Inheritance and Originality: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Kierkegaard

What might it mean to think of philosophy as being in the condition of modernism -- in which its relation to its own past, and hence its sense of its own future, has become an undismissable problem? If philosophy's hitherto-defining conventions can neither be taken for granted nor rejected, they must be put in question -- which menans re-evealuating the relation between the form and content of philosophical writing, rethinking the demands that such writing must place on its readers, and reconceiving the nature of philosophy itself. Inheritance and Originality argues that the writings of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard are best understood as responsive (each in their own way) to such questions, and as driven in consequence to strikingly similar reconceptions of language, reason, and understanding, doubt and scepticism, morality, and the structure of selfhood. Through detailed re-readings of these authors' most influential texts, as attentive to their specificity as to their family resemblances, Stephen Mulhall reorients our sense of the philosophical work each text aims to accomplish, to engender a critical dialogue betweeen them from which the elements of a new conception of philosophy might emerge, and to uncover that conception's indebtedness to certain fundamental theological preoccupations.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1: Modernist Origins: Reading Stanley Cavell's The Claim of Reason Part One Wittgenstein's Vision of Language: Reading the Philosophical Investigations Part Two Heidegger's Vision of Scepticism: Reading Being and Time and What is Called Thinking? Part Three Kierkegaard's Vision of Religion: Reading Philosophical Fragments, Fear and Trembling, and Repetition Acknowledgements Bibliography

About the Author :
Stephen Mulhall is Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, New College, Oxford.

Review :
Inheritance and Originality is worth reading for anyone interested in a close and nuanced reading of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard. British Journal of the History of Philosophy For Mulhall to have covered three such disparate figures in such a thorough way, yet to have managed to integrate the analyses into a convincing whole, is a very considerable achievement. The book is also remarkable for the way in which it implicitly challenges the impoverished models of philosophy that are currently on offer from the contemporary analytic and continental academic stables respectively. Few will complete the volume without a strong sense of how philosophical inquiry that challenges those models can contribute powerfully to our understanding of language in general, and the language of religion in particular. Religious Studies To anyone who loves Heidegger and Wittgenstein, the name Stephen Mulhall immediately evokes feeling of gratitude ... Mulhall in this book brings a narrative eloquence and master precision to his interpretations ... a sterling performance. Philosophical Investigations It is in Mulhall's textual analyses of these works that his book especially shines. His readings are exceedingly close and sensitive, and more than repay the not insubstantial demands that they place upon the reader. From the outset, one gets the sense from Mulhall that there are still new and important insights to be reaped by freshly reconsidering works that have already received a huge amount of attention, and throughout the book he delivers on this promise. This makes it a real pleasure to read ... There is much to consider in this book. It is rigorously argued, and opens up Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Kierkegaard in new and interesting ways. Mind Mulhall's readings are rich, provocative and sometimes compelling ... [Reading the book] is a long and demanding journey ... to those who undertake it, Inheritance and Originality offers a complex vision of the dispensation required for a transfiguration of our moral - and religious - consciousness. David E Cooper, Times Literary Supplement