Basic Concepts

Basic Concepts, one of the first texts to appear in English from the critical later period of Martin Heidegger’s thought, strikes out in new directions. First published in German in 1981 as Grundbegriffe (volume 51 of Martin Heidegger’s Collected Works), it is the text of a lecture course that Heidegger gave at Freiburg in the winter semester of 1941 during the phase of his thinking known as the turning. In this translation, Heidegger shifted his attention from the problem of the meaning of being to the question of the truth of being. In this lucid translation by Gary E. Aylesworth, Basic Concepts provides a concise introduction to Heidegger’s later thought.