Reading Heidegger and interpretive phenomenology: a response to the work of Michael Crotty

In a recent paper in Nursing Inquiry and in his other work, Michael Crotty was severely critical of much interpretive nursing scholarship and especially of some nurse scholars' interpretations of the work of Martin Heidegger. In this paper we respond to Crotty's attempt to set out what Heidegger 'actually says' [sic] in relation to tradition, culture, destruction, das Man and everydayness. We suggest that Crotty took a narrow, existentialist view of Heidegger's work and that this view was often misguided and poorly informed. We show not only that an alternative understanding of Heidegger's work in these important areas is possible, but that this interpretation is strongly supported by a deeper and wider reading of Heidegger's own work and of the secondary literature of Heideggerian scholarship.