Hans Pedersen has made an important and timely contribution to Heidegger studies with his interpretation of human agency in Heidegger’s early period. Combining meticulous research with clear and lively prose, Pedersen brings Heidegger’s views on free will and responsibility into conversation with mainstream Anglophone philosophy and illuminates how influential and groundbreaking Heidegger’s insights on these matters have been. I envision Agency, Freedom, and Responsibility in the Early Heidegger will be a key text in the philosophy of action for years to come.

Kevin Aho, Professor of Philosophy, Florida Gulf Coast University

This refreshing engagement of long-standing debates on agency, free will, and autonomy is an innovative and productive application of Heidegger’s thinking to those largely stalled debates that also opens the future of Heidegger scholarship to new inquiries.

Patricia Glazebrook

A lucid, thorough, and stimulating reconstruction of early Heidegger’s understanding of human agency. Pedersen compellingly connects Heidegger with several major debates in the philosophy of action in the analytic tradition and he puts many issues in Heidegger-interpretation in a useful new light, for example, the relation of the biological to the existential in Heidegger’s picture of human agency.

B. Scot Rousse, Visiting Scholar of Philosophy, UC Berkeley

Pedersen has produced a clearly written and helpful book for anyone interested in seeing how Heidegger scholarship may be able to speak to analytic philosophy of action, or conversely for finding an alternative approach to philosophy of action.

Human Studies