Knowing and Doing

The extraordinary influence of Heidegger - which in our century some consider comparable only to that of Wittgenstein - awakens a need for examining the theoretical value of his philosophy. Gerold Prauss here offers a restatement of the relation of theory and praxis derived from an analysis of Heidegger's own approach to that relation. This text is significant for three main reasons. First, it presents Prauss' painstaking analyses of Heidegger's views in "Being and Time". Second, it makes a major contribution to the theory of action at a time when it is most needed. Prauss shows how an understanding of the relationship between theory and practice, based on the ideals of transcendental philosophy and carried out with phenomenological methods, may enable us to address problems of technology and what Prauss calls human subjectivity's 'obsession with success'. And third, the text provides English-speaking readers with their first exposure to the work of a major living German philosopher, one whose numerous books on Kant and the problem of subjectivity have had a major influence in Germany but are relatively unknown in the United States.