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Set during the period of the Counter-Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, this historical novel, written as a chronicle, follows the life of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg at a time when Europe was at war over faith and power. The Protestant educated Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg, who converted to Catholicism, was a key figure during the period advising the staunchly Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II while ruling all of Inner Austria from the Eggenberg family seat in Graz (the only non-Habsburg to be granted that privilege). The inside dust jacket has this to say about it...

"...Historiography and poetry are successfully brought together in this work.
Within these pages one of the most moving epochs of Austrian history and the personalities that shaped it are so vividly presented that one can almost catch the scent of these former times. This chronicle of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg, who, as primary adviser and closest confidant of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, played a decisive role in determining the fate of his era, has become a world stage where emperors and kings, princes and cardinals, field-marshals and envoys appear as sharply profiled figures in an ever-changing game..." ~ Professor Arthur Fischer-Colbrie

Although touted as the new definitive translation I think Stambaugh's translation falls short of that mark. In spite of some glaring flaws, the definitive translation remains the M&R translation from 1962. Although Stambaugh does effectively eliminate some errors in that translation she introduces a host of others in her attempt to render Heidegger's German and neologisms into contemporary American English. This might have the effect of making it more accessible for first-time readers but it also takes away from Heidegger's meaning so greatly that it renders the book almost useless.

The important job of a translator is not to translate the text from one language into another but to render the text in such a way as to translate the reader from the cultural background of one language onto the cultural background of another. Stambaugh has seemingly attempted to do the former and in so doing lost the purpose Heidegger's work.

[a:Joan Stambaugh|211245|Joan Stambaugh|https://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-d9f6a4a5badfda0f69e70cc94d962125.png], one of Heidegger's last students, has done a nice job with this text. This work is the English translation of 3 of Heidegger's later lectures given in the 1960's including the lecture from which this book takes its title. In addition to the other two lectures there is a summary of students notes from the title lecture. It is significant that Heidegger chose to name this lecture after the unfinished section of his Being and Time. While it is not the section of that work that would have been included had Heidegger finished it in the early 1920's as opposed to the early 1960's, it demonstrates that the journey Heidegger was on philosophically didn't change from the basic question of being in spite of his hesitantly self-proclaimed Kehre or turning. As such this book is a "must read" in conjunction with Heidegger's early work as a "lantern" helping his readers to follow his journey from his break with Husserl to his focus on language.

This book helped change the way I think about ethics and cultural backgrounds and even how one goes about research. Gilligan's book is not and should not be considered in any way supportive of an essentialist argument about what a man's man is and what the fairer sex is. While there are definitive biological and physiological differences, gender differences, those culturally based judgments are rooted not in nature but in fact they come about through nurturing; what we are taught to expect of ourselves and others. Now Gilligan's critique, although presented for women, in principle applies to any culturally defined groups and the assumptions we make about them, us and our relations.

In terms of scientific research, conclusions are often discovered because they were, perhaps unknowingly, expected from the start and the universalizing of such conclusions is suspect at best. This book, taking issue with Lawrence Kohlberg's research into the psychological development of ethics in the individual which culminates in a what he believed was a universal ethic of justice, shows how this supposedly universal ethic is in fact an artifact of a particular culture, in this case a very narrowly defined segment of American culture in the 20th century, namely straight, white, male youths from the upper-middle class socio-economic level.

Her work here shows that there is potentially a fundamental moral developmental track that isn't so based in cultural biases and nurturing, i.e. what we teach our boys to be, but is discovered in the development of girls who, being girls and coming from middle and lower socio-economic levels of society, were largely ignored and developed then in a kind of absence of expectations. This track Gilligan discovered she calls the ethics of Care.

I highly recommend this book for anyone doing any sort of research and in particular as an introduction to the pitfalls of not being aware of one's own and one's cultural expectations and presuppositions.