Early years

Marburg

Freiburg

Post-war

Personal life

Being, time, and Dasein

• The first is his observation that, in the course of over 2,000 years of history, philosophy has attended to all the beings that can be found in the world (including the "world" itself), but has forgotten to ask what "being" itself is. This is Heidegger's "question of being," and it is Heidegger's fundamental concern throughout his work. One crucial source of this insight was Heidegger's reading of Franz Brentano's treatise on Aristotle's manifold uses of the word "being," a work which provoked Heidegger to ask what kind of unity underlies this multiplicity of uses. Heidegger opens his magnum opus, Being and Time, with a citation from Plato's Sophist indicating that Western philosophy has neglected "being" because it was considered obvious, rather than as worthy of question. Heidegger's intuition about the question of being is thus a historical argument, which in his later work becomes his concern with the "history of being," that is, the history of the forgetting of being, which according to Heidegger requires that philosophy retrace its footsteps through a productive "destruction" of the history of philosophy.
• The second intuition animating Heidegger's philosophy derives from the influence of Edmund Husserl, a philosopher largely uninterested in questions of philosophical history. Rather, Husserl argued that all that philosophy could and should be is a description of experience (hence the phenomenological slogan, "to the things themselves"). But for Heidegger, this meant understanding that experience is always already situated in a world and in ways of being. Thus Husserl's understanding that all consciousness is "intentional" (in the sense that it is always intended toward something, and is always "about" something) is transformed in Heidegger's philosophy, becoming the thought that all experience is grounded in "care." This is the basis of Heidegger's "existential analytic", as he develops it in Being and Time. Heidegger argues that to describe experience properly entails finding the being for whom such a description might matter. Heidegger thus conducts his description of experience with reference to "Dasein," the being for whom being is a question. In Being and Time, Heidegger criticized the abstract and metaphysical character of traditional ways of grasping human existence as rational animal, person, man, soul, spirit, or subject. Dasein, then, is not intended as a way of conducting a "philosophical anthropology", but is rather understood by Heidegger to be the condition of possibility for anything like a "philosophical anthropology." Dasein, according to Heidegger, is care. In the course of his existential analytic, Heidegger argues that Dasein, who finds itself thrown into the world amidst things and with others, is thrown into its possibilities, including the possibility and inevitability of one's own mortality. The need for Dasein to assume these possibilities, that is, the need to be responsible for one's own existence, is the basis of Heidegger's notions of authenticity and resoluteness...that is, of those specific possibilities for Dasein which depend on escaping the "vulgar" temporality of calculation and of public life.

Being and Time

Die Kehre

Later works

Influences

Aristotle and the Greeks

Dilthey

Husserl

Heidegger himself, who is supposed to have broken with Husserl, bases his hermeneutics on an account of time that not only parallels Husserl's account in many ways but seems to have been arrived at through the same phenomenological method as was used by Husserl.... The differences between Husserl and Heidegger are significant, but if we do not see how much it is the case that Husserlian phenomenology provides the framework for Heidegger's approach, we will not be able to appreciate the exact nature of Heidegger's project in Being and Time or why he let it unfinished.

Heidegger's silence about the stark similarities between his account of temporality and Husserl's investigation of internal time-consciousness contributes to a misrepresentation of Husserl's account of intentionality. Contrary to the criticisms Heidegger advances in his lectures, intentionality (and, by implication, the meaning of 'to be') in the final analysis is not construed by Husserl as sheer presence (be it the presence of a fact or object, act or event). Yet for all its "dangerous closeness" to what Heidegger understands by temporality, Husserl's account of internal time-consciousness does differ fundamentally. In Husserl's account the structure of protentions is accorded neither the finitude nor the primacy that Heidegger claims are central to the original future of ecstatic-horizonal temporality.

Kierkegaard

Hölderlin and Nietzsche

Heidegger and Eastern thought

The rectorate

Though as rector he prevented students from displaying an anti-Semitic poster at the entrance to the university and from holding a book burning, he kept in close contact with the Nazi student leaders and clearly signaled to them his sympathy with their activism.

The rectorate was an attempt to see something in the movement that had come to power, beyond all its failings and crudeness, that was much more far-reaching and that could perhaps one day bring a concentration on the Germans' Western historical essence. It will in no way be denied that at the time I believed in such possibilities and for that reason renounced the actual vocation of thinking in favor of being effective in an official capacity. In no way will what was caused by my own inadequacy in office be played down. But these points of view do not capture what is essential and what moved me to accept the rectorate.

Treatment of Husserl

Post-rectorate National Socialist period

Today...if one still reads such books at all...one can scarcely read a treatise or book on the Greeks without everywhere being assured that here, with the Greeks, "everything" is "politically" determined. In the majority of "research results", the Greeks appear as the pure National Socialists. This overenthusiasm on the part of academics seems not even to notice that with such "results" it does National Socialism and its historical uniqueness no service at all, not that it needs this anyhow.

[I] told him that I did not agree either with the way in which Karl Barth was attacking him or in the way [[:De:Emil Staiger|[Emil] Staiger]] was defending him, because my opinion was that his taking the side of National Socialism was in agreement with the essence of his philosophy. Heidegger told me unreservedly that I was right and developed his idea by saying that his idea of historicity [Geschichtlichkeit] was the foundation for his political involvement.

In response to my remark that I could understand many things about his attitude, with one exception, which was that he would permit himself to be seated at the same table with a figure such as Julius Streicher (at the German Academy of Law), he was silent at first. At last he uttered this well-known rationalisation (which Karl Barth saw so clearly), which amounted to saying that "it all would have been much worse if some men of knowledge had not been involved." And with a bitter resentment towards people of culture, he concluded his statement: "If these gentlemen had not considered themselves too refined to become involved, things would have been different, but I had to stay in there alone." To my reply that one did not have to be very refined to refuse to work with a Streicher, he answered that it was useless to discuss Streicher; the Stürmer was nothing more than "pornography." Why didn't Hitler get rid of this sinister individual? He didn't understand it.

Post-war period

Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.

The Der Spiegel interview

Existentialism and pre-war influence

Sartre's key proposition about the priority of existentia over essentia [that is, Sartre's statement that "existence precedes essence"] does, however, justify using the name "existentialism" as an appropriate title for a philosophy of this sort. But the basic tenet of "existentialism" has nothing at all in common with the statement from Being and Time [that "the 'essence' of Dasein lies in its existence"]...apart from the fact that in Being and Time no statement about the relation of essentia and existentia can yet be expressed, since there it is still a question of preparing something precursory.

Post-war forays into France

Derrida and deconstruction

The Farías debate

Bernard Stiegler

Early criticisms

Left-Hegelianism and critical theory

Reception by Analytic and Anglo-American philosophy

Highly eccentric in its terminology, his philosophy is extremely obscure. One cannot help suspecting that language is here running riot. An interesting point in his speculations is the insistence that nothingness is something positive. As with much else in Existentialism, this is a psychological observation made to pass for logic.

Contemporary European reception

• The Ister (2004) is a film based on Heidegger's 1942 lecture course on Friedrich Hölderlin, and features Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Bernard Stiegler, and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg.
• The film director Terrence Malick translated Heidegger's 1929 essay "Vom Wesen des Grundes" into English. It was published under the title The Essence of Reasons (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969, bilingual edition).

Gesamtausgabe

Selected works

On Being and Time

• William Blattner, Heidegger's Temporal Idealism
• Taylor Carman, Heidegger's Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse, and Authenticity in "Being and Time"
• Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I
• Graham Harman, Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects
• Michael Gelven, A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Revised Edition
• E.F. Kaelin, "Heidegger's Being & Time: A Reading for Readers"
• Magda King, A Guide to Heidegger's Being and Time
• Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time
• Stephen Mulhall, Heidegger and Being and Time
• James Luchte, Heidegger's Early Philosophy: The Phenomenology of Ecstatic Temporality

Biographies

• Victor Farias, Heidegger and Nazism, ed. by Joseph Margolis and Tom Rockmore
• Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life
• Otto Poeggeler, Martin Heidegger's Path of Thinking, trans. by D. Magurshak and S. Barber, Humanities Press, 1987.
• Rüdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil
• John van Buren, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King

Politics and National Socialism

• Pierre Bourdieu, The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger
• Miguel de Beistegui, Heidegger and the Political: Dystopias
• Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question
• Victor Farías, Heidegger and nazism, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1989.
• Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger, l'introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie : autour des séminaires inédits de 1933—1935, Paris, Albin Michel, 2005. ISBN 2-226-14252-5 in French language
• Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert & Otto Pöggeler (eds.), Heidegger und die praktische Philosophie, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 1989. in German language
• Dominique Janicaud, The Shadow of That Thought
• Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, "Transcendence Ends in Politics", in Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics
• Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art, and Politics: The Fiction of the Political
• George Leaman, Heidegger im Kontext: Gesamtüberblick zum NS-Engagement der Universitätsphilosophen, Argument Verlag, Hamburg, 1993. ISBN 3-88619-205-9
• Karl Löwith, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism
• Karl Löwith Heidegger's Existentialism
• Jean-François Lyotard, Heidegger and "the jews"
• Günther Neske & Emil Kettering (eds.), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism: Questions and Answers
• Political Texts — Rectoral Addresses
• Tom Rockmore and Joseph Margolis (ed.), The Heidegger Case
• Daniel Ross, Heidegger and the Question of the Political
• Hans Sluga, Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany
• Iain Thomson, Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education
• Dana Villa, Arendt and Heidegger: the Fate of the Political
• Richard Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy ISBN 0-262-23166-2.

Other secondary literature

• Robert Bernasconi, Heidegger in Question: The Art of Existing
• Lee Braver. A Thing of This World: a History of Continental Anti-Realism. Northwestern University Press: 2007.
• Walter A. Brogan, Heidegger and Aristotle: The Twofoldness of Being
• Gabriel Cercel / Cristian Ciocan (eds), The Early Heidegger (Studia Phaenomenologica I, 3—4), Bucharest: Humanitas, 2001, 506 p., including letters by Heidegger and Pöggeler, and articles by Walter Biemel, Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Theodore Kisiel, Marion Heinz, Alfred Denker
• Steven Galt Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths toward Transcendental Phenomenology
• Jacques Derrida, "Ousia and Gramme: Note on a Note from Being and Time", in Margins of Philosophy
• Paul Edwards, Heidegger's Confusions
• Christopher Fynsk, Heidegger: Thought and Historicity
• Graham Harman, Heidegger Explained
• Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Poetry as Experience
• Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger and the Politics of Poetry
• S. J. McGrath, Heidegger. A (Very) Critical Introduction
• William McNeill, The Glance of the Eye: Heidegger, Aristotle, and the Ends of Theory
• William McNeill, The Time of Life: Heidegger and Ethos
• Jean-Luc Nancy, "The Decision of Existence", in The Birth to Presence
• Herman Philipse, Heidegger's Philosophy of Being: A Critical Interpretation
• Richard Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction
• François Raffoul, Heidegger and the Subject
• François Raffoul & David Pettigrew (ed), Heidegger and Practical Philosophy
• John Sallis, Echoes: After Heidegger
• John Sallis (ed), Reading Heidegger: Commemorations, including articles by Robert Bernasconi, Jacques Derrida, Rodolphe Gasché, and John Sallis, among others.
• Reiner Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy
• Tony See, Community without Identity: The Ontology and Politics of Heidegger
• Adam Sharr, Heidegger's Hut
• Bernard Stiegler, The Fault of Epimetheus
• Leo Strauss, "An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism," in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (University of Chicago: 1989).
• Andrzej Warminski, Readings in Interpretation: Hölderlin, Hegel, Heidegger

Reception in France

• Jean Beaufret, Dialogue avec Heidegger, 4 vols.
• Dominique Janicaud, Heidegger en France, 2 vols.
• Maxence Caron, Heidegger — Pensée de l'être et origine de la subjectivité, 1760 pages, first and only book on Heidegger awarded by the Académie française.
• Ethan Kleinberg, Generation Existential: Heidegger's Philosophy in France, 1927—1961

Influence on Japanese philosophy

• Mayeda, Graham. 2006. Time, space and ethics in the philosophy of Watsuji Tetsur?, Kuki Sh?z?, and Martin Heidegger (New York: Routledge, 2006). ISBN 0-415-97673-1 (alk. paper).

Influence on Asian philosophy

• Parkes, Graham. 1987. Heidegger and Asian Thought. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1064-3.

General information

• German Heidegger Society
• Der Spiegel Interview

Works by Heidegger

• English translations of Heidegger's works
• Heidegger works on archive.org
• Some volumes of Gesamtausgabe (Klostermann) in German