Praise for
Duns Scotus’s Doctrine of Categories and Meaning

Heidegger’s early engagement with medieval philosophy via neo-Kantian logic foreshadows his later explorations of being, truth, and meaning. He concludes by challenging himself to grapple with “historical spirit.” Bagchee and Gower’s meticulous translation brings this formative phase of Heidegger’s thought to English-speaking readers.

—Richard Polt, Xavier University

Heidegger’s Habilitationsschrift, submitted to the University of Freiburg in 1915, at the age of twenty-six, takes up themes central to scholastic ontology and logic: the categories of reality and the differentiations of meaning. Quite traditional topics, these are not themes that one might suspect would help open the way to the revolutionary work of 1927, Being and Time. And yet: here one sees the phenomenological gifts already at work in the young Heidegger. Here one finds the early formulations of the hermeneutics of facticity and the first hints of the notion of formal indication—one finds the earliest signs of the revolutionary work to come. Ably translated, this text offers insights into key problems of scholasticism as well as into the genesis of the philosophical revolutionary that Heidegger would soon become.

—Dennis Schmidt, Western Sydney University

With this careful and scholarly translation of Heidegger’s postdoctoral thesis, Bagchee and Gower have provided an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to understand the trajectory of Heidegger's early thinking. A splendid achievement.

—William McNeill, DePaul University