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Concept
Martin Heidegger
Summary
Martin Heidegger (ˈhaɪdɛɡər,_ˈhaɪdɪɡər; ˈmaʁtiːn ˈhaɪdɛɡɐ; 26 September 1889 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th century. He has been widely criticized for supporting the Nazi Party after his election as rector at the University of Freiburg in 1933, and there has been controversy about the relationship between his philosophy and Nazism.
In Heidegger's first major text, Being and Time (1927), "Dasein" is introduced as a term for the type of being that humans possess. (Literally translated, the common German word Dasein means "being there" or "there-being".) Heidegger believes that Dasein already has a "pre-ontological" and concrete understanding that shapes how it lives. This is a mode of being he terms "being-in-the-world". Dasein and "being-in-the-world" are unitary concepts at odds with rationalist philosophy and its "subject—object" opposition.
Heidegger uses an analysis of Dasein to approach the question of the meaning of being, that is, the question of how or why entities appear to us as the specific entities they are. In other words, Heidegger's governing "question of being" is "concerned with what makes beings intelligible as beings".
Heidegger was born in rural Meßkirch, Baden, the son of Johanna (Kempf) and Friedrich Heidegger. 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.
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