<<Heidegger, more than any other philosopher, looked to poetry as a model of what thinking should be. He used individual poems, especially the hymns of Hölderlin, to help explicate his own ideas about nature, technology, art, and history. He constantly dwelled on the mysteries of language and translation, how the way we name things can reveal and conceal their essence. And he himself approached writing in a poetic spirit. We usually think of philosophy, especially German philosophy, as being written in dry, awkward jargon. But Heidegger's writing, though difficult, is deeply creative: he uses nouns as verbs and verbs as nouns, puns on etymologies, and even plays with spelling, all in an effo...

<<Heidegger, more than any other philosopher, looked to poetry as a model of what thinking should be. He used individual poems, especially the hymns of Hölderlin, to help explicate his own ideas about nature, technology, art, and history. He constantly dwelled on the mysteries of language and translation, how the way we name things can reveal and conceal their essence. And he himself approached writing in a poetic spirit. We usually think of philosophy, especially German philosophy, as being written in dry, awkward jargon. But Heidegger's writing, though difficult, is deeply creative: he uses nouns as verbs and verbs as nouns, puns on etymologies, and even plays with spelling, all in an effort to jar the reader out of conventional ways of reading and thinking.>>