The Return to Philosophy? Or: Heidegger and the Task of Thinking

Krzysztof Ziarek's essay, The Return to Philosophy? or: Heidegger and the Task of Thinking, constitutes a response to Russell. While Ziarek admits that there is some philological sense in the attempt to read Heidegger through a transcendental optics, he argues that philosophically this strategy risks covering-up the most significant developments of Heidegger's thinking. Whilst it might be said that the attempt to locate a transcendental reduction in Heidegger only ever applies to his early work, and in particular Being and Time, to distinguish between an 'early transcendental Heidegger' in opposition to a 'late history-of-being Heidegger' makes the living development of his work invisible in that it reduces philosophical thought to systems of positive, affirmative judgements. Against such a reduction not only in, but also of Heidegger's work, Ziarek mobilizes the insights that develop explicitly during the 1930s, which constitute a radical break not only with transcendental ' phenomenology, but also with philosophical, metaphysical thought as such.