Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (/ˈhaɪdɛɡər, -dɪɡər/;[6] German: [ˈmaɐ̯tiːn ˈhaɪdɛɡɐ]; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher and a seminal thinker in the Continental tradition and philosophical hermeneutics, with a growing influence on Analytic philosophy.
According to the IEP, he is "widely acknowledged to be one of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th century."[7] Heidegger is best known for his contributions to Phenomenology and Existentialism, though as the SEP cautions, "his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification."[8]
His first and best known book, Being and Time (1927), though unfinished, is one of the central philosophical works of the 20th century.[9] In the first division of the work, Heidegger attempted to turn away from "ontic" questions about beings to ontological questions about Being, and recover the most fundamental philosophical question: the question of Being, of what it means for something to be. Heidegger approached the question through an inquiry into the being that has an understanding of Being, and asks the question about it, namely, Human being, which he called Dasein ("being-there").
Heidegger argued that Dasein is defined by Care, its practically engaged and concernful mode of Being-in-the-world, in opposition to Rationalist thinkers like René Descartes who located the essence of man in our thinking abilities. For Heidegger thinking is thinking about things originally discovered in our everyday practical engagements. The consequence of this is that our capacity to think cannot be the most central quality of our being because thinking is a reflecting upon this more original way of discovering the world.
In the second division, Heidegger argues that human being is even more fundamentally structured by its Temporality, or its concern with, and relationship to time, existing as a structurally open "possibility-for-being." He emphasized the importance of Authenticity in human existence, involving a truthful relationship to our thrownness into a world which we are "always already" concerned with, and to our Being-towards-death, the Finitude of the time and being we are given, and the closing down of our various possibilities for being through time.[10]
Heidegger also made critical contributions to philosophical conceptions of truth, arguing that its original meaning was unconcealment, to philosophical analyses of art as a site of the revelation of truth, and to philosophical understanding of language as the "house of being." Heidegger's later work includes criticisms of technology's instrumentalist understanding in the Western tradition as "enframing," treating all of Nature as a "standing reserve" on call for human purposes.[10][11]
Heidegger is a controversial figure, largely for his affiliation with Nazism, as Rector of the University of Freiburg for 11 months prior to his resignation in April 1934, for which he neither apologized nor publicly expressed regret,[12] although in private he called it "the biggest stupidity of his life" (die größte Dummheit seines Lebens).[13]
Contents
Biography
Early years
He was born in rural Meßkirch, Germany. Raised a Roman Catholic, he was the son of the sexton of the village church that adhered to the First Vatican Council of 1870, which was observed mainly by the poorer class of Meßkirch. His family could not afford to send him to university, so he entered a Jesuit seminary, though he was turned away within weeks because of the health requirement and what the director and doctor of the seminary described as a psychosomatic heart condition. Heidegger was short and sinewy, with dark piercing eyes. He enjoyed outdoor pursuits, being especially proficient at skiing.[14]
Studying theology at the University of Freiburg while supported by the church on the understanding that he would defend their doctrine, Heidegger broke with Catholicism and switched his field of study to philosophy. He completed his doctoral thesis on psychologism in 1914,[15] influenced by Neo-Thomism and Neo-Kantianism, and in 1916 finished his venia legendi with a thesis on Duns Scotus influenced by Heinrich Rickert and Edmund Husserl.[16]
In the two years following, he worked first as an unsalaried Privatdozent. He served as a soldier during the final year of World War I, working behind a desk and never leaving Germany. During the 1930s, critics of Heidegger's espousal of a Nazi-style rhetoric of martial manliness noted the unheroic nature of his service in WWI.
Marburg
In 1923, Heidegger was elected to an extraordinary Professorship in Philosophy at the University of Marburg. His colleagues there included Rudolf Bultmann, Nicolai Hartmann, and Paul Natorp. Heidegger's students at Marburg included Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Gerhard Krüger, Leo Strauss, Jacob Klein, Gunther (Stern) Anders, and Hans Jonas.
Following on from Aristotle, he began to develop in his lectures the main theme of his philosophy: the question of the sense of being. He extended the concept of subject to the dimension of history and concrete existence, which he found prefigured in such Christian thinkers as Saint Paul, Augustine of Hippo, Luther, and Kierkegaard. He also read the works of Dilthey, Husserl, and Max Scheler.[17]
Freiburg
In 1927, Heidegger published his main work Sein und Zeit (Being and Time). When Husserl retired as Professor of Philosophy in 1928, Heidegger accepted Freiburg's election to be his successor, in spite of a counter-offer by Marburg. Heidegger remained at Freiburg im Breisgau for the rest of his life, declining a number of later offers, including one from Humboldt University of Berlin. His students at Freiburg included Arendt, Günther Anders, Hans Jonas, Karl Löwith, Charles Malik, Herbert Marcuse and Ernst Nolte.[18] Emmanuel Levinas attended his lecture courses during his stay in Freiburg in 1928.[19]
Heidegger was elected rector of the University on 21 April 1933, and joined the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party on 1 May.[20] In his inaugural address as rector on 27 May he expressed his support of a German revolution, and in an article and a speech to the students from the same year he also supported Adolf Hitler.[21] In November 1933 Heidegger signed the Loyalty Oath of German Professors to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist State. He resigned the rectorate in April 1934, but remained a member of the Nazi party until 1945 even though (as Julian Young asserts) the Nazis eventually prevented him from publishing.[22]
According to historian Richard J. Evans, Heidegger was not only a member of the Nazi party, but was enthusiastic about participating. He wanted to position himself as the philosopher of the party, but the highly abstract nature of his work and the opposition of Alfred Rosenberg, who himself aspired to act in that position, limited Heidegger's role. His resignation from the rectorate owed more to his frustration as an administrator than to any principled opposition to the Nazis.[23]
Heidegger's Black Notebooks, written between 1931 and 1941 and first published in 2014, contain several anti-semitic statements and have led to a re-evaluation of Heidegger's relation to Nazism.[24]
Post-war
In late 1946, as France engaged in épuration légale in its Occupation zone, the French military authorities determined that Heidegger should be blocked from teaching or participating in any university activities because of his association with the Nazi Party.[25]
The denazification procedures against Heidegger continued until March 1949 when he was finally pronounced a Mitläufer (the second lowest of five categories of "incrimination" by association with the Nazi regime). No punitive measures against him were proposed.[citation needed] This opened the way for his readmission to teaching at Freiburg University in the winter semester of 1950–51.[26] He was granted emeritus status and then taught regularly from 1951 until 1958, and by invitation until 1967.
Personal life
Heidegger married Elfride Petri on 21 March 1917, in a Catholic ceremony officiated by his friend Engelbert Krebs, and a week later in a Protestant ceremony in the presence of her parents. Their first son, Jörg, was born in 1919. Elfride then gave birth to Hermann in 1920. Heidegger knew that he was not Hermann's biological father but raised him as his son. Hermann became a historian and would later serve as the executor of Heidegger's will.[27]
Martin Heidegger had extramarital affairs with Hannah Arendt and Elisabeth Blochmann, both students of his. Arendt was Jewish, and Blochmann had one Jewish parent, making them subject to severe persecution by the Nazi authorities. He helped Blochmann emigrate from Germany prior to World War II and resumed contact with both of them after the war.[28] Heidegger's letters to his wife contain information about several other affairs of his.[27]
Heidegger spent much time at his vacation home at Todtnauberg, on the edge of the Black Forest. He considered the seclusion provided by the forest to be the best environment in which to engage in philosophical thought.[29]
A few months before his death, he met with Bernhard Welte, a Catholic priest, Freiburg university professor and earlier correspondent. The exact nature of the conversation is not known, but what is known is that it included talk of Heidegger's relationship to the Catholic Church and subsequent Christian burial at which the priest officiated.[30][31][32] Heidegger died on 26 May 1976, and was buried in the Meßkirch cemetery, beside his parents and brother.
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