Book Reviews

In this issue we are pleased to have a wider than usual variety of reviews. Philosophers will find reviews of books on Heidegger and Husserl while therapeutic practice is addressed in different ways by an accessible new book on existential skills and by a more unconventional and autobiographical study of love and grief. We continue the therapeutic practice theme with a review, which may be surprising to some readers, of a book on CBT. Erich Fromm is usually not considered as one of the major philosopher practitioners perhaps because he straddled so many different traditions. In considering his clinical contribution our reviewer considers this to be a major oversight. Last but not least we look beyond the narrow confines of existential philosophy and practice with a review of the film version of Irvin Yalom's docu-subjunctive-novel When Nietzsche Wept. One implication of being-in-the-world is in terms of the intimate connection between the personal and the political. These are addressed in two rather more mainstream books: one on the existential meanings of the way we work at the start of the 21^st century, and the other on the culturo-political ramifications of the 'happiness industry'. Both also employing autobiography to great effect.

We look forward to being able publishing more reviews of media that are outside the usual academic boundaries.

Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling

Sharin N. Elkholy. (2008). London: Continuum.

Sharin Elkholy's book, I think, makes a significant contribution to the exposition and interpretation of Martin Heidegger's work. Her focus, as implied by the book's title, is on the role of anxiety (Angst) as a fundamental mood that attunes us i.e. opens us up, to Being. However, Elkholy also opens Heidegger, particularly with reference to his Being and Time, to critical analysis and introduces her own concepts that elaborate on his philosophy. Much of this I found useful and helpful, though I have some caveats to this that I will highlight a little later in this review.

Given the title of this book, I was initially a little wary of immersing myself in what I assumed to be an Aristotelian philosophical approach to reading Heidegger. The problem for me lay in the juxtaposing of 'Heidegger' and 'Metaphysics of Feeling', which suggests a reading of Heidegger as one in a long line of metaphysicians. Metaphysics, a branch of philosophy established in the Western philosophical tradition by Plato and Aristotle, is the study of the ultimate ground of reality, what ultimately exists, and is 'first philosophy', as Aristotle put it. Heidegger breaks radically from traditional Western metaphysics, calling it 'onto-theology';