Activities, both past and present, as well as information about how to sign up to get involved with the project, can be found on the dedicated website here.
Martin Heidegger’s original and audacious engagement with the thinkers of Greek antiquity is still little acknowledged in much, especially English-speaking, Classical scholarship. Only recently, as Heidegger’s Collected Works nears completion, and with newly added translations from it into English, has it become far clearer both how important the early Greeks were to the development of Heidegger’s thought, and how much of his thinking was developed in direct conversation with the most important philologists in his own time.
The work of the German philologists of the late nineteenth century had revolutionary consequences, especially for the interpretation of the earliest Greek thinkers. In dialogue with this transformation in interpretation, Heidegger reopened the question of how, not only the thought of Plato and Aristotle, but also that of Parmenides, Anaximander and Heraclitus connects and lays the ground for contemporary philosophical work. This was never merely an archaeology, but, he believed, transforms the thinking of the present.
We aim to make Heidegger’s profound contribution to classical thought more widely accessible. Although we do work with the original German and Greek texts, we ensure that even those without fluency in these languages can participate fully. The working language of these projects is English.
Bringing philosophers and classicists into dialogue, we open the way for fruitful exchange between contemporary thinkers interested in Heidegger and classical discourse.
Project Leads: Laurence Hemming & Aaron Turner