William J. Richardson, “From the Archives: William J. Richardson’s Questions for Martin Heidegger’s Preface”

Martin Heidegger wrote one and only one preface for a scholarly work on his thinking, and it was for William J. Richardson’s study Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, first published in 1963. Ever since, both Heidegger’s Preface and Richardson’s groundbreaking book have played an important role in Heidegger scholarship. Much has been discussed about these texts over the decades, but what has not been available to students and scholars up to this point is Richardson’s original comments and questions to Heidegger that led to the famous Preface. These are published here for the first time both in the German original and in our English translation. In our commentary we (1) discuss how Heidegger’s Preface came about, (2) explain the source and status of the materials published here, and (3) pair selected passages from Richardson’s text with Heidegger’s reply in his Preface to highlight the consonance of their thinking.