MARTIN HEIDEGGER

Peasant genius, Nazi philosopher, impossible ego. Son of sexton in rural Catholic town, raised in traditional religiosity he later abandoned. Brilliant student who became Husserl's assistant, then successor, then betrayer. Arrogant, charismatic, manipulative. Had affair with his student Hannah Arendt (she was Jewish, eighteen, he was married, thirty-five) — he ended it, she remained devoted despite everything. Joined the Nazi Party (1933), became rector of Freiburg University, gave speeches praising Hitler and the "National Socialist revolution," purged Jewish faculty including his mentor Husserl. Removed dedication to Husserl from Being and Time's later editions. After the war, banned from teaching, wrote bitter letters blaming everyone but himself. Never apologized, never fully confronted his complicity. Lived in hut in Black Forest, cultivating peasant image while being feted as greatest philosopher. Continued working, lecturing, building legend. Influenced everyone: Sartre, Arendt, Gadamer, Derrida, Foucault — all had to contend with him. The philosopher who asked the question of Being couldn't face the question of his own guilt. Genius and evil intertwined in ways philosophy still hasn't resolved.

Died in Freiburg, Germany, at 86, from heart failure after long illness; buried in his hometown Meßkirch in cemetery where his father had been sexton; wife Elfride survived him; funeral attended by disciples and critics; the Nazi past still unconfronted

Not publicly recorded — he died in hospital after declining health

Martin Heidegger was born on 26 September 1889 in Meßkirch, a small Catholic town in Baden, southwestern Germany. His father, Friedrich Heidegger, was sexton and cooper at St. Martin’s Church; his mother, Johanna, was a peasant’s daughter. The family was poor, pious, traditional. Martin served as altar boy, grew up steeped in Catholic liturgy and rural life. This background — peasant rootedness, Catholic rituals, small-town provincialism — shaped him lifelong.

He was bright. The local priest sponsored his education. In 1903, he entered a Jesuit seminary but left (weak health, perhaps already doubting vocation). He attended Konstanz Gymnasium, then Freiburg Gymnasium, graduating in 1909. He entered the University of Freiburg to study theology, intending priesthood. But by 1911, he abandoned theology for philosophy, having lost faith in Catholic dogma while retaining interest in religious questions.

He studied under Heinrich Rickert (neo-Kantian) and absorbed Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. In 1913, he completed his dissertation on psychologism in logic (defending Husserlian anti-psychologism). In 1915, he wrote his Habilitationsschrift on Duns Scotus (actually a misattribution — the text was by someone else, but Heidegger’s interpretation was brilliant regardless).

In 1914, WWI began. Heidegger was initially rejected (weak heart) but served briefly in postal censorship, then weather service. He spent most of the war studying and writing.

In 1916, Husserl moved to Freiburg as professor. Heidegger became his assistant in 1919 — a fateful relationship. Husserl saw him as brilliant successor who would carry phenomenology forward. Heidegger absorbed phenomenology but began transforming it. Where Husserl examined consciousness, Heidegger examined existence.

In 1917, Heidegger married Elfride Petri, a Protestant economics student. She was nationalist, later an enthusiastic Nazi. They had two sons, Jörg and Hermann. The marriage was unhappy but lasted until his death.

In 1919, Heidegger met Hannah Arendt, an eighteen-year-old student brilliant in philosophy. He was thirty-five, married, her professor. They began an affair. He was charismatic, intense; she was dazzled. He broke it off in 1925 when he left for Marburg, but they corresponded for decades. After the war, she helped rehabilitate his reputation despite his Nazi past and his betrayal of her as Jew. Their relationship remains one of philosophy’s strangest — the victim defending her victimizer.

From 1923-28, Heidegger taught at Marburg University. These were his most productive years. He lectured brilliantly on Aristotle, phenomenology, time, being. Students included Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Herbert Marcuse. He was developing Being and Time, his masterwork.

In 1927, Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) appeared. It was 400 pages, dense, neologistic, unfinished (only Part One of a planned two-part work). But it was revolutionary. Heidegger argued that Western philosophy had forgotten Being itself. It studies beings (things that are) but never asks: What is Being as such? What does it mean to be?

To answer, we must analyze Dasein — “being-there,” human existence. We don’t observe the world as detached subjects; we’re thrown into it, always already engaged, using tools, pursuing projects, making sense. Dasein’s Being is characterized by: being-in-the-world (we’re always situated), care (Sorge — we’re concerned with our existence), temporality (we’re finite, mortal, projecting toward death), thrownness (we find ourselves in a world we didn’t choose), projection (we’re oriented toward possibilities).

Anxiety reveals Dasein’s authentic situation: we’re finite beings facing death, responsible for making meaning in a world that doesn’t provide it. Authenticity means owning this; inauthenticity means fleeing into “the they” (das Man) — conformity, distractions, bad faith.

The book was sensation. Here was phenomenology radicalized, epistemology bypassed, existence made central. Sartre, Camus, and existentialists drew on it (though Heidegger rejected the label). It made Heidegger famous.

In 1928, Husserl retired. Heidegger succeeded him as professor at Freiburg — the student inheriting the master’s chair. But relations soured. Husserl saw Heidegger abandoning transcendental phenomenology for anthropology or existentialism. Heidegger saw Husserl stuck in subject-object framework, missing Being.

Then disaster: In January 1933, Hitler became Chancellor. In May 1933, Heidegger joined the Nazi Party (membership card 3,125,894). In the same month, he was elected Rector of Freiburg University. He gave his inaugural address, “The Self-Assertion of the German University,” praising National Socialism, declaring universities must serve the state, calling for spiritual renewal through German destiny.

As Rector, Heidegger implemented Nazi policies: the Führerprinzip (leadership principle), burning books, dismissing Jewish faculty. He blocked Husserl’s access to the university library. He removed the dedication to Husserl from Being and Time’s later editions. He denounced colleagues to authorities. He gave pro-Nazi speeches to students and workers, invoking the greatness of the National Socialist movement.

He resigned as Rector in 1934 (claiming disillusionment with bureaucracy, but he remained in the Party until 1945). Some claim he became disillusioned with Nazism; others argue he simply found the crude reality disappointing compared to his philosophical fantasy of spiritual revolution. His private notes (the “Black Notebooks,” published 2014) reveal continued anti-Semitism, including linking Jews to modernity’s nihilism.

He continued teaching during the war, giving lectures that became Introduction to Metaphysics (1935), which contained notorious line praising “the inner truth and greatness” of National Socialism (he later claimed this referred to the encounter between technology and modern humanity, not the party, but he didn’t remove it). He taught on Nietzsche, Hölderlin, pre-Socratics, developing his later philosophy.

In 1945, Germany collapsed. French occupation authorities investigated Heidegger. He was banned from teaching (1946-51). He had a nervous breakdown, spent time in psychiatric care. His supporters began campaign for rehabilitation.

In the 1950s-60s, he resumed lecturing (not as professor but as guest), published extensively (mostly lecture courses from earlier decades), and built his legend. He lived between Freiburg and his famous hut in Todtnauberg in the Black Forest — cultivating peasant image, wearing traditional clothing, playing the simple thinker.

His later philosophy shifted. The “turn” (Kehre) emphasized Being’s history rather than Dasein’s existence. Being isn’t static essence but event (Ereignis) — it happens, withdraws, sends epochs (pre-Socratic, medieval, modern). Technology is modern Being’s manifestation — treating everything as “standing reserve” (resources to be exploited). We’re caught in this “enframing” (Gestell), unable to escape. Only a god can save us (he said in famous 1966 interview). Art, poetry (especially Hölderlin), and “thinking” (not philosophy) might prepare for new epochal dispensation.

He influenced everyone. Sartre developed existentialism from Being and Time. Gadamer developed hermeneutics. Arendt incorporated his analysis of modernity. Derrida deconstructed his texts. Foucault absorbed his historicizing of truth. Rorty and American pragmatists engaged him. Even analytic philosophers (Hubert Dreyfus, Charles Taylor) found resources.

But the Nazi past haunted everything. After the war, he never apologized adequately. In 1945, he wrote to the Denazification Committee claiming he’d been naive, misled, trying to save the university. But he never confronted his complicity. In 1949, he gave lectures on technology without mentioning Holocaust as technology’s manifestation. In 1966 Der Spiegel interview (published after his death in 1976), he blamed Americanism and communism, claiming he’d tried to work within Nazism to steer it philosophically.

He died on 26 May 1976, lauded as century’s greatest philosopher by many, condemned as unreconstructed Nazi by others. The question remains: Can we separate the philosophy from the politics? Is Being and Time contaminated by what came after? Or is there something in the philosophy itself — the anti-humanism, the critique of reason, the emphasis on destiny and rootedness — that enabled the embrace of Nazism?

In 1933, as Rector, Heidegger gave speeches to students and workers promoting Nazism. He declared: "Let not propositions and 'ideas' be the rules of your being. The Führer himself and he alone is the German reality and its law." Students wore SA uniforms to class; Heidegger approved. He led them in Nazi salutes. One day, Heidegger encountered his former student Karl Löwith (Jewish) in Rome (1936). Löwith was fleeing Germany. Heidegger wore his Nazi Party pin. They discussed philosophy awkwardly. Löwith asked about the connection between Heidegger's philosophy and his political engagement. Heidegger replied: "It rests on the concept of 'historicity.'" Later, Löwith wrote: "I wondered how such a radical thinker could have been so blind." The answer: the philosophy's emphasis on destiny, rootedness, and historical fate may not have been merely compatible with Nazism but productive of it. The peasant thinker wearing the swastika, defending it through his philosophy's core concepts.

Heidegger wasn't simply an existentialist — he explicitly rejected the label, seeing existentialism (especially Sartre) as misunderstanding his fundamental ontology as anthropology or psychology. He wasn't advocating authentic individual choice in Being and Time — authenticity means owning Dasein's structural features (finitude, thrownness, being-toward-death), not creating yourself ex nihilo. He wasn't irrationalist rejecting logic — he criticized certain conceptions of logic and rationality but used rigorous phenomenological analysis. He wasn't simply pessimistic about technology — his later work analyzed technology as epochal dispensation of Being, not mere tools, and sought "releasement" (Gelassenheit) as response, not rejection. He wasn't clearly or fully disillusioned with Nazism after 1934 — evidence suggests continued sympathy with some Nazi ideas, and the Black Notebooks reveal persistent anti-Semitism. And his philosophy isn't simply separable from his politics — deep questions remain about connections between his thought and his political choices.

Heidegger destroyed Western metaphysics by showing it had forgotten Being itself. Traditional philosophy asks "What is this being?" (substance, cause, essence) but never asks "What is Being as such?" — the difference between beings and Being. Against Husserl transcendental phenomenology (consciousness constitutes objectivity), Heidegger insisted we're always already in the world — not subjects contemplating objects but Dasein ("being-there"), thrown into existence, interpreting our Being through practices and possibilities. Against epistemology (how do we know?), he pursued fundamental ontology (what is it to be?). Against presence metaphysics (truth as correspondence, being as presence), he showed truth as unconcealment (aletheia) and Being as temporal, historical, finite. This "destruction" of metaphysics wasn't nihilism but clearing ground to ask the question anew. But Heidegger also broke catastrophically with philosophy's ethical obligations by embracing Nazism, never adequately confronting this, and poisoning his legacy. The Nazi involvement wasn't incidental but connected to his philosophy's anti-humanism, critique of modernity, and romantic nationalism. Whether his philosophy can be separated from his politics remains philosophy's most bitter controversy.

Start with secondary sources — Michael Inwood's Heidegger Dictionary or Richard Polt's Heidegger: An Introduction clarify terminology. Then "The Question Concerning Technology" — relatively accessible essay showing later Heidegger. Being and Time Divisions I and II (skip Division III/unpublished parts initially) — Macquarrie & Robinson translation is standard, though newer translations exist. Introduction to Metaphysics for bridge between early and late. Avoid Contributions until you've mastered Being and Time. Rüdiger Safranski's biography Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil addresses the Nazi question. Expect extreme difficulty — Heidegger is deliberately obscure, creating neologisms, Germanic compounds, challenging every assumption.

"Building Dwelling Thinking" (1951), essay on what it means to dwell. Heidegger analyzes a Black Forest farmhouse and a bridge, showing how authentic building lets things be, gathers the fourfold (earth, sky, divinities, mortals). Dwelling isn't just occupying space but being at home in the world. The essay is poetic, concrete, showing Heidegger at his best — phenomenologically rich, connecting everyday life to ontology. But it also reveals his romanticism and nostalgia for premodern rootedness, which connects to his politics. Beautiful and troubling, like much of his work.

Imagine a forest. Walking a familiar path, you don't notice the path itself — you notice landmarks, destinations. The path withdraws into use. Only if blocked (fallen tree) does it become visible as path-object. Similarly, tools withdraw in use: the hammer disappears into hammering; only when broken do you contemplate it. Heidegger says Being is like the path or hammer — it gives (makes things possible) by withdrawing. We're always already on the path (in Being), using tools (engaged with beings), but we forget the path itself (Being as such). Philosophy traditionally studies what's on the path (beings), missing the path (Being). Heidegger's question: What is this path? How did it get here? Where does it lead? The path is Being; walking is Dasein; forgetting the path while using it is metaphysics; remembering is fundamental ontology.

Heidegger’s philosophy is vast, difficult, and divisible into early (Being and Time, 1927) and later work (post-1930s “turn”). But continuity exists: always asking about Being.

The question of Being: Western philosophy studies beings (things that are — substances, causes, essences) but forgets Being itself (what it means to be). Plato asks what is beauty, virtue, triangle — essence of beings. Aristotle analyzes substance. Descartes analyzes thinking substance. But none asks: What is Being as such? What does “to be” mean? This is the forgotten question, and forgetting it leads to metaphysics’s dead ends.

Dasein: To approach Being, Heidegger analyzes Dasein (literally “being-there”) — human existence. We’re the beings who ask about Being, so understanding our way of being opens the question. Dasein isn’t subject contemplating objects. We’re always already in-the-world, engaged, using tools, pursuing projects, interpreting. Being-in-the-world is primordial; subject and object are derivative abstractions.

Ready-to-hand versus present-at-hand: Tools in use (hammer hammering nail) are ready-to-hand (zuhanden) — they withdraw into practice, transparent. Only when broken does a tool become present-at-hand (vorhanden) — an object we contemplate. Cartesian epistemology reverses this, starting with present-at-hand objects and wondering how to reach them. Heidegger says we’re already among things, using them; theoretical contemplation is derivative mode.

Care (Sorge): Dasein’s Being is care — we’re concerned with our existence, always dealing with it. This isn’t emotion but structure: we find ourselves thrown (Geworfenheit) into a situation we didn’t choose (time, place, body, circumstances). We’re falling (Verfallen) — absorbed in everyday concerns, distracted by “the they” (das Man — public norms, convention, chatter). But we project toward possibilities — we’re ahead of ourselves, oriented toward future, always unfinished until death.

Being-toward-death: Death individualizes. Das Man (the public) dies in general — “one dies.” But my death is mine alone. Anxiety (Angst) reveals this: not fear of something particular but dread before nothing — the possibility of my total impossibility. Authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) means anticipating death, owning finitude, choosing in light of mortality. Inauthenticity means fleeing this through distraction, conformity, bad faith.

Temporality: Dasein’s Being is temporal. Not that we’re in time (like objects in container) but we are time. We exist as past (thrownness — facticity we can’t escape), present (falling — absorbed in concerns), and future (projection — oriented toward death and possibilities). Temporality unifies care’s structure. Heidegger argues time is the horizon of Being — to understand Being, we must understand temporality.

Truth as unconcealedness: Truth isn’t correspondence (propositions matching facts). Truth is aletheia — unconcealment, disclosure. Things show themselves, become available for understanding. Dasein’s existence is “there” (Da) where Being discloses itself. We don’t create truth, but we’re the site where things become unconcealed.

The turn (Kehre): In the 1930s, Heidegger’s focus shifted from Dasein to Being itself. Being and Time approached Being through analyzing Dasein; later work analyzes Being’s history, its epochs, its sendings. Being isn’t entity or ground but event (Ereignis) — it happens, gives, withdraws. Different epochs (pre-Socratic, medieval, modern) have different dispensations of Being. Metaphysics is one epoch — Being sent as presence, substance, ground. But Being withdraws in giving, conceals itself in unconcealment.

Technology: Modern technology is manifestation of Being’s current sending. It’s not just tools but “enframing” (Gestell) — mode of revealing where everything appears as standing-reserve (Bestand), resources to be exploited. Nature becomes energy source; humans become human resources. Technology threatens because it closes other ways of revealing. We can’t reject it (we’re already in it), but we might achieve “releasement” (Gelassenheit) — letting things be without controlling them.

Art and poetry: Against technological enframing, art discloses Being differently. A Greek temple gathers world, opens earth’s concealment, lets Being shine through. Poetry (especially Hölderlin’s) speaks Being. Heidegger’s later works are often poetic, performative attempts to let Being speak rather than to argue propositionally.

Language: “Language is the house of Being.” We don’t use language as tool; we dwell in it. Language speaks us as much as we speak it. Etymology (Greek roots) reveals forgotten meanings. Later Heidegger writes dense, neologistic German attempting to let language speak, to break conventional meanings, to prepare for new thinking.

Critique of humanism: Heidegger rejects humanism (Sartre’s existentialism, Renaissance humanism, modern subject-centered philosophy) because it places man at center. This perpetuates metaphysics, missing Being’s happening. Humans aren’t subjects creating meaning but “shepherds of Being,” responding to its call. This anti-humanism is controversial — does it devalue human dignity? Critics link it to his Nazism’s disregard for individuals.

Nazism and philosophy: Heidegger’s Nazi involvement wasn’t aberration. Connections exist: (1) His critique of modernity (rationalism, technology, Americanism, democracy) fit Nazi rhetoric. (2) His emphasis on rootedness (Bodenständigkeit), destiny (Geschick), and historical people (Volk) aligned with Blood and Soil ideology. (3) His anti-humanism allowed instrumentalizing individuals for historical mission. (4) His Führer-concept (1933 speeches) paralleled leadership principle. Some argue Being and Time’s structures (authenticity, resoluteness, destiny) enabled fascist reading. Others argue the philosophy was misapplied. But at minimum, Heidegger saw Nazism (initially) as realizing his philosophical vision.

Post-war, he never adequately confronted this. He blamed modernity, technology, nihilism — not his own choices. The Black Notebooks (private notebooks, published 2014-15) reveal anti-Semitism linking Jews to modernity’s rootlessness and calculative thinking. This is eliminationist rhetoric cloaked in ontological language.

Can we separate philosophy from politics? Debate continues. Some (Gadamer, Derrida) engage the philosophy while condemning the man. Others (Levinas, Habermas) see the philosophy as tainted. Still others argue the philosophy itself tends toward authoritarianism despite valuable insights. There’s no consensus.

Heidegger transformed continental philosophy utterly. Existentialism (Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus) drew on Being and Time despite his rejection of the label. Hermeneutics (Gadamer, Ricoeur) developed from his analysis of interpretation and understanding. Deconstruction (Derrida) extended his destruction of metaphysics. Post-structuralism (Foucault) absorbed his historical understanding of truth and power. Phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, Levinas) responded to his radicalization of Husserl. Theology (Bultmann, Tillich, Marion) engaged his questions about Being and God. Philosophy of technology treats his "Question Concerning Technology" as foundational. Literary theory and criticism apply his hermeneutics. Even analytic philosophy (Dreyfus, Brandom, Taylor) engages him. His vocabulary (Dasein, being-in-the-world, thrownness, authenticity) pervades intellectual culture. He's inescapable in 20th-century continental thought, even for those who hate him.

Heidegger addresses contemporary crises. His technology critique speaks to digital life — everything (nature, people, attention) becomes standing-reserve, resources for exploitation. Social media is extreme enframing: relationships, experiences, selves are content to be monetized. His analysis of "the they" (das Man) illuminates conformity, groupthink, and loss of authenticity in mass society. His environmentalism (letting things be, dwelling with earth) influences deep ecology and anti-consumerism. His critique of humanism resonates with posthumanism and animal rights (though from opposite direction — he didn't care about animal suffering). His emphasis on finitude and death speaks to denial of mortality in medical technology and transhumanism. His call for new thinking beyond calculative reason challenges instrumental rationality. But his Nazi legacy warns: brilliant critique of modernity can enable monstrous politics. His case forces confronting whether philosophy can be separated from philosopher's moral failures.

Heidegger's philosophy parallels Eastern thought strikingly. His Being (beyond beings) resembles Taoist Tao (the way beyond things) and Buddhist emptiness (śūnyatā — ultimate reality beyond conceptualization). His emphasis on letting-be (Gelassenheit) echoes Taoist wu wei (effortless action, non-interference). His critique of presence metaphysics parallels Madhyamaka Buddhism's critique of svabhava (intrinsic existence). His notion that language speaks us resonates with Zen's emphasis on reality speaking through us when ego dissolves. His dwelling and rootedness connect to Confucian emphasis on place and ritual. His emphasis on death as individualizing resembles Samurai and Zen memento mori practices. Heidegger engaged with Taoist texts late in life (dialogues with Chinese scholars), seeing resonances. But crucial differences: Buddhism seeks liberation from suffering through extinction of ego; Heidegger seeks authenticity through owning finitude. Taoism emphasizes harmony with nature; Heidegger emphasizes historical destiny. The parallels are real but shouldn't obscure deep differences in aims and values.