Actually, I did once read German, as an undergrad and in graduate school, and translated Peter Handke's "Die Gallistl'sch Krankheit" as my project. I have nothing against Germans or the German language. Unfortunately, like anyone else who doesn't make it into academia and has to get other work for a living, and never has the money to travel, I haven't been sitting around reading German a lot in many years.
However, Bourdieu reads German and his translations of Heidegger and elicitation of the implications of his Hiedegger's language are not stupid.
He would probably say go ahead and read Heidegger, but don't presume that you're getting anything like strong social analysis.
Habermas? Haven't read a lot, but I do see a clearer relationship between his writing and social thought.
Peter
Gordon Fitch wrote:
>
> Justin Schwartz:
> > You should have learned German anyway: Heidegger is actually beautiful in
> > German. The comparison to Habermas' turgid, social-sciency prose is
> > insulting to a writer is is the most poetic of German philosophers of the
> > last century. I do not consider myself a Heideggerian of any sort, but I do
> > think the old Nazi creep has a lot to offer, although I frankly haven't
> > studied his work for a decade. You can get a lot of the same thing from
> > Lukacs as far as romantic anticapitalism goes; Lucian Goldman has a little
> > book on this. --jks
>
> So maybe Heidegger should be considered as a poet _rather_than_ a philosopher.
> But in that case, Rilke would be the reason to learn German.
-- ============================================================= Peter Kosenko Email: mailto:kosenko at netwood.net URL: http://www.netwood.net/~kosenko ============================================================= "Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe."--Benjamin Franklin