Heidegger, Martin

Heidegger, Martin
Name	Martin Heidegger
Birth date	26 September 1889
Birth place	Meßkirch, Grand Duchy of Baden
Death date	26 May 1976
Death place	Freiburg im Breisgau, West Germany
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Continental philosophy
School tradition	Phenomenology, Existentialism, Hermeneutics
Main interests	Ontology, Metaphysics, Hermeneutics, Technology, Art
Notable works	Being and Time; Introduction to Metaphysics; What Is Called Thinking?
Influences	Edmund Husserl; Aristotle; Søren Kierkegaard; Friedrich Nietzsche; Franz Brentano
Influenced	Jean-Paul Sartre; Maurice Merleau-Ponty; Hans-Georg Gadamer; Jacques Derrida; Hannah Arendt

Heidegger, Martin was a German philosopher whose work on ontology, phenomenology, and hermeneutics reshaped 20th century Continental philosophy and influenced existentialism, hermeneutics, deconstruction, and debates about technology. His magnum opus, Being and Time, sought to revive questions about Being by analyzing human existence (Dasein) in relation to temporality, authenticity, and death. His later writings and public political involvement, especially during the 1930s, generated lasting controversy and intense scholarly debate across philosophy, literary theory, and political thought.

Early life and education

Born in the town of Meßkirch in the Grand Duchy of Baden, Heidegger studied theology briefly at the University of Freiburg before switching to philosophy under the influence of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl and the medieval scholar Heinrich Rickert. He completed a dissertation on the concept of time in Psychology under Brentano-influenced currents and a habilitation on Aristotle and medieval scholasticism that brought him into contact with Freiburg colleagues such as Max Müller and the classicist tradition. Early ties to Catholicism and studies of Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas shaped his engagement with existential themes and hermeneutic questions.

Academic career and major works

Heidegger succeeded Husserl as chair of phenomenology at the University of Freiburg and later taught at the University of Marburg, where he lectured alongside figures tied to German Idealism and Kantian scholarship. His 1927 work Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) established a novel analytic of Dasein, temporality, and Being, drawing on Aristotle, Plato, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. Subsequent major publications include Introduction to Metaphysics, What Is Called Thinking?, and the Black Notebooks lectures, which expanded inquiries into language, art, and technology and engaged with poets and thinkers like Friedrich Hölderlin, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He delivered influential lectures and seminars at institutions such as the University of Freiburg, attracting students and interlocutors including Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, and Herbert Marcuse.

Phenomenology and fundamental ontology

Heidegger reoriented phenomenology from Husserl’s emphasis on essences to a fundamental ontology seeking the meaning of Being itself, arguing that prior metaphysical traditions from Parmenides through Descartes and Immanuel Kant had obscured Being. He introduced analytic categories—Dasein, Being-in-the-world, care (Sorge), thrownness (Geworfenheit), and being-toward-death—drawing on Kierkegaard’s existential themes and Aristotle’s concepts of actuality and potentiality. His hermeneutic method emphasized historicity (Geschichtlichkeit), fore-structures of understanding, and the retrieval of pre-Socratic questions from the history of Western philosophy. The shift influenced contemporaries in existentialism (e.g., Jean-Paul Sartre), phenomenological psychologists, and critics of modernity such as Jacques Derrida and Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Later thought and the turn (Kehre)

In his later period, often called the Kehre or turn, Heidegger moved from analyses centered on Dasein to an investigation of Being itself, language, and the history of metaphysics in works like On the Way to Language, The Question Concerning Technology, and the later essays collected in Pathmarks. He engaged poets and thinkers—Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan, Georg Trakl—and critiqued instrumental reason and enframing (Gestell) in technology, drawing comparisons with Karl Marx’s critiques of capitalism and with Martin Buber’s dialogical thought. This turn influenced hermeneutic scholarship, post-structuralism, and debates on the ontology of art, aesthetics, and environmental philosophy.

Political involvement and Nazism controversy

Heidegger’s acceptance of the rectorship at the University of Freiburg in 1933 and some public statements aligning with National Socialism sparked intense controversy. His interactions with figures such as Adolf Hitler, his rectoral address, and entries in the Black Notebooks have provoked sustained debate among scholars including Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Gustav Adolf Janssen, and contemporary historians like Victor Farias and Emmanuel Faye. Defenders and critics dispute the extent to which his philosophy is implicated in his politics; investigations examine his private correspondence, lectures, and postwar denazification proceedings at the University of Freiburg and by Allied authorities. The controversy has affected reception in contexts ranging from Jewish studies and political theory to institutional discussions at universities such as Harvard University, University of Cambridge, and University of Chicago.

Influence, reception, and legacy

Heidegger’s impact spans continental philosophy, phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, deconstruction, literary theory, architecture, technology studies, and theology. Thinkers shaped by or responding to him include Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Gilles Deleuze, and Richard Rorty. His work has been translated into numerous languages and remains central to debates in metaphysics, ethics, and critiques of modernity advanced by scholars at institutions like the Collège de France, New School for Social Research, and the University of Paris. Ongoing scholarship reassesses his notebooks, lectures, and the political consequences of his thought, ensuring his continued prominence—and contention—in contemporary intellectual life.

Category:German philosophers Category:Phenomenologists Category:20th-century philosophers