Belu, Dana S. Review of Sharin Elkholy's HEIDEGGER AND A METAPHYSICS OF FEELING. NDPR (June 2009).

Elkholy, Sharin N. Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling: Angst and the Finitude of Being. London: Continuum, 2008. Sharin Elkholy's Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling offers an original interpretation of the role of Angst in Heidegger's Being and Time. Against the grain of many and varied commentators on this theme, Elkholy's central thesis is that the experience of Angst or anxiety, and the concomitant encounter with the nothing fundamentally disindividuates and strips inauthentic Da-sein of any and all sense of selfhood. The last two chapters develop this thesis at some length and conclude with an argument for the retrieval of Da-sein's authenticity as a pre-personal and historically-inflected identity that Elkholy explains using her own concept of "ontological occlusion". The book is divided into four chapters. While the last two chapters presuppose that the reader already has more than a rudimentary familiarity with Being and Time and at least some of its influential interpretations, the first two chapters are excellently suited for the newcomer. They present a clear and detailed account of main ontological (existential) categories along with a special emphasis on "inauthenticity" and being-toward-death. The detailed account of "inauthenticity" as a deep form of conformism where Da-sein relates to its possibilities in a "leveled down" way shaped by a prereflective understanding of Being as "objective presence" is important to the structure of the book. This is because Elkholy's work turns on clearly understanding the difference between Da-sein's authentic and inauthentic or empirical comportment in its being-toward-death and guilt. . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=16345.