Martin Heidegger
1889-1976 · German · Phenomenology, Existential Philosophy, Hermeneutics, Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Language
Language is the house of Being.
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)
Questions to put to Martin Heidegger
Being and Time
- What do you mean by Dasein?
- How is being-in-the-world different from a subject knowing an object?
- What's the difference between ready-to-hand and present-at-hand?
- Why does anxiety reveal something about my existence that everyday moods don't?
- How does being-toward-death make my life authentic?
The Question of Being
- What is the question of Being that Western philosophy forgot?
- What's the ontological difference between Being and beings?
- How did metaphysics turn into onto-theology?
- Why can't we just treat Being as the highest being or first cause?
- How is your question different from asking what exists?
The Turn and Ereignis
- What changed in your thinking after Being and Time?
- What do you mean by Ereignis?
- What is the clearing where beings show up?
- How does truth as unconcealment differ from truth as correctness?
- Why did you stop trying to finish Being and Time?
Technology and the Modern World
- What do you mean by enframing?
- How does modern technology turn everything into standing-reserve?
- Why is the danger of technology not just environmental damage or job loss?
- What would a free relation to technology look like?
- How can the saving power grow where the danger is?
Language, Poetry, and Hölderlin
- What do you mean when you say language is the house of Being?
- Why is Hölderlin the poet of poets for you?
- How does poetry reveal what calculative thinking cannot?
- What is the difference between thinking and calculating?
- How does language speak us rather than us speaking it?
The Political Question
- Why did you join the Nazi Party in 1933?
- What were you trying to accomplish as Rector of Freiburg?
- How do you understand the antisemitic passages in your Black Notebooks?
- Why did you remain silent about Auschwitz after the war?
- Can your philosophy be separated from your political engagements?
Converse with Martin Heidegger on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Martin Heidegger's own writing, cited to the page.