The Early Heidegger and Medieval Philosophy : Phenomenology for t

"The Early Heidegger and Medieval philosophy" is a major interpretive study of Heidegger´s complex relationship to the medieval tradition. S.J. McGrath´s contribution is historical and biographical as well as philosophical, examining how the enthusiastic defender of the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition became the great destroyer of metaphysical theology. This book provides an informative and comprehensive examination of Heidegger´s changing approach to medieval sources - from the seminary studies of Bonaventure to the famous phenomenological destructions of medieval ontology. McGrath argues that the mid-point of this development, and the high point of Heidegger´s reading of medieval philosophy, is the widely neglected habilitation thesis on Scotus and speculative grammar. He shows that this neo-Kantian retrieval of phenomenological moments in the metaphysics of Scotus and Thomas of Erfurt marks the beginning of a turn from metaphysics to existential phenomenology. McGrath´s careful hermeneutical reconstruction of this complex trajectory uncovers the roots of Heidegger´s critique of ontotheology in a Luther-inspired defection from his largely Scholastic formation.In the end, McGrath argues that Heidegger fails to do justice to the spirit of medieval philosophy. The book sheds new light on a long-debated question of the early Heidegger´s theological significance. Far from a neutral phenomenology, Heidegger´s masterwork, "Being and Time", is shown to be a philosophically questionable overturning of the medieval theological paradigm.