important philosophers of the 20th century, but also one of the most
controversial. His thinking has contributed to such diverse fields as
phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty), existentialism (Sartre, Ortega y
Gasset), hermeneutics (Gadamer, Ricoeur), political theory (Arendt,
Marcuse), psychology (Boss, Binswanger, Rollo May), theology
(Bultmann, Rahner, Tillich), and postmodernism (Derrida). His main
concern was ontology or the study of being. In his fundamental
treatise, Being and Time, he attempted to access being (Sein) by means
of phenomenological analysis of human existence (Dasein) in respect to
its temporal and historical character. In his later works Heidegger
had stressed the nihilism of modern technological society, and
attempted to win Western philosophical tradition back to the question
of being. He placed an emphasis on language as the vehicle through
which the question of being could be unfolded, and on the special role
of poetry. His writings are notoriously difficult. Being and Time
remains still his most influential work.
Life and Works
Heidegger was born on September 26, 1889 in Messkirch in south-west
Germany to a Catholic family. His father worked as sexton in the local
church. In his early youth Heidegger was being prepared for the
priesthood. In 1903 he went to the high school in Konstanz, where the
church supported him by a scholarship, and then, in 1906, he moved to
Freiburg. His interest in philosophy first arose during his high
school studies in Freiburg when, being seventeen, he read Franz
Brentano's book entitled On the Manifold Meaning of Being according to
Aristotle. By his own account, it was this work that inspired his
life-long quest for the meaning of being. In 1909, after completing
the high school, he became a Jesuit novice, but was discharged within
a month for reasons of health. He then entered Freiburg University
where he studied theology. However, a deteriorating health condition
and perhaps a lack of a strong spiritual vocation led Heidegger in
1911 to leave the seminary and beak off his training for the
priesthood. He took up studies in philosophy, mathematics, and natural
sciences. It was also at that time that he first became influenced by
Edmund Husserl. He studied Husserl's Logical Investigations. In 1913
he completed a doctorate in philosophy with a dissertation on The
Doctrine of Judgement in Psychologism under the direction of the
neo-Kantian philosopher Heinrich Rickert.
The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 interrupted briefly
Heidegger's academic career. He was enlisted in the army, but after
two months released because of health reasons. Hoping to take over the
chair of Catholic philosophy at Freiburg, Heidegger now began to work
on his habilitation thesis on Duns Scotus's Doctrine of Categories and
Meaning, the second qualifying dissertation that would win him a
license to teach at the university. The dissertation was completed in
1915 and in the same year Heidegger became a Privatdozent or
unsalaried lecturer. He taught mostly courses in Aristotelian and
scholastic philosophy, and regarded himself as standing in the service
of the Catholic world-view. Nevertheless, his turn from theology to
philosophy was soon to be followed by another turn. In 1916 he came to
know personally Edmund Husserl who joined the Freiburg faculty. Then,
in 1917 he married Thea Elfride Petri, a Protestant student who had
attended his courses since the fall of 1915. His career was again
interrupted in 1918 when he was called up for active military duty. He
served as a weatherman on the western front during the last three
months of the war. When he returned to Freiburg, within a few weeks,
he announced his break with the "system of Catholicism" (January 9,
1919), got himself appointed as Husserl's assistant (January 21,
1919), and began lecturing in a new, insightful way (February 7,
1919). His lectures on phenomenology and his creative interpretations
of Aristotle would earn him now a wide acclaim. And yet, Heidegger was
not Husserl's faithful follower. He was not captivated by his master's
later developments – by his neo-Kantian turn towards transcendental
subjectivity, and even less by his Cartesian turn – but preferred his
earlier work, Logical Investigations. Laboring over the question of
the things themselves, he soon began to radically reinterpret
Husserl's phenomenology.
In 1923 Heidegger moved to Marburg University where with the help of
Paul Natrop he obtained a position of associate professor. Between
1923 and 1928 he enjoyed there the most fruitful years of his entire
teaching. His students testified to the originality of his insight and
the intensivity of his philosophical questioning. Heidegger extended
the scope of his lectures, and taught courses on history of
philosophy, time, logic, phenomenology, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas,
Kant, and Leibniz. But since 1916 he had published nothing and the
lack of publications stood on the way of his further academic career.
Finally, in February 1927, partly because of an administrative
pressure, his fundamental, but also unfinished treatise,Being and
Time, appeared. Within a few years, this book was recognized as a
truly epoch-making work of the 20th century philosophy. It earned
Heidegger, in the fall of 1927, the full professorship at Marburg, and
one year later, after Husserl's retirement from teaching, the chair of
philosophy at Freiburg University. Although Being and Time is
dedicated to Husserl, upon its publication Heidegger's departure from
Husserl's phenomenology and the differences between two philosophers
became apparent. Next works, published in 1929, "What is
Metaphysics?," "On the Essence of Ground," and Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics, had further revealed how far Heidegger moved from
neo-Kantianism and phenomenology of consciousness to his
phenomenological ontology.
Heidegger's life entered in a new, controversial stage with Hitler's
rise to power. In September 1930, Adolf Hitler's National Socialist
German Workers' Party (NSDAP) became the second largest party in
Germany and on January 30, 1933 Hitler was appointed chancellor of the
German Republic. Heidegger, who before was virtually apolitical, in
early 1930s become politically involved. On April 21, 1933 he was
elected rector of Freiburg University by the faculty, and accepted
this politically charged post with the motive, as he later claimed, to
resist the political control of the university. On May 3, 1933 he
joined the NSDAP party. On May 27, 1933 he delivered his inaugural
rector's address on "The Self-Affirmation of the German University,"
whose ambiguous text is frequently interpreted as an expression of his
support of Hitler's regime. There is a little doubt that during his
tenure as rector, Heidegger became instrumental to Nazi policies and,
willingly or not, helped to transform the university into
National-Socialist mold. And yet, one year later, on April 23, 1934
Heidegger resigned the rectorate and took no further part in politics.
His inaugural rector's address was found incompatible with the party
line and its text was eventually banned by the Nazis. There was no
trace there of the biologism which sustained nazism, nor of
anti-Semitism. Because he was no longer involved in the party's
activity, Heidegger's membership in the NSDAP became a mere formality.
Various restrictions were put on his freedom to publish and attend
conferences. In his lectures of the late 1930s and the early 1940s,
especially those which he gave during the period in which he was
writing Contributions to Philosophy, he expressed covert criticism of
Nazi ideology. For some time he was under surveillance of Gestapo. He
was finally humiliated in 1944 when he was declared the most
"expendable" member of the faculty and sent to the Rhine to dig
trenches. Because of the ambiguity of Heidegger's attitude toward
nazism, the period of his life under Hitler's regime and the
relationship between his philosophy and political involvement are
still the subject of controversy and provoke a heated debate.
Following Germany's defeat in the Second World War, Heidegger was in
1945 forbidden to teach and in 1946 dismissed from his chair of
philosophy because of alleged Nazi sympathies. The ban was lifted in
1949.
The 1930s are not only marked by Heidegger's controversial involvement
in politics, but also by a change in his thinking which is known as
"the turn" (die Kehre). In his lectures and writings that followed
"the turn," he became less systematic and often more obscure than in
his fundamental work, Being and Time.He turned to the exegesis of
philosophical and literary texts, especially of the Presocratics, but
also of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Hölderlin, and makes this his way
of philosophizing. A recurring theme of that time was "the essence of
truth." During the decade between 1931 and 1940, Heidegger offered
five courses under this title. His preoccupation with the question of
language and his fascination with poetry were expressed in lectures on
Hörderlin which he gave between 1934 and 1936. Towards the end of
1930s and the beginning of 1940s, he taught five courses on Nietzsche,
in which he submitted to criticism the tradition of western
metaphysics, described by him as nihilistic, and made allusions to the
absurdity of war and the bestiality of his contemporaries. Finally,
his reflection upon western philosophical tradition and an endeavor to
open a space for philosophizing outside it, brought him to Presocratic
thought. In the course of lectures entitled "An Introduction to
Metaphysics," offered in the summer semester of 1935, and published in
1953, which can be seen as a bridge between earlier and later
Heidegger, the Presocratics were no longer a subject of mere passing
remarks as in Heidegger's earlier works. The course was not about
early Greek though; and yet, the Presocratics became there the pivotal
center of discussion. It is clear that with the evolution of
Heidegger's thinking in the 1930s, they gained in importance in his
work. During the 1940s, in addition to giving courses on Aristotle,
Kant and Hegel, Heidegger lectured extensively on Anaximander,
Parmenides, and Heraclitus.
During the last three decades of his life, from the mid 1940s to the
mid 1970s, Heidegger wrote and published much, but in comparison to
earlier decades, there was no significant change in his philosophy. In
his insightful essays and lectures, such as "What are Poets for?"
(1946), "Letter on Humanism" (1947), "The Question Concerning
Technology" (1953), "The Way to Language" (1959), "Time and Being"
(1962), and "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking" (1964),
he addressed different issues concerning modernity, labored on his
original philosophy of history – the history of being, and attempted
to clarify his way of thinking after the turn. Most of his time was
divided between his home in Freiburg, his second study in Messkirch,
and his mountain hut in the Black Forest. But he escaped
provincialism, by being frequently visited by his friends, including,
among the others, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, the
physicist Werner Heisenberg, the theologian Rudolf Bultmann, the
psychologist Ludwig Binswanger, and by traveling more widely than ever
before. He lectured on "What is Philosophy?" at Cerisy-la-Salle in
1955, and on "Hegel and the Greeks" at Aix-en-Provence in 1957. He
visited Greece in 1962, and again in 1967. In 1966, Heidegger
attempted to justify his political involvement during the Nazi regime
in an interview with Der Spiegel entitled "Only a God Can Save Us." It
was published only ten years later, after his death. One of his last
teaching assignments was his seminar on Parmenides which he offered in
Zähringen in 1973. Heiddegger died on May 26, 1976 and was buried in
the churchyard at Messkirch. To the very end he worked on various
projects, including the extensive Gesamtausgabe, the complete edition
of his works.
Philosophy as Phenomenological Ontology
In order to understand Heidegger's philosophy before "the turn" let us
first briefly consider his indebtedness to Edmund Husserl. As it has
been mentioned, Heidegger was interested in Husserl from his early
student years at the University of Freiburg when he read Logical
Investigations. Later, when Husserl accepted a chair at Freiburg, he
become his assistant. His debt to Husserl cannot be overlooked. Not
only is Being and Time dedicated to Husserl, but also Heidegger
acknowledges in it that without Husserl's phenomenology his own
investigation would not have been possible. How is then Heidegger's
philosophy related to the Husserlian program of phenomenology?
By "phenomenology" Husserl himself had always meant the science of
consciousness and its objects; this core of sense pervades the
development of this concept as eidetic, transcendental or constructive
throughout his works. Following the Cartesian tradition, he saw the
ground and the absolute starting point of philosophy in the subject.
The procedure of bracketing is essential to Husserl's
"phenomenological reduction" – the methodological procedure by which
we are led from "the natural attitude," in which we are involved in
the actual world and its affairs, to "the phenomenological attitude,"
in which the analysis and detached description of the content of
consciousness is possible. The phenomenological reduction helps us to
free ourselves from prejudices and secure the purity of our detachment
as observers, so that we can encounter "things as they are in
themselves" independently of any presuppositions. The goal of
phenomenology for Husserl is then a descriptive, detached analysis of
consciousness in which objects, as its correlates, are constituted.
What right does Husserl have to insist that the original mode of
encounter with beings, in which they appear to us as they are as
things in themselves, is the encounter of consciousness purified by
phenomenological reduction and its objects? "Whence and how is it
determined what must be experienced as the "things themselves" in
accordance with the principle of phenomenology?" These are pressing
questions which Heidegger either might have or had asked. Perhaps
because of his reverence for Husserl, he does not subject him to a
direct criticism in his fundamental work. Nevertheless, Being and Time
is itself a powerful critique of the Husserlian phenomenology.
Heidegger there gives attention to many different modes in which we
exist and encounter things. He analyses the structures constitutive of
things not only as they are encountered in the detached, theoretical
attitude of consciousness, but also in daily life as "utensils"
(Zuhandene) or in special moods, especially in anxiety (Angst). Also,
he exhibits there the structures that are constitutive of the
particular kind of being which is the human being and which he calls
"Dasein." For Heidegger, it is not pure consciousness in which beings
are originally constituted. The starting point of philosophy for him
is not consciousness, but Dasein in its being.
The central problem for Husserl is the problem of constitution: How is
the world as phenomenon constituted in our consciousness? Heidegger
brings the Husserlian problem one step further. Instead of asking how
something must be given in consciousness in order to be constituted,
he asks: "What is the mode of being of that being in which the world
constitutes itself?" In a letter to Husserl dated October 27, 1927, he
states that the question of Dasein's being cannot be evaded, as far as
the problem of constitution is concerned. Dasein is that being in
which any being is constituted. Further, the question of Dasein's
being directs him to the problem of being in general. The "universal
problem of being," he says in the same letter, "refers to that which
constitutes and to that which is constituted." Hence far from being
dependent upon Husserl, Heidegger finds in his thought an inspiration
leading him to the theme which continues to draw his attention from
his early years: the question of the meaning of being.
Phenomenology receives thus in Heidegger a new meaning. He conceives
it more broadly, and more etymologically, than Husserl as "letting
what shows itself to be seen from itself, just as it shows from
itself." Husserl applies the term "phenomenology" to a whole
philosophy. Heidegger takes it rather to designate a method. Since in
Being and Time philosophy is described as "ontology" and has as its
theme being, it cannot adopt its method from any of the actual
sciences. For Heidegger the method of ontology is phenomenology.
"Phenonenology," he says, "is the way of access to what is to become
the theme of ontology." Being is to be grasped by means of the
phenomenological method. However, being is always the being of a
being, and accordingly, it becomes accessible only indirectly through
some existing entity. Therefore, "phenomenological reduction" is
necessary. One must direct oneself toward an entity, but in such a way
that its being is thereby brought out. It is Dasein which Heidegger
chooses as the particular entity to access being. Hence, as the basic
component of his phenomenology Heidegger adopts the Husserlian
phenomenological reduction, but gives it a completely different
meaning.
To sum up, Heidegger does not base his philosophy on consciousness as
Husserl did. For him the phenomenological or theoretical attitude of
consciousness, which Husserl makes the core of his doctrine, is only
one possible mode of that which is more fundamental, namely, Dasein's
being. Although he agrees with Husserl that the transcendental
constitution of the world cannot be unveiled by naturalistic or
physical explanations, in his view it is not a descriptive analysis of
consciousness that leads to this end, but the analysis of Dasein.
Phenomenology for him is not a descriptive, detached analysis of
consciousness. It is a method of access to being. For the Heidegger of
Being and Time philosophy is phenomenological ontology which takes its
departure from the analysis of Dasein.
Dasein and Temporality
In everyday German language the word "Dasein" means life or existence.
The noun is used by other German philosophers to denote the existence
of any entity. However, Heidegger breaks the word down to its
components "Da" and "Sein," and gives to it a special meaning which is
related to his answer to the question of who the human being is. He
relates this question to the question of being. Dasein, that being
which we ourselves are, is distinguished from all other beings by the
fact that it makes issue of its own being. It stands out to being. As
Da-sein, it is the site '"Da" for the disclosure of being "Sein."
Heidegger's fundamental analysis of Dasein from Being and Time points
to temporality as the primordial meaning of Dasein's being. Dasein is
essentially temporal. Its temporal character is derived from the
tripartite ontological structure: existence, thrownness, and
fallenness by which Dasein's being is described. Existence means that
Dasein is potentiality-for-being (Seinkönnen); it projects its being
upon various possibilities. Existence represents thus the phenomenon
of the future. Then, as thrownness, Dasein always finds itself
already-in a certain spiritual and material, historically conditioned
environment; in short, in the world, in which the space of
possibilities is always somehow limited. This represents the
phenomenon of the past as having-been. Finally, as fallenness, Dasein
exists in the midst of beings which are both Dasein and not Dasein.
The encounter with those beings, 'being-alongside' or 'being-with'
them, is made possible for Dasein by the presence of those beings
within-the-world. This represents the primordial phenomenon of the
present. Accordingly, Dasein is not temporal for the mere reason that
it exists "in time," but because its very being is rooted in
temporality: the original unity of the future, the past and the
present. Temporality cannot be identified with ordinary clock time –
with simply being at one point in time, at one 'Now' after another –
which for Heidegger is a derivative phenomenon. Dasein's temporality
does not have also a merely quantitative, homogeneous character of the
concept of time found in natural science. It is the phenomenon of
original time, of the time which "temporalizes" itself in the course
of Dasein's existence. It is a movement through a world as a space of
possibilities. The 'going back' to the possibilities that have been
(the past) in the moment of thrownness, and their projection in the
resolute movement 'coming towards' (the future) in the moment of
existence, which both take place in 'being with' others (the present)
in the moment of falleness, provide for the original unity of the
future, the past, and the present which constitutes authentic
temporality.
As authentically temporal, Dasein as potentiality-for-being comes
towards itself in its possibilities of being by going back to what has
been; it always comes towards itself from out of a possibility of
itself. Hence, it comports itself towards the future by always coming
back to its past; the past which is not merely past but still around
as having-been. But in this "going back" to what it has been which is
constitutive together with "coming towards" and "being with" for the
unity of Dasein's temporality, Dasein hands down to itself its own
historical "heritage," namely, the possibilities of being that have
come down to it. As authentically temporal Dasein is thus
authentically historical. The repetition of the possibilities of
existence, of that which has been, is for Heidegger constitutive for
the phenomenon of original history which is rooted in temporality.
The Quest for the Meaning of Being
Throughout his long, stretching over a half of century academic career
as a teacher and scholar, Heidegger was preoccupied with the question
of being. We have mentioned that the first formulation of this
question goes as far as his high school studies during which he read
Franz Brentano's book On the Manifold Meaning of Being in Aristotle.
In 1907 the seventeen year old Heidegger asked: "If what-is is
predicated in manifold meanings, then what is its leading fundamental
meaning? What does being mean?" The question of being, unanswered by
that time, becomes then the leading question of Being and Time(1927).
Looking at the long history of the meaning attributed to "being,"
Heidegger notices that in the philosophical tradition it has generally
been presupposed that being is at once the most universal concept, the
concept indefinable in terms of other concepts, and the self-evident
concept; in short, the concept that is taken mostly for granted. And
yet, although we seem to understand being, he claims, its meaning is
still veiled in darkness. Therefore, we need to restate the question
of the meaning of being. In accordance with the phenomenological
method of philosophy which he employs, before attempting to provide an
answer to the question of being in general, Heidegger ventures to
answer the question of being of the particular kind of entity which is
the human being – Dasein. The vivid phenomenological descriptions of
Dasein's being-in-the-world from Being and Time, especially of
Dasein's everydayness and resoluteness toward death, have attracted
many readers from areas related to existential philosophy, theology
and literature. Basic concepts of the Heideggerian fundamental work,
such as temporality, understanding, historicity, repetition, or
authentic and inauthentic existence, were carried over to and further
explored in his later works. Still, from the point of view of the
quest for the meaning of being, Being and Time was a failure and
remained unfinished. As Heidegger admitted himself in his later essay
"Letter on Humanism" (1946), the third division of its first part
entitled "Time and Being" was held back "because thinking failed in
adequate saying of the turn and could not succeed with the help of the
language of metaphysics." Its second part was also unpublished.
The turn is a change in Heidegger's thinking. The consequence of "the
turn" is not the abandoning of the leading question of Being and Time.
In spite of the change, Heidegger stresses the continuity of his
thought. But as "everything is reversed", even the question concerning
the meaning of being is reformulated in Heidegger's later works as the
question of the openness, i.e. of the truth, of being. Furthermore,
since the openness of being refers to a situation within history, the
most important conception of later Heidegger becomes the history of
being.
For a reader unacquainted with Heidegger's thought both the "question
of the meaning of being" and the expression "history of being" sound
strange. Firstly, he may argue that when something is said to be,
there is nothing expressed which the world "being" could properly
denote. Therefore, the word "being" is a meaningless term and the
Heideggerian quest for the meaning of being is in general a
misunderstanding. Second, the reader may also think that the being of
Heidegger should no more likely have history than the being of
Aristotle; so that the "history of being" is a misunderstanding as
well. Nevertheless, Heidegger's task is precisely to show that there
is a meaningful concept of being. "We understand the 'is' we use in
speaking," he claims, "although we do not comprehend it conceptually".
Can then being be thought of? – Heidegger inquires. Beings – that is
something: a table, my desk, the pencil with which I am writing, the
school building, a heavy storm in the mountains …, but being? If being
after the meaning of which Heidegger looks seems so elusive, almost
like nothing, it is because it is not an entity; it is not what-is; it
is no-thing; it is not a being. "Being is essentially different from a
being, from beings". The "ontological difference," the distinction
between being (das Sein) and beings (das Seiende), is fundamental for
Heidegger. The forgetfulness of being which, according to him, occurs
in the course of western philosophy amounts to the oblivion of this
distinction.
The conception of the history of being is of central importance in
Heidegger's thought. Already in Being and Time its idea is
foreshadowed as "the destruction of the history of ontology." In
Heidegger's later writings the story is considerably recast and called
the 'history of being' (Seinsgeschichte). The beginning of this story,
as told by Heidegger especially in the Nietzsche lectures, is the end,
the completion of philosophy by its dissolution into particular
sciences and nihilism – questionlessness of being, a dead end into
which the west has run. Heidegger argues that the question of being
would still provide a stimulus to researches of Plato and Aristotle,
but it was precisely with them that the original experience of being
of the early Greeks was covered over. The fateful event was followed
by the gradual slipping away of the distinction between being and
beings. Called variously by different philosophers, being was reduced
to a being: to idea in Plato, substantia and actualitas in Medieval
philosophy, objectivity in modern philosophy, and will to power in
Nietzsche and contemporary thought. The task which the later Heidegger
sets before himself is then to make a way back into the primordial
beginning, so that the "dead end" can be replaced by a new beginning.
And since the primordial beginning of western thought lies in ancient
Greece, those are the Presocratics, the first western thinkers, to
whom Heidegger ultimately turns for help into solving the problems of
contemporary philosophy and reversing the course of modern history.
Overcoming Metaphysics
For the later Heidegger, "western philosophy" in which there occurs
forgetfulness of being is synonymous with "metaphysics." Metaphysics
inquires about beings with respect to being, but in it the question of
being as such is disregarded and being itself is obliterated. The
Heideggerian "history of being" can thus be seen as the history of
metaphysics which is the history of being's oblivion. Further,
metaphysics is also the way of thinking which looks beyond beings
toward their ground. Each metaphysics aims at thefundamentum
absolutum, the ground of such a metaphysics which presents itself
indubitably. In Descartes, for example, the fundamentum absolutum is
attained with the ego cogito. The Cartesian metaphysics is
characterised by subjectivity because it has its ground in the
self-certain subject. Nevertheless, metaphysics as understood by the
later Heidegger is not just the philosophy which asks the question of
the being of beings and of their ground. At the end of philosophy,
i.e. in our present age where there occurs the dissolution of
philosophy into particular sciences, the sciences still speak of the
being of what-is as a whole. The modern sciences and technology,
Heidegger claims, may try to conceal or deny their metaphysical
origin, but they cannot dispense with it. In the wider sense of this
term, metaphysics is thus, for him, any discipline which whether
explicitly or not, provides an answer to the question of the being of
beings. In medieval times such a discipline was scholastic philosophy
which defined beings asentia creatum and provided them with the ground
in ens perfectissimum, God; today it is modern technology, which
Heidegger mentions so often in his late works, by which the
contemporary human being establishes himself in the word "by working
on it in the manifold modes of making and shaping." In modern
technology there speaks the today's claim of being. It masters and
dominates beings in various ways.
"In distinction from mastering beings, the thinking of thinkers is the
thinking of being." Heidegger argues that early Greek thinking is not
yet metaphysics. Presocratic thinkers ask the question concerning the
being of beings, but in such a way that being itself is laid open.
They experience the being of beings as thepresencing (Anwesen) of what
is present (Anwesende). Being as presencing means enduring in
unconcealment, disclosing. Throughout his later works Heidegger uses
several words in order rightly to convey this Greek experience.
What-is, what is present, the unconcealed, is "what appears from out
of itself, in appearing shows itself , and in this self-showing
manifests." It is the "emerging arising, the unfolding that lingers."
The early Greeks do not "objectify" beings (they do not reduce them to
an object for the thinking subject), but they let them be as they are,
as self-showing rising into unconcealment. They experience the
phenomenality of what is present, its radiant self-showing. Further,
the departure of western philosophical tradition from what is present
in presencing, from the unique experience that astonished the Greeks,
has profound theoretical and practical consequences.
Firstly, according to Heidegger, the experience of what is present in
presencing signifies the true, unmediated experience of "the things
themselves" (die Sache selbst). We may recall that the call to "the
things themselves" was included in the Husserlian program of
phenomenology. By means of phenomenological description Husserl
attempted to arrive at pure phenomena and to describe beings just as
they were given independently of any presuppositions. For Heidegger,
this attempt has however a serious draw-back. Like the tradition of
modern philosophy preceding him, Husserl stood at the ground of
subjectivity. The transcendental subjectivity or consciousness was for
him "the sole absolute being." It was the presupposition that had not
been accounted for in his program which aimed to be
presuppositionless. Consequently, in Heidegger's view, the Husserlian
attempt to arrive at pure, unmediated phenomena fails. Husserl's
phenomenology departs from the original phenomenality of beings and
represents them in terms of thinking subject as their presupposed
ground. By contrast, for the Presocratics, beings are grounded in
being as presencing. Being, however, is not a ground. To the early
Greeks, being, unlimited in its dis-closure, appears as an abyss, the
source of thought and wonder. It calls everything into question, casts
the human being out of any habitual ground, and opens before him the
mystery of existence.
The departure from what is present in presencing, from the original
experience of beings in being which astonished the early Greeks,
results in metaphysics. According to Heidegger, today's metaphysics,
in the form of technology and calculative thinking related to it,
becomes so pervasive that there is no realm of life that is not
subjected to its dominance. It imposes on man its
technological-scientific-industrial character and makes it the sole
criterion of his sojourn on the earth. Grounded in the Cartesian
philosophy of the subject and the Nietzschean idea of the
unconditioned will, metaphysics provides an answer to the question of
the being of beings for contemporary men and women, but skillfully
removes from their field of view the problem of existence. Moreover,
because of its powerful sway over contemporary human beings,
metaphysics cannot be simply cast aside or rejected. Any
straightforward attempt to do so can only fortify its power over human
life. Metaphysics can neither be rejected, canceled or denied, but it
can be overcome by the way of demonstration that it is nihilism. In
Heidegger's usage the term "nihilism" has a very specific meaning.
What remains unquestioned and forgotten in metaphysics is being; and
hence, it is nihilistic.
According to Heidegger, western humankind in all its relations with
beings is in every aspect sustained by metaphysics. Every age, every
human epoch, however different they are – Greece after Plato, Rome,
the middle ages, modernity, the age of technology – is established in
some metaphysics and is placed thereby in a definite relationship to
what-is as a whole. But metaphysics is a nihilism proper and the
metaphysics of Plato is no less nihilistic than that of Nietzsche.
Insofar as metaphysics thinks the being of beings, it reduces being to
a being; it does not think being as being. Heidegger attempts to
demonstrate the nihilism of metaphysics in the history of being which
is the history of being's oblivion. His attempt to overcome
metaphysics is not a common-sense based positing of some different
values or an alternative world-view, but is related to his conception
of history, whose central theme is the repetition of the possibilities
for existence. It consists in thinking back being to the primordial
beginning of the west – the early Greek experience of what is present
in presencing – and in repeating this beginning, so that the western
world can begin anew.
From the First Beginning to the New Beginning
Many scholars perceive something unique in the Greek beginning of
philosophy. It is commonly acknowledged that Thales and his successors
asked generalized questions concerning what is as a whole and proposed
general, rational answers which were no longer based on a theological
ground. However, Heidegger does not associate the unique beginning
with the alleged discovery of rationality and science. In fact, he
claims that both rationality and science are later developments, so
that they cannot apply to Presocratic thought. In his view, the
Presocratics ask: "What are beings as such as a whole?" and they
answer: aletheia – unconcealment. They experience beings in their
phenomenality: as what is present in presencing. But the later thought
which begins with Plato and Aristotle is unable to keep up with the
beginning. With Plato and Aristotle metaphysics begins and the history
of being's oblivion originates.
The aim which later Heidegger sets before himself is precisely to
return to the original experience of beings in being that stands at
the beginning of Western thought. This unmediated experience of beings
in their phenomenality can be variously described: what is present in
presencing, the unconcealment of what is present, the original
disclosure of beings. To repeat the primordial beginning more
originally in its originality means to bring us back to the
Presocratic experiences, to dis-close them, and to let them be as they
originally are. But the repetition is not for the sake of the
Presocratics themselves. Heidegger's work is not a mere antiquarian,
scholarly study of early Greek thinking nor an affirmation of the long
lost Greek way of life. It occurs within the perspective of nihilism
and being's forgetfulness, both unknown to the Greeks, and has as a
goal the future possibilities for existence. It happens as the
listening that opens itself out to the words of the Presocratics from
our contemporary age, from the age of the world picture and
representation, the world which is marked by the domination of
technology and the oblivion of being. In the first beginning, the task
of the Greeks was to ask the question "What are beings?," and hence to
bring beings as such as a whole to the first recognition and the most
simple interpretation. In the end, the task is to make questionable
what at the end of a long tradition of philosophy-metaphysics has been
forgotten. The new beginning begins thus with the question of being.
From Being and Time (1927) where the question of the meaning of being
is first developed, but still expressed in the language of
metaphysics, to "Time and Being" (1962) where an attempt to think
being without regard to metaphysics is made, Heidegger goes full
circle. Heidegger begins by asking about the multiple meanings of
being and ends up conceding its multiplicity and acknowledging that
there are multiple determinations or meanings of being in which being
discloses itself in history. Nevertheless, in neither of these
meanings does being give itself fully. "As it discloses itself in
beings, being withdraws." There is an essential withdrawal of being.
Therefore, the truth of being is none of its particular historical
determinations - idea, substantia, actualitas, objectivity or the will
to power. The truth of being can be defined as the openness, the free
region which always out of sight provides the space of play for the
different determinations of being and human epochs established in
them. It is that which is before actual things and grants them a
possibility of manifestation as what is present, ens creatum, and
objects.
The truth of being, its openness, is for Heidegger not something which
we can merely consider or think of. It is not our own production. It
is where we always come to stand. We find ourselves thrown in a
historically conditioned environment, in an epoch in which the
decision concerning the prevailing interpretation of the being of
being is already made for us. Yet, by asking the question of being, we
can at least attempt to free ourselves from our historical
conditioning. The Heidegger's program expressed in "The End of
Philosophy and the Task of Thinking" (1964) consists solely in the
character of thinking which does not attempt to dominate, but engages
in disclosing and opening up what shows itself, emerges, and is
manifest. When Heidegger urges us to stand in being, he does not
merely ask us to acknowledge our own place in being's history, but to
be future-oriented and see the future in a unity with the past as
having-been and the present. It means turning oneself into being in
its disclosing withdrawal.
Heidegger claims that human being as Da-sein can be understood as the
site, "Da" which being requires in order to disclose itself. The human
being is the unique being whose being has the character of openness
toward being. But men and women can also turn away from being, forget
their true selves, and thus deprive themselves of their humanity. This
is, in Heidegger's view, the situation of contemporary humans who have
replaced authentic questioning concerning their existence by
ready-made answers served by ideologies, mass media, and overwhelming
technology. Consequently, Heidegger attempts to bring contemporary men
and women back to the question of being. At the beginning of the
tradition of western philosophy the human being was defined as animal
rationale, the animal endowed with reason. Since then reason has
become an absolute value which through education brings a gradual
transformation of all spheres of human life. It is not more reason,
especially in its calculative form, Heidegger believes, that we today
need, but more openness toward and more reflection upon that which is
our nearest – being.
Heidegger's Collected Works
Heidegger's earlier publications and transcripts of his lectures are
being brought out in Gesamtausgabe, the complete edition of his works.
The Gesamtausgabe, which is not yet complete and projected to fill
about one hundred volumes, is published by Vittorio Klostermann,
Frankfurt am Main. The series consists of four divisions: (I)
Published Writings 1910-1976; (II) Lectures from Marburg and Freiburg,
1919-1944; (III) Private Monographs and Lectures, 1919-1967; (IV)
Notes and Fragments. Below there is a list of the collected works of
Martin Heidegger. English translations and publishers are cited with
each work translated into English.
a. Published Writings, 1910-1976
1. Frühe Schriften (1912-16).
2. Sein und Zeit (1927). Translated as Being and Time by John
Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978).
3. Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1929). Translated as Kant and
the Problem of Metaphysics, by Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1997).
4. Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung (1936-68). Translated as
Elucidations of Hölderlin's Poetry, by Keith Hoeller (Amherst, New
York: Humanity Books, 2000).
5. Holzwege (1935-46).
"Der Ursprung der Kunstwerkes." Translated as "The Origin of the Work
of Art," by Albert Hofstadter, in Poetry, Language, Thought (New York:
Harper & Row, 1971), and in Basic Writings (New York: Harper & Row,
1977, 1993).
"Die Zeit des Weltbildes." Translated as "The Age of the World
Picture" by William Lovitt in The Question Concerning Technology and
Other Essays (NewYork: Harper & Row, 1977).
"Hegels Begriff der Erfahrung."
"Nietzsches Wort 'Gott ist tot'." Translated as "The Word of
Nietzsche: 'God Is Dead'" by William Lovitt in The Question Concerning
Technology and Other Essays.
"Wozu Dichter?." Translated as "What Are Poets For?" by Albert
Hofstadter, in Poetry, Language, Thought.
"Der Spruch der Anaximander." Translated as "The Anaximander Fragment"
by David F. Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi in Early Greek Thinking (New
York: Harper & Row, 1975).
6. Vol. I, Nietzsche I (1936-39). Translated as Nietzsche I: The Will
to Power as Art by David F. Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1979); Vol.
II, Nietzsche II (1939-46). Translated as "The Eternal Recurrence of
the Same" by David F. Krell in Nietzsche II: The Eternal Recurrence of
the Same (New York, Harper & Row, 1984).
7. Vorträge und Aufsätze (1936-53).
"Die Frage nach der Technik." Translated as "The Question Concerning
Technology" by William Lovitt in The Question Concerning Technology
and Other Essays.
"Wissenschaft und Besinnung." Translated as "Science and Reflection"
by William Lovitt inThe Question Concerning Technology and Other
Essays.
"Überwindung der Metaphysik." Translated as "Overcoming Metaphysics"
by Joan Stambaugh in The End of Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row,
1973).
"Wer ist Nietzsches Zarathustra." Translated as "Who is Nietzsches
Zarathustra?" by David F. Krell in Nietzsche II: The Eternal
Recurrence of the Same.
"Bauen Wohnen Denken." Translated as "Building Dwelling Thinking."
"Das Ding." Translated as "The Thing" by Albert Hofstadter, in Poetry,
Language, Thought.
"…dichterisch wohnet der Mensch..." Translated as "…Poetically Man
Dwells…" by Albert Hofstadter, in Poetry, Language, Thought.
"Logos." Translated as "Logos (Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)" by David F.
Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi in Early Greek Thinking.
"Moira." Translated as "Moira (Parmenides VIII, 34-41)" by David F.
Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi in Early Greek Thinking.
"Aletheia." Translated as "Aletheia (Heraclius, Fragment B 16)" by
David F. Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi in Early Greek Thinking.
8. Was heisst Denken? (1951-52). Translated as What Is Called
Thinking? by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper & Row,
1968).
9. Wegmarken (1919-58). Translated as Pathmarks. Edited by William
McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Contains: "Comments on Karl Jaspers' Psychology of Worldviews"
(1919/21), "Phenomenology and Theology" (1927), "From the Last Marburg
Lecture Course" (1928), "What is Metaphysics?" (1929), "On the Essence
of Ground" (1929),
"On the Essence of Truth" (1930), "Plato's Doctrine of Truth"
(1931-1932, 1940), "On the Essence and Concept in Aristotle's Physics
B 1″ (1939), "Postscript to 'What is Metaphysics?'" (1943); "Letter on
Humanism" (1946), "Introduction to 'What is Metaphysics?'" (1949), "On
the Question of Being" (1955), "Hegel and the Greeks" (1958), "Kant's
Thesis About Being" (1961).
10. Der Satz vom Grund (1955-56). Translated as The Principle of
Reason by Reginald Lilly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1991).
11. Identität und Differenz (1955-57). Translated as Identity and
Difference by Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1969).
12. Unterwegs zur Sprache (1950-59). Translated as On the Way to
Language by Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).
13. Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens (1910-76).
14. Zur Sache des Denkens (1962-64). Translated as On Time and Being
by Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). Contains: "Time and
Being," "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking," and "My Way
to Phenomenology."
15. Seminare (1951-73).
16. Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges (1910-1976).
b. Lectures from Marburg and Freiburg, 1919-1944
17. Der Beginn der neuzeitlichen Philosophie (winter semester, 1923-1924).
18. Aristoteles: Rhetorik (summer semester, 1924).
19. Platon: Sophistes (winter semester, 1924-1925). Translated as
Plato's Sophist by Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer (Bloomington,
Indiana University Press, 1997).
20. Prolegomena zur Geschite des Zeitbegriffs (summer semester, 1925).
Translated as History of the Concept of Time by Theodore Kisiel
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985).
21. Logik: Die frage nach der Wahrheit (winter semester 1925-1926).
22. Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie (summer semester 1926).
23. Geschichte der Philosophie von Thomas v. Aquin bis Kant (winter
semester 1926-1927).
24. Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (summer semester 1927).
Translated as The Basic Problems of Phenomonology by Albert Hofstadter
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982).
25. Phänomenologie Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft
(winter semester 1927-1928). Translated as Phenomenological
Interpretations of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason by Parvis Emad and
Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).
26. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz
(summer semester, 1928). Translated as The Metaphysical Foundations of
Logic by Michael Heim (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).
27. Einleitung in die Philosophie (winter semester 1928-1929).
28. Der Deutsche Idealismus (Fichte, Hegel, Schelling) und die
philosophische Problemlage der Gegenwart (summer semester, 1929).
29/30. Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit
(winter semester, 1929-1930). Translated as The Fundamental Concepts
of Metaphysics by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1995).
31. Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die Philosophie
(summer semester, 1930).
32. Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes (winter semester, 1930-1931).
Translated as Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit by Parvis Emad and
Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).
33. Aristoteles: Metaphysik IX (summer semester, 1931). Translated as
Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta 1-3 On the Essence and Actuality of
Force by Walter Brogan and Peter Warnek (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1995).
34. Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Zu Platons Höhlengleichnis und Theätet
(winter semester, 1931-1932).
35. Der Anfang der abendländischen Philosophie (Anaximander und
Parmenides) (summer semester, 1932).
36/37. Sein und Wahrheit (winter semester, 1933-1934).
38. Logik als die Frage nach dem Wesen der Sprache (summer semester, 1934).
39. Hölderlins Hymnen "Germanien" und "Der Rhein" (winter semester, 1934-1935).
40. Einführung in die Metaphysik (summer semester, 1935). Translated
as An Introduction to Metaphysics by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000).
41. Die Frage nach dem Ding. Zu Kants Lehre von den transzendentalen
Grundsätzen. (winter semester, 1935-1936). Translated as What Is a
Thing by W. B. Barton, Jr. and Vera Deutsch, (Chicago: Henry Regnery
Company, 1967).
42. Schelling: Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809) (summer
semester, 1936). Translated asSchelling's Treatise on the Essence of
Human Freedom by Joan Stambaugh, (Athens: Ohio University Press,
1984).
43. Nietzsche: Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst (winter semester,
1936-1937). Translated as Nietzsche I: The Will to Power as Art by
David F. Krell (New York, Harper & Row, 1979).
44. Nietzsches Metaphysische Grundstellung im abendländischen Denken:
Die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen (summer semester, 1937). Translated
as "The Eternal Recurrence of the Same" inNietzsche II: The Eternal
Recurrence of the Same by David F. Krell (New York: Harper & Row,
1984).
45. Grundfragen der Philosophie. Ausgewählte "Probleme" der "Logik"
(winter semester, 1937-1938). Translated as Basic Questions of
Philosophy by Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1982).
46. Nietzsches II. Unzeitgemässe Betrachtung (winter semester, 1938-1939).
47. Nietzsches Lehre vom Willen zur Macht als Erkenntnis (summer
semester, 1939). Translated as "The Will to Power as Knowledge" in
Nietzsche III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and Metaphysics by Joan
Stambaugh (New York, Harper & Row, 1987).
48. Nietzsche: Der europäische Nihilismus (second trimester, 1940).
49. Die Metaphysik des deutschen Idealismus. Zur erneuten auslegung
von Schelling: Philosophische untersuchungen ueber das Wesen der
menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhaengenden Gegenstaende
(1809) (first trimester, 1941).
50. Nietzsches Metaphysik (1941-2). Einleitung in die Philosopie –
Denken und Dichten (1944-5).
51. Grundbegriffe (summer semester, 1941). Translated as Basic
Concepts by Gary Aylesworth (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1993).
52. Hölderlins Hymne "Andenken" (winter semester, 1941-1942).
53. Hölderlins Hymne "Der Ister" (summer semester, 1942). Translated
as Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister" by William McNeill and Julia Davis
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996).
54. Parmenides (winter semester, 1942-1943). Translated as Parmenides
by Andre Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington, Indiana
University Press, 1992).
55. Heraklit. 1. Der Anfang des abendländischen Denkens (Heraklit).
(summer semester, 1943); 2.Logik. Heraklits Lehre vom Logos (summer
semester, 1944).
56/57. Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie (1919).
58. Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (winter semester, 1919-1920).
59. Phaenomenologie der Anschauung und des Ausdrucks. Theorie der
philosophischen Begriffsbildung (summer semester, 1920).
60. Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens (summer semester, 1921).
61. Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles: Einführung in
die phänomeno-logische Forschung (winter semester, 1921-1922).
62. Phänomenologische Interpretationen ausgewählter Abhandlungen des
Aristoteles zur Ontologie und Logik. (summer semester, 1922).
63. Ontologie: Hermeneutik der Faktizität (summer semester, 1923).
Translated as Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity by John va Buren
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).
c. Private Monographs and Lectures, 1919-1967
64. Der Begriff der Zeit (1924). Translated as The Concept of Time by
William McNeill, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
65. Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (1936-1938). Translated as
Contributions to Philosophy: (From Enowning) by Parvis Emad and
Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).
66. Besinnung.
67.Metaphysik und Nihilismus. Die Überwindung derMetaphysik. Das Wesen
des Nihilismus.
68. Hegel. Die Negativität. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Hegel aus dem
Ansatz in der Negativität(1938-1939, 1941). 2 Erläuterung der
"Einleitung" zu Hegels "Phänomenologie des Geistes"(1942).
69. Die Geschichte des Seyns (1938-1940).
71. Das Ereignis (1941)
73. Wahrheitsfrage als Vorfrage. Die Aletheia: Die Erinnerung in den
ersten Anfang; Entmachtung der Ousis (1937).
75. Zu Hölderlin – Griechenlandreisen.
77. Feldweg-Gespräche. (1944-1945)
79. Bremer und Freiburger Vortraege.
80. Vorträge Vom Wesen der Wahrheit Freiburg lecture (1930). Der
Ursprung der Kunstwerkes(1935).
81. Gedachtes.
82. Anmerkungen zu "Vom Wesen des Grundes" (1936). Eine
Auseinandersetzung mit "Sein und Zeit" (1936). Laufende Anmerkungen zu
Sein und Zeit (1936).
83. Marburger Übungen. Auslegungen der Aristotelischen "physik".
84. Leibniz-Übungen.
d. Notes and Fragments
85. Vom Wesen der Sprache
87. Übungen SS 1937. Neitzsches metaphysische Grundstellung. Sein und
Schein (1937)
88. Einübung in das Denken. Die metaphysischen Grundstellungen des
abendländischen Denkens. Die Bedrohung der Wissenschaft.
94. Überlegungen II-VI.
95. Überlegungen VII-XI.
96. Überlegungen XII-XV.
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