Martin Heidegger

 

Heidegger came to regard language as the ultimate reality, and so is much quoted (but perhaps not read: he is phenomenally difficult) by literary theorists. But though he might appear to be calling poetry the most authentic language, Heidegger generally uses poetry to illustrate his own ideas.

Martin Heidegger was born in Baden-Württemburg in 1889, and studied initially for the priesthood. In 1909 he entered the University of Freiburg to read philosophy, receiving his lectureship in 1915. After military service, Heidegger returned to Freiburg as Husserl's Assistant, and in 1923 moved to Marburg, where he wrote Being and Time. He returned to Freiburg in 1929, became Rector in 1933, when he also implemented Nazi policies and made his notorious pro-Hitler radio broadcast. The following year Heidegger resigned as Rector, and took no further part in politics. His activities were not forgotten after the war, however, and the French occupying powers banned him from lecturing until 1950. But the following year Heidegger was granted Emeritus status, and indeed continued writing till 1961, when he published his two-volume Nietzsche. He died in Freiburg in 1976.

What is "being" asks Heidegger in Being and Time? His answer was to distinguish what it is for beings to be beings (Sein) from the existence of entities in general (Seindes). Seindes was "ontic" — i.e. makes reference, allows us to talk about things. It was simply a "place holder" and applied to relations, processes, events, etc. Sein was more fundamental: Heidegger was concerned with something he felt had been overlooked since the pre-Socratics. Descartes, for example, simply sidestepped the problem of ontology (philosophy of being) by dividing the world into three (God, the exterior world, and mental processes) and depicting the essentials of the exterior world in terms of time and the three spatial dimensions. This leads him in all kinds of difficulties, and evaded the question we must ask as to what being really is.

 

Heidegger was very idiosyncratic. He indulged in extended word play, and employed his own spelling, vocabulary and syntax. One famous coining was Dasein: literally "to be there". Dasein has no essence beyond what it can make itself be — i.e. no fixed nature or inveterate tendency. Man alone has Dasein, and he cannot escape it. Nor is there anything more fundamentally human, to which he can dedicate his life. The world is disclosed to us through and in Dasein: disclosed without mediation by concepts, propositions and inner mental states. Truth is Dasein's disclosedness. We are "thrown" into the world. Heidegger rejected the correspondence theory of truth, and regarded as a scandal the continual attempt by philosophy to centre knowledge on mental processes.

 

Martin Heidegger was very prolific: his writing is packed into some 70 dense volumes. The secondary literature is enormous and is fast expanding. {9} This, and the unsystematic nature of Heidegger's thought (not to mention the obscurity of style) makes assessment very difficult. Certainly Heidegger has been very influential and is much quoted, though generally by literary and media theorists without philosophical training. Profession philosophers are more divided in their opinions. A devoted band see him as an inspirational and truly original thinker. The great majority find his work muddled, opaque and fraudulent.

But this doubtless would be to miss what Heidegger was trying to say, perhaps would only emphasize what Heidegger contended: that logic has limits, and that our sense of wonder at the world is not to be captured in the abstract meditations of traditional philosophy.

A greatly expanded version of this article can be found on TextEtc.

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Martin Heidegger

 

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