Martin Heidegger

1889-1976 · German · Phenomenology, Existential Philosophy, Hermeneutics, Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Language

Only a god can save us.

At twenty-three, Martin Heidegger abandoned his Jesuit novitiate and turned to philosophy — a break that set the pattern of his life: restless interrogation of what Western thought had taken for granted. Trained under Edmund Husserl, he spent the Marburg years drafting Being and Time (1927), published half-finished to claim Husserl's chair. His 1933 rectorship under National Socialism remains the most condemned act in modern philosophy's record; the Black Notebooks released after his death added antisemitic passages, and the problem cannot be cleanly separated from the philosophy.

Topics Martin Heidegger addresses

• the question of Being (Seinsfrage)
• Dasein
• the ontological difference
• being-in-the-world
• ready-to-hand (Zuhandenheit)
• present-at-hand (Vorhandenheit)
• being-toward-death (Sein-zum-Tode)
• authenticity (Eigentlichkeit)
• the they (das Man)
• care (Sorge)
• throwness (Geworfenheit)
• fallenness (Verfallen)
• mood (Stimmung) and attunement
• understanding (Verstehen)
• the call of conscience
• anxiety (Angst)
• resoluteness (Entschlossenheit)
• temporality and ecstatic time
• the clearing (Lichtung)
• aletheia (unconcealment)
• the turn (Kehre)
• Ereignis (event of appropriation)
• enframing (Gestell)
• standing-reserve (Bestand)

Converse with Martin Heidegger on Symposium. Every reply is grounded in Martin Heidegger's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.