Thinker · TH-0283
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher, a student of Husserl, who taught at Marburg and Freiburg. In Being and Time he argued that the…
On the Coordinates: 1.1 Ontology · 6.16 Philosophy of Technology · 6.20 Philosophy of Death
1889 – 1976 · Messkirch, Marburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Todtnauberg (Germany)
Traditions: Continental
Schools: Phenomenology
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher, a student of Husserl, who taught at Marburg and Freiburg. In Being and Time he argued that the Western tradition had forgotten the question of the meaning of Being itself, as distinct from any particular being, and approached it through an analysis of human existence (Dasein). His work, including later writings on technology and language, shaped existentialism, hermeneutics and deconstruction. His membership of the Nazi Party and his 1933–34 Freiburg rectorship remain matters of sustained controversy.
Key ideas
- The question of Being, what it means for anything to be, must be distinguished from questions about particular beings.
- Human existence is being-in-the-world: we are first engaged with things in practical concern, not detached observers.
- Being-toward-death, owning one's finitude, makes an authentic life possible.
- Modern technology is a way of revealing that turns everything, including people, into 'standing-reserve' to be ordered and used.
Major works
- Being and Time (Sein und Zeit, 1927)
- What Is Metaphysics? (Was ist Metaphysik?, 1929)
- Introduction to Metaphysics (Einführung in die Metaphysik, 1953)
- The Question Concerning Technology (Die Frage nach der Technik, 1954)
In the conversation
- Reading group Reading group: Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, three short chapters a week
- Question How can you talk about non-being without turning it into a something?
- Question What is the epoché, and why would bracketing whether the world exists help anyone?
- Debate “It’s just a tool” is false: instrumentalism cannot survive the smartphone
- Question When someone dies, whose loss is grief about: theirs or ours?
- Discussion Davos, 1929: was the split already visible in the room?
- Discussion Nishitani on nihilism: you have to go through it, not around it
- Question Camus and Heidegger both rejected the label. So who actually counts as an existentialist?
- Debate Dreyfus’s critique of AI has aged better than Searle’s Chinese Room
- Discussion Watsuji’s betweenness, ubuntu and relational autonomy: one discovery made three times, or three ideas?
- Question Nāgārjuna and the Vienna Circle both attacked metaphysics. Were they doing the same thing?
- Reading group Reading group: Gadamer’s Truth and Method, Part Two, on prejudice and the fusion of horizons
- Debate The analytic/continental split is mostly an accident of the 1930s, not a philosophical divide
- Discussion Heidegger’s standing-reserve and Zhuangzi’s machine heart are two different worries
In the Coordinates
The questions of philosophy where Martin Heidegger takes a place, from The Coordinates of Thought.
- 1.1 Ontology What is there?
- 6.16 Philosophy of Technology Do we shape our tools, or do they shape us?
- 6.20 Philosophy of Death Can something be bad for you if you are not there for it?