Being and Time (1927)
Sein und Zeit: dedicated to Husserl; analyses Dasein as Being-in-the-world, care, authenticity and Being-towards-death
Philosophy
Martin Heidegger
1889–1976 · German
Phenomenology; existentialism; hermeneutics
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher, a student of Husserl, whose Being and Time (1927) reoriented phenomenology around the question of the meaning of Being and the analysis of human existence, Dasein. He profoundly influenced existentialism, hermeneutics and deconstruction. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933, served as rector of Freiburg University in 1933–34 and remained a member until 1945; his posthumously published Black Notebooks contain antisemitic passages.
How to spot them
- ▸Dasein; Being-in-the-world; thrownness; Being-towards-death; das Man ("the They")
- ▸The question of Being; ontological difference; forgetfulness of Being; the Turn (die Kehre)
- ▸Ready-to-hand vs present-at-hand; enframing (Gestell); "Language is the house of Being"
- ▸Freiburg rectorship; Todtnauberg hut; Black Notebooks; relationship with Hannah Arendt
Key works
What Is Metaphysics? (1929)
Freiburg inaugural lecture on anxiety and the Nothing ("the nothing itself nothings")
Introduction to Metaphysics (1953)
1935 lecture course (published 1953) asking "Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?"
Letter on Humanism (1947)
Brief über den Humanismus: distances himself from Sartre's existentialism; "Language is the house of Being"
The Question Concerning Technology (1954)
Die Frage nach der Technik: modern technology as Gestell (enframing), revealing nature as mere standing-reserve
Key ideas
- The question of the meaning of Being (Sein) has been forgotten by Western metaphysics, which has confused Being with beings (the ontological difference)
- Dasein ("being-there") is the human way of existing: always already Being-in-the-world, engaged with things and others, rather than a detached subject
- Thrownness (Geworfenheit): we find ourselves cast into a world and situation we did not choose
- Authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) means owning one's existence in the face of Being-towards-death, rather than dissolving into das Man, the anonymous "They"
- Things are first encountered as ready-to-hand (zuhanden) equipment in use, like a hammer, and only secondarily as present-at-hand (vorhanden) objects of theory
- Modern technology is a mode of revealing, Gestell (enframing), that treats everything, including humans, as standing-reserve (Bestand)
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Messkirch, Baden, to a Catholic sexton's family; initially trained for the priesthood
- •Succeeded Edmund Husserl in the chair of philosophy at Freiburg in 1928
- •Joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) on 1 May 1933, was rector of the University of Freiburg from April 1933 to April 1934, and remained a party member until 1945
- •Was barred from teaching by the French denazification authorities after the war, until 1951
- •His Black Notebooks (Schwarze Hefte), published from 2014, contain antisemitic remarks, intensifying debate over his Nazism
- •Had a love affair with his student Hannah Arendt at Marburg in the mid-1920s
- •Debated Ernst Cassirer on Kant at Davos in 1929
- •His 1966 Der Spiegel interview, published after his death in 1976, contains the line "Only a God can save us"
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Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Martin Heidegger
- Anthony Kenny — A New History of Western Philosophy