Harman has a funny post up about real books that look like parodies. He goes with Heidegger’s Contributions. Heidegger does really give himself over to self-parody, doesn’t he? (I think you could probably find any author writing in German whose work, especially translated, comes off puffy and self-important, the two sufficient ingredients of parody.) I was just thinking about this, strangely, after reading some of Heidegger’s 44-5 “dialogue” (published in German in 1995) among a scientist, a walker of wooded paths, and a philosopher. This “dialogue” goes on for quite a long stretch of pages (some 150 if I remember), and I saw that it’s being translated into English. I just remember thinking, if there was one text I would swear was taking Heidegger’s greatest hits, putting them together, and then leading us to wonder after the profundity of the peasant walker just to make a few more bucks for the Gesamtausgabe, this would be it.
Of course, there’s also his poetry. That’s always helpful for light moments to give students a momentary break when going through his texts.
Not that I’m not thinking about assigning that dialogue if the translation is any good.
PHILOSOPHY IN A TIME OF ERROR 