The idea of place—of topos—runs through Martin Heidegger’s thinking almost from the very start. It can be seen not only in his attachment to the famous hut in Todtnauberg but in his constant deployment of topological terms and images, and in the situated character of his thought and of its major themes and motifs. Heidegger’s work, this book argues, exemplifies the practice of “philosophical topology.” The author examines the topological aspects of Heidegger’s thought and offers a broad elaboration of the philosophical significance of place. In doing so, he provides a distinct approach to Heid ... More

The idea of place—of topos—runs through Martin Heidegger’s thinking almost from the very start. It can be seen not only in his attachment to the famous hut in Todtnauberg but in his constant deployment of topological terms and images, and in the situated character of his thought and of its major themes and motifs. Heidegger’s work, this book argues, exemplifies the practice of “philosophical topology.” The author examines the topological aspects of Heidegger’s thought and offers a broad elaboration of the philosophical significance of place. In doing so, he provides a distinct approach to Heidegger as well as a new reading of other key figures, notably, Kant, Aristotle, Gadamer, and Davidson, also including Benjamin, Arendt, and Camus. Expanding arguments he made in his earlier book Heidegger’s Topology, the author discusses such topics as the role of place in philosophical thinking, the topological character of the transcendental, the convergence of Heideggerian topology with Davidsonian triangulation, the necessity of mortality in the possibility of human life, the role of materiality in the working of art, the significance of nostalgia, and the nature of philosophy as beginning in wonder. Philosophy, he argues, begins in wonder, and in place and the experience of place. The place of wonder, of philosophy, and of questioning, the author writes, is the very topos of thinking.