Heidegger, Work, and Being

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

In a world of changing work patterns and the global displacement of working lifestyles, the nature of human identity and work is put under great strain. Modern conceptions of work have been restricted to issues of utility and necessity, where aims and purposes of work are reducible to the satisfaction of immediate technical and economic needs. Left unaddressed is the larger narrative context in which humans naturally seek to understand a human contribution to and responsibility for themselves, others and being as a whole. What role does human work play in the development of the world itself Is it merely a functional activity or does it have a metaphysical and ontological calling
Heidegger, Work, and Being elucidates Heidegger's philosophy of work, providing a novel interpretation of the Aristotelian understanding of work in relation to Heidegger's ontology and notion of thanking. Todd S. Mei employs Heidegger's hermeneutical approach to a critique and reconstruction of an understanding of work to show that work, at its core, is an activity centred on thanking and mutual recognition.

Reviews

"The modern understanding of work, suggests Mei, incorrectly reduces its meaning to mere necessity and utility for the purposes of maintaining life. He seeks to expand the meaning of work by conducting a hermeneutical analysis informed by the works of Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur. Heidegger's hermeneutics are deployed in conjunction with Ricoeur's theory of metaphor to both critique the historical and intellectual foundations of the modern conception of work and to articulate the nature of work as a manner of giving thanks to being. In this understanding, work not only responds to necessity, but transforms it according to a metaphorical capacity to project greater meaning to work beyond the fulfillment of necessity." -Eithne O'Leyne, BOOK NEWS, Inc.

Author Bio

Todd S. Mei is Lecturer of Philosophy at the University of Kent, UK.