Books by David Farrell Krell

Nietzsche: Vols. 3 and 4 (Vol. 3: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics; Vol. 4: Nihilism)

by Martin Heidegger, David Farrell Krell

A landmark discussion between two great thinkers--the second (combining volumes III and IV) of two volumes inquiring into the central issues of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy.

Ecstasy, Catastrophe: Heidegger from Being and Time to the Black Notebooks (SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

by David Farrell Krell

Lectures on ecstatic temporality and on Heidegger’s political legacy.

In Ecstasy, Catastrophe, David Farrell Krell provides insight into two areas of Heidegger’s thought: his analysis of ecstatic temporality in Being and Time (1927)and his “political” remarks in the recently published Black Notebooks (1931–1941). The first part of Krell’s book focuses on Heidegger’s interpretation of time, which Krell takes to be one of Heidegger’s greatest philosophical achievements. In addition to providing detailed commentary on ecstatic temporality, Krell considers Derrida’s analysis of ekstasis in his first seminar on Heidegger, taught in Paris in 1964–1965. Krell also relates ecstatic temporality to the work of other philosophers, including Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, Schelling, Hölderlin, and Merleau-Ponty; he then analyzes Dasein as infant and child, relating ecstatic temporality to the “mirror stage” theory of Jacques Lacan.

The second part of the book turns to Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, which have received a great deal of critical attention in the press and in philosophical circles. Notorious for their pejorative references to Jews and Jewish culture, the Notebooks exhibit a level of polemic throughout that Krell takes to be catastrophic in and for Heidegger’s thought. Heidegger’s legacy therefore seems to be split between the best and the worst of thinking—somewhere between ecstasy and catastrophe.

Based on the 2014 Brauer Lectures in German Studies at Brown University, the book communicates the fruits of Krell’s many years of work on Heidegger in an engaging and accessible style.

“…[the book] reveals Krell as a generous and gracious thinker and teacher.” — Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Ecstasy, Catastrophe Heidegger from Being and Time to the Black Notebooks

by David Farrell Krell

 Lectures on ecstatic temporality and on Heidegger’s political legacy.

In Ecstasy, Catastrophe, David Farrell Krell provides insight into two areas of Heidegger’s thought: his analysis of ecstatic temporality in Being and Time (1927)and his “political” remarks in the recently published Black Notebooks (1931–1941). The first part of Krell’s book focuses on Heidegger’s interpretation of time, which Krell takes to be one of Heidegger’s greatest philosophical achievements. In addition to providing detailed commentary on ecstatic temporality, Krell considers Derrida’s analysis of ekstasis in his first seminar on Heidegger, taught in Paris in 1964–1965. Krell also relates ecstatic temporality to the work of other philosophers, including Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, Schelling, Hölderlin, and Merleau-Ponty; he then analyzes Dasein as infant and child, relating ecstatic temporality to the “mirror stage” theory of Jacques Lacan.

The second part of the book turns to Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, which have received a great deal of critical attention in the press and in philosophical circles. Notorious for their pejorative references to Jews and Jewish culture, the Notebooks exhibit a level of polemic throughout that Krell takes to be catastrophic in and for Heidegger’s thought. Heidegger’s legacy therefore seems to be split between the best and the worst of thinking—somewhere between ecstasy and catastrophe.

Based on the 2014 Brauer Lectures in German Studies at Brown University, the book communicates the fruits of Krell’s many years of work on Heidegger in an engaging and accessible style.

Phantoms of the Other Four Generations of Derrida's Geschlecht

by David Farrell Krell

Features a reconstruction of an unfinished text by Jacques Derrida from his most penetrating series of readings of Heidegger's philosophy.

During the 1980s Jacques Derrida wrote and published three incisive essays under the title Geschlecht, a German word for "generation" and "sexuality." These essays focused on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, taking up the rarely discussed issue of sexual difference in Heidegger's thought. A fourth essay-actually the third in the series-was never completed and never published. In Phantoms of the Other, David Farrell Krell reconstructs this third Geschlecht on the basis of archival materials and puts it in the context of the entire series. Touching on the themes of sexual difference, poetics, politics, and criticism as practiced by Heidegger, Derrida's unfinished third essay offers a penetrating critical analysis of Heidegger's views on sexuality and Heidegger's reading of the love poems of Georg Trakl, one of the greatest Expressionist poets of the German language, who died during the opening days of the First World War.