Why this book?
- To understand Aristotle’s place in the formation of the young Heidegger’s thought.
- To explore the meaning of logos beyond its conventional, exclusively logical interpretation.
- To examine the relation of logos to motion, phenomenology, theory, and action in Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle.
- To understand Heidegger’s hermeneutic engagement with one of the founders of the metaphysical tradition.
- To study an academic work situated at the intersection of Aristotle studies, Heidegger studies, and phenomenology.
About the book
The Logic of Life: Heidegger’s Retrieval of Aristotle’s Concept of Logos originated as Charlotta Weigelt’s doctoral dissertation, submitted to Stockholm University in 2002 and published in the Stockholm Studies in Philosophy series. The study examines Martin Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle’s concept of logos and stands at the intersection of Aristotle studies, Heidegger studies, and phenomenology.
The book’s central problem arises from Heidegger’s concern with the “beginning” of philosophy. For Heidegger, thought cannot remain indifferent to its own history or to philosophy’s Greek beginning; consequently, the effort to prepare a new beginning for philosophy requires a renewed engagement with Aristotle. Weigelt traces this engagement through the concept of logos, showing that Heidegger’s interpretation is not merely a historical commentary on Aristotle but part of his attempt to reconsider the foundations of philosophy itself.
The inquiry extends beyond the meaning of logos to concepts such as motion, the facticity of life, phenomenology, teleology, proposition, theory, action, and everyday life. This conceptual network demonstrates why, in Heidegger’s reading, logos cannot be understood solely in the later sense of “logic” or as the formal structure of propositions. It must instead be examined in relation to modes of being, the disclosure of truth, and human activity.