FREEDOM AS THE MAIN PROBLEM OF PHILOSOPHY GÜNTHER NEUMANN DER FREIHEITSBEGRIFF BEI GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ UND MARTIN HEIDEGGER. PHILOSOPHISCHE SCHRIFTEN, BAND 9. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2019 ISBN 978-3-428-15537-8 HEIDEGGER UND LEIBNIZ. MIT EINEM GELEITWORT VON FRIEDRICH-WILHELM VON HERRMANN (DAS DENKEN MARTIN HEIDEGGERS II 2 HRSG. VON HANS-CHRISTIAN GÜNTHER). Traugott Bautz Verlag, Nordhausen, 2020 ISBN 978-3-95948-493-0

Abstract

Book review focuses on two books by Gunther Neumann, dedicated to the thought of Heidegger and Leibniz. If one of the books deals specifically with the understanding of freedom in both of the two philosophers, then the other one deals more with Heidegger’s three approaches to Leibniz’s thought: (1) Interpretation of Leibniz in the context of the making of fundamental ontology and in Being and Time, as well as the reading of Leibniz after Being and Time; (2) Interpretation of Leibniz during the transition to Ereignis thought; (3) Interpetation of Leibniz in the framework of Ereignis thought. Author’s scrupulous close reading approach allows to show the changes in Heidegger’s approach to Leibniz’s philosophy, as well as sketch out the placement of Leibniz’s great themes on the horizon of Heidegger’s history of the truth of being. Author also shows that from metaphysics there stems a certain view in the modern philosophical discussions oriented on neurosciences—a certain view on the human being and on the freedom of will. On this background Heidegger appears as a thinker who has looked beyond the alloy of metaphysics and sciences, in which the concept of freedom has been greatly restricted. Heidegger manages (thanks to the radical questioning of Being) to turn the view on the problem of freedom, which appears in G. Neumann’s books as the main problem of philosophy—through the contact of Leibniz’s thought and Heidegger’s.