta, USA).
“To write clearly and accessibly, and yet present a philosopher’s ideas without trivialising or distorting them requires considerable intellectual discipline. This challenge is, arguably, all the more severe in the case of philosophers such as Heidegger and Wittgenstein…Michael Watts has understood his responsibilities to the ‘newcomer’ very well.†(Extract from The Philosophers’ Magazine [Summer 2002] review by Jonathan Derbyshire, Culture Editor of New Statesman and Managing Editor of Prospect).
“Michael Watts gives an exceptionally clear and readable account of Being and Time, while also performing the difficult feat of weaving this into an account of Heidegger’s later writings. He provides valuable guidance for the beginner through the complexities of Heidegger’s thought and much of interest for those who are already ‘on the way’.†(Michael Inwood, Trinity College, Oxford).
Ideal for complete beginners, this is an exceptionally readable and reliable overview of Heidegger's thought, refreshingly free from the complex jargon typical of most academic philosophy. Full of concrete examples, Watts provides easy access to key Heideggerian notions of authenticity, falling, throwness, angst, guilt, conscience, technology and death, while also navigating the difficult relationship between earlier and later texts, to provide readers with a strong sense of the overall continuity of the Heidegger's thought.
About the Author
Philosophy Publications:
1.The Philosophy of Heidegger, Acumen Publishing, Durham (2011) 2.Kierkegaard, Oneworld Publications, Oxford (2003) E book version: Kierkegaard: An Essential Introduction 3.Heidegger: A Beginner’s Guide, Hodder and Stoughton Educational, London, (2001) 4.Heidegger: A Beginner’s Guide, Spanish Language Edition: Heidegger Guia para Jovenes, Logues Ediciones, Madrid (2003) 5.Heidegger: A Beginner’s Guide, Korean Language Edition: Korean Translation Joong-Ang Inc. Seoul, (2006) Psychology Publications: 6.Doodle Interpretation: A Beginner's Guide, Hodder and Stoughton Educational, London (2000) 7.Lovescript: What Handwriting Reveals About Love & Romance, St Martins Griffin, New York, (1996) 8.The Naked Hand: Sexuality Revealed Through Handwriting, Headline Book Publishing, London (1995) 9.Graphology: What Your Handwriting Reveals About You, Your Friends and Your Enemies, Simon & Schuster, New York (1991)
Michael Watts graduated with honors in 1980 in Experimental Psychology, (Sussex University, UK). Continuing with post-graduate research in Graphology, he became a personnel consultant for companies worldwide, and in 1983 assisted the Security Commission in Whitehall.
Writing for numerous magazines and national newspapers in the UK and USA, he has also been a frequent guest on radio and television (ITV, BBC and Sky News channels).
An independent scholar and writer, his specialist interests are in philosophy, in particular in the practical application of East Asian thinking and Western Existentialism. His philosophy publications have been extremely well received by his peers in the academic community worldwide – see Jonathan Derbyshire’s review of Heidegger: A Beginner’s Guide, in “The Philosophers Magazine†(UK) and Professor Roy Martinez’ review of Kierkegaard (Review of Metaphysics, USA). Michael is also an avid practitioner of Tai Chi and Qi Gong and enjoys alpine hanggliding.