Why Read Heidegger?

To build, calculate, investigate, create; to see, hear, say, and cultivate; to think; all are ways men and women involve themselves with beings as a whole. For humans are among the beings that for the time being are. The question of Being is not [a] bloodless [academic exercise], but vital.

For what?

For recovery of the chance to ask what is happening with man on this earth the world over, not in terms of headlines but of less frantic and more frightful disclosures.

For maintenance of the critical spirit that can say No and act No (as Nietzsche says) without puncturing the delicate membrane of its Yes.

For nurturing awareness of the possibilities and vulnerabilities implied in these simple words, am, are, is, since Being may be said of all beings and in many senses, though always with a view to one.

For pondering the fact that as we surrender the diverse senses of Being to a sterile uniformity, to a One that can no longer entertain variation and multiplicity, we become immeasurably poorer--and that such poverty makes a difference.

--David Farrell Krell