Heidegger For Beginners

Eric Lemay, Jennifer A. Pitts, Paul Gordon

• Publisher: For Beginners
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781939994097
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Filosofía moderna

The ideas of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger have been described as an intellectual time bomb, as some of the most revolutionary thought in Western history. Despite the enormous amount of secondary scholarships available on Heidegger, it is – due to the complexity of his thought and the density of his writing – difficult for the curious beginner to gain an insight into Heidegger’s philosophy.  Heidegger For Beginners  serves as an entry into the ideas of on of the 20th Century’s most important thinkers, situating Heidegger’s thought within its philosophical and historical context – alongside such thinkers as Plato, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Husserl, and Sartre. Heidegger For Beginners  explicates many of Heidegger’s central ideas, including the Nothing, average-everydayness, care, existence, being-in-the-world, the One, the critique of technology, anxiety, and most importantly, being – a notion which may offer us the key to understanding the very mystery of our own existence. Explained here in a way that makes it both accessible and relevant, Heidegger’s thought not only challenges an entire intellectual tradition, but also challenges our own self-conceptions, the very manner in which we, as humans, choose to exist. 

…enter Heidegger

Over the course of his life, Heidegger wrote over fifty volumes of work on almost every conceivable topic, starting in 1914 with his doctoral thesis on the medieval philosopher, Duns Scotus. Heidegger himself, however, started a few years earlier.

On the twenty-sixth of September 1889, Heidegger was born into a strongly Catholic family in the town of Messkirch in the Black Forest region of Balden-Wurtemberg, Germany.

Heidegger received his formal philosophical training at the University of Freiburg under Heinrich Rickert, a neo-Kantian, and Edmund Husserl.

From 1915 to 1928, Heidegger lectured at both Freiburg and the University of Marburg. establishing a widespread reputation.

In 1927, Heidegger published his magnum opus, Being and Time, which eventually became world renowned. In 1928, as a member of the Nazi party, Heidegger succeeded Husserl, a Jew, as chairman at Freiburg. Heidegger actively helped to implement Nazi policy throughout the university. In 1944, by order of Allied authorities, Heidegger was suspended from teaching until 1951.

There is an appendix on Heideggere’s Nazism at the end of this book that touches on this topic, but it cannot begin to explain how some people—like the composer Richard Wagner or the Ezra Pound—can exhibit such genius in one area while being so politically and morally irresponsible.

Being

Plato set a precedent when he questioned various aspects of the world around him, rather than focusing on the world itself. From that point on, philosophers have been preoccupied with things of the world, rather than the more primordial fact: the very existence of the world.

Heidegger’s philosophy is an attempt to think through the significance of this basic condition of existence which he dubbed…

Likewise, Being is the necessary condition for beings to exist. Without Being, without basic existence, no individual could exist.

Also, just as one never actually sees light, but rather things lit by light, one never directly experiences Being, but rather beings which exist through Being.

Another approach to understanding Heidegger’s idea of Being is to contrast it with what he calls… “The Nothing.” Once we recognize the significance of the world’s existence, we can also fathom the possibility of its non-existence. The Nothing is the possibility of the non-existence of all things, literally “no-thing.” The notions of Being and the Nothing are difficult to grasp because they are so self-evident that they have been taken for granted.

On the other hand, they are central to understanding our condition as humans. To better conceive these ideas, let us turn our attention toward a 20th century cultural figure…John Lennon. Regardless of one’s personal disposition towards John, we could easily imagine a world in which he never existed. Perhaps the aura of the hippie sub-culture would have been different or perhaps the Beatles would have never ex...