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Transformations: Thinking after Heidegger.

Article Excerpt
Stenstad, G. (2006). Transformations: Thinking after Heidegger. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, ISBN 0-299-21540-7, 232 pp., $60.00 (cloth); ISBN 0-299-21544-X, 232 pp., $24.95 (paper).

"To think is above all else to listen" is Gail Stenstad's stated epigraph for Transformations: Thinking after Heidegger. She gleans this notion from Heidegger's later essay "The Nature of Language", and it is indeed emblematic of what she sets out to achieve in the study. For her, the real possibility that meaningful transformations will take place as a result of encountering Heidegger's thought necessitates thinking be-ing in the wake of a hearing and heeding what "things" have to show us. To that end she invites readers to join her in thinking with Heidegger in order to think after or beyond him so that the effects of this personal listening encounter may bring about a changed and renewed perspective. This conviction is expressed numerous times when she asserts the slippery slope effect that can result from thinking differently about be-ing and beings, "'Change one thing, and everything changes.' If that 'one thing' is the thought of be-ing, and the next thing is our understanding of ourselves, then everything else begins to follow" (p. 185).

From this it becomes clear that Stenstad's intention is to write for a broader audience, while simultaneously issuing a fresh challenge to seasoned Heidegger scholars. For her there is too much at stake in the early 21st century that Heidegger's thought can meaningfully address, and so it deserves a fair hearing beyond the confines of professional philosophy,

I aim to call the reader, whether inside or outside academia, to engage with me in enacting a dynamic way--not a theory, not a method--of thinking that can, quite possibly, transform our destructive and exploitative relationships with nature, our fellow living beings, and one another. (p. xii)

In chapter one, Stenstad shows how Heidegger's life long goading to re-examine the question the meaning of be-ing opened the way for a transformative type thinking able to confront vexing contemporary dilemmas. Please note her particular way of designating "be-ing". It is well known that among Heidegger experts there is a variety of means to express this all important notion, with "Being" as one of the more prevalent uses. Nonetheless, Stenstad opts for the lower case hyphenated variant as the way to contrast the interest in the question of the meaning of "being" that launched the study of metaphysics 2,500 years ago. Her rendering of Heidegger's Seyn as be-ing better emphasizes its dynamic and questionable character (p. 7). Throughout chapter one, she shows how Heidegger's two main works--Being and time and Contributions to philosophy (from enowning)--as well as 14 other smaller texts advance the being question from the conclusions of the first metaphysicians. While by her own admission this treatment is "fairly well known to Heidegger scholars" (p. 5), especially the sections on Being and time, she nevertheless portrays Heidegger's counterpoint to traditional metaphysics in a tone that helps to underscore what is positive and constructive about thinking with and after him.

As the Greeks set out to think "the first beginning" in their...