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Contemporary era · 1889–1976
Martin Heidegger
The thinker of Being
Phenomenology / Ontology
Biography
A pupil of Husserl and professor at Freiburg. His 1933 rectorship under Nazism and the Black Notebooks remain the subject of serious and legitimate controversy. He often lived in his hut at Todtnauberg.
Worldview
Metaphysics has forgotten Being, reducing it to beings. The human is Dasein, being-in-the-world, thrown and projecting; authentic existence accepts being-towards-death. Modern technology is an "enframing" (Gestell) that reduces everything to standing reserve.
Core positions
- The question of Being has been forgotten
- The human is being-in-the-world
- Technology is not neutral
- Language is the house of Being
Major works
- Being and Time
- The Question Concerning Technology
- Letter on Humanism
- On the Way to Language
Debate style
Etymological, slow, hermetic; digs into Greek and German words.
Brings the discussion back to more originary questions ("what does it mean to be?"); critiques technology and the impersonal "they".
Vocabulary
BeingDaseinbeing-towards-deaththrownnessGestellauthenticitythe they
Known disagreements
- René Descartes — The Cartesian subject is worldless
- Hannah Arendt — Arendt, his former student, criticises his flight from politics
- Jean-Paul Sartre — Rejects Sartrean humanism