"Martin Heidegger,"

byThomas Sheehan

A Companion to the Philosophers,ed., Robert L. Arrington,

Oxford and Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1999, pp. 288-297.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is best known as the author of Sein und Zeit (Being andTime), published in 1927. The book aims at establishing how being shows up within humanunderstanding. Heidegger offered the provisional answer that our experience of being isconditioned by our finitude and temporality. In a phrase: Temporality is what makes possible theunderstanding of being, or: The meaning of being is time.

Heidegger published only half the book in 1927, the part dealing with human being andtemporality. He never produced the rest of the work, but he did complete the project in otherforms. During the 1930s he reshaped some elements of his philosophy without changing its twoessential topics: (1) the temporal occurrence of being, which he called "disclosure" and (2) thetemporal structure of human nature, which he called "Dasein." Understanding how these two fittogether is the key to grasping Heidegger's philosophy.

Heidegger spent his life as a university professor in Germany, first in Freiburg (1915-1923), where he abandoned Catholic philosophy, became a protégé of Edmund Husserl, andbegan propounding a radical form of phenomenology. He then taught at Marburg University(1923-1928), where his reformulation of the method and tasks of phenomenology foundexpression in Being and Time and led to a break with Husserl. In 1928 Heidegger succeededHusserl in the chair of philosophy at Freiburg University, where he taught until 1945.

A conservative nationalist, Heidegger joined the Nazi party three months after Hitler cameto power. From April 1933 to April 1934 he served as rector of Freiburg University, during whichtime he enthusiastically supported Hitler and aligned the university with some aspects of the Nazirevolution. His public and private statements indicate that he supported many of the Nazi policiesand ideals and that he backed Hitler's war aims at least until 1943. In 1945 he was suspended fromteaching because of his earlier political activities, and he formally retired with emeritus status in1950. The question of his political sympathies continues to shadow Heidegger's otherwise solidreputation as one of the most original philosophers of the twentieth century.

Apart from philosophy, Heidegger's thought has had a strong influence on such disparatefields as theology (Rudolf Bultmann, Karl Rahner), existentialism (Jean-Paul Sartre),hermeneutics (Hans-Georg Gadamer), and literary theory and deconstruction (Jacques Derrida).The collected edition of his works (his Gesamtausgabe, 1975-), will include some eighty volumes,over half of which have already appeared. Most of his works are available in English translation,and the secondary literature on his philosophy is immense and continues to grow. The best studyof his work in any language is Richardson (1963), and the most complete bibliography in Englishis Sass (1982).

The problematic

Contrary to popular accounts of his philosophy, Heidegger's central topic is not "being" (at leastnot in any of the usual meanings of the term) but rather the disclosure of being within humanunderstanding. The distinction between being and the disclosure of being is crucial for a correctunderstanding of Heidegger, and we spell it out below. But we begin by simply listing other titlesthat Heidegger gave his problematic.

Besides the disclosure of being, Heidegger also called his central topic the clearing ofbeing, the emergence of being, the unconcealment of being, the "truth" of being, and the"meaning" of being. In the 1930s he began designating it by the German word Ereignis("appropriation"). All of these italicized terms refer to one and the same thing: the "coming-to-pass" or "engendering" of being within the sphere of human understanding. Because this"happening" is intrinsically hidden, Heidegger also calls it the mystery of being.

Heidegger likewise appropriated some Greek terms to name his problematic. Parmenides,he argued, had long ago referred to the mystery of being under the title "aletheia," a word formedfrom the prefix a- (un- or dis-) and lethe (-hiddenness or -closure). Heidegger also thought thatHeraclitus had alluded to the emergence of being with the term "physis," for example in hisfragment no. 123: "Physis loves to hide." Heidegger interprets this to mean: The emergence ofbeing always remains hidden.

Despite the variety and divergence of titles, Heidegger claimed that his philosophy wasabout one thing only: the disclosure of being in conjunction with human experience and concern.To understand this claim we must first grasp the distinction between things and their being.

The ontological difference

Heidegger distinguishes between an entity (das Seiende) and the being (das Sein) of anentity. He calls this distinction the "ontological difference." An entity, on the one hand, is anythingthat is or can be, whether it be physical, spiritual, or whatever. For example, God, human beings,socialism, and the number nine are all entities. The being of an entity, on the other hand, has to dowith the "is" of whatever is. "Being" designates what an entity is, how it is, and the fact that it is atall. Clearly the point is to find out what "is" means for Heidegger.

In one sense Heidegger's ontological difference merely repeats a commonplace oftraditional philosophy. The medieval scholastics, for example, had already clearly distinguishedbetween ens and esse, just as the ancient Greeks before them had distinguished between to on andousia. But Heidegger gives this tradition a "phenomenological" twist by understanding being notas the mere "thereness" of entities, their simple existence in space and time (this is what he callsVorhandenheit, the "mere presence" of entities). Rather, Heidegger understands the being of anentity as the significance or meaningful presence of that entity within the field of human concern.For Heidegger the being of an entity is always correlative to human possibilities and concerns(above all, practical concerns). Hence to point out an entity's being is to indicate how that entity ismeaningfully involved -- and what significance it has -- within a given set of such concerns.

Three things follow from this phenomenological understanding of being and distinguish itfrom traditional philosophy. First, according to Heidegger, entities may certainly haveVorhandenheit -- existence as mere presence -- regardless of whether human beings are alive ornot. However, entities do not have "being" in Heidegger's sense of the term -- that is, they do nothave significance -- apart from some actual or possible relation to human concerns. In fact, without

human beings there is no "being" at all. Second, an entity and its being are clearly not two separaterealities. Being cannot subsist on its own apart from entities; rather, it is always the being of anentity. Third, although an entity and its being/significance do not occur in isolation, they can bedistinguished. And the ability to make this ontological distinction -- that is, to know the being ofany entity -- belongs to only one kind of entity: human beings. The ontological difference comesabout only in the essence of human being.

Dasein

For Heidegger, the essence of human being consists in "transcendence": always already"standing out beyond" immediate contact with entities in such a way as to disclose thebeing/significance of those entities. (Here the phrase "always already" means: structurally,essentially, and of necessity.) As transcendence, human being is a "thrown projection": thrust intoresponsibility for its own existence as a field of possibilities (thrownness) and thereby able todisclose and understand entities in terms of those same possibilities (projection). Only because wehave already been thrust out beyond entities can we disclose or "project" them in terms of theirbeing qua meaningful presence. Thrown projection, insofar as it allows one to have entitiesmeaningfully present, is called "care" (Sorge).

Heidegger also speaks of the human essence as the "open place" (the Da) where being(Sein) occurs. This comes out as "Dasein" (the locus-of-being), a technical term that has beencarried over into English to name the essence of human being. As thrownprojection/transcendence, Dasein is first of all an understanding of its own being. In this self-referential capacity, Dasein's being is called "existence" in the sense of "standing out" (ek-sistence) unto itself. But Dasein is the only place where any instance of being shows up. ThusDasein is disclosive of all being, and apart from Dasein, being simply does not happen.Transcendence, thrown projection, care, and Dasein are finally the same thing: the human essenceas the condition necessary if the disclosure of being is to happen at all.

Dasein is also called "being-in-a-world." By "world" Heidegger does not mean a spatio-temporal aggregate of physical entities, such as the universe, or planet Earth. Rather, he means aunified field of concerns and interests, such as the "world" of the mother or the "world" of theletter-carrier. "Being in" such a world refers to one's engagement with the meaning-givingconcerns and interests that define the field.

For example, Mrs. Smith as mother lives in a different world from the same Mrs. Smith asletter-carrier. The difference has to do with her distinct concerns and goals (nurturing children vs.delivering the mail) and the possibilities and requirements they generate. Each of her worlds isstructured as a dynamic set of relations, all of them ordered to human possibilities and concerns,that lends significance to the entities that Mrs. Smith encounters (e.g., children in the one case,letters in the other).

What constitutes the essence of all such worlds -- what Heidegger calls their "worldhood"-- is the significance that accrues to entities by their relationship to human concerns and interests.And this significance occurs only in correlation with one's engagement with those concerns andinterests. In short, being-in-a-world is disclosive of the being/significance of entities.

As being-in-a-world, Dasein not only discloses its own being by living into its possibilitiesbut also discloses the meaningfully presence of other entities by referring them to those samepossibilities. Our primary way of understanding the significance of entities (which is always achangeable significance and not some eternal essence) is by interpreting them in terms of ourpragmatic purposes or possibilities. For example, when I use this stone to hammer in a tent peg, Iunderstand the current being of the stone as being-useful-for hammering. This primary, pragmaticawareness of the being/significance of the tent peg is pre-predicative or "pre-ontological": it

requires no thematic articulation (either mental or verbal) of the form S=P. Rather, it evidencesitself in the mere doing of something: I understand the current significance of the stone by using it.

Heidegger designates such pre-predicative awareness "hermeneutical understanding." It ismade possible by one's being-in-a-world and specifically one's structure as thrown projection."Hermeneutics" in Heidegger has less to do with interpreting texts than it does with revealing --within all forms of human behavior -- the often overlooked structure of being-in-a-world and thehermeneutical understanding underlying predicative knowledge of entities.

Temporality

In Being and Time Heidegger argues that the defining structure of Dasein's transcendenceis "temporality" or "time," a uniquely human condition that is not to be confused withchronological notions of time as past-present-future. For Heidegger, temporality connotesbecoming, and human temporality entails becoming oneself. Human becoming is a matter of livinginto one's future, "standing out" (ek-sisting, ek-stasis) towards one's possibilities.

The ultimate possibility into which one lives is death, the possibility that ends allpossibilities. Human becoming is mortal becoming, not only because we will die at some futuredate but above all because mortality defines our becoming at each present moment. As Heideggerputs it, human being is always being-at-the-point-of-death (Sein-zum-Tode). Thus one's being isradically finite, and it consists in both (a) being already mortal and (b) becoming fully mortal, i.e.,"anticipating" one's death. Such mortal becoming is what Heidegger means by human temporality:the finite presence that one has by becoming what one already is. (These three moments oftemporality are usually, and unfortunately, translated as "making present," "coming towardsitself," and "having been.")

Temporality means being present by becoming absent; and this mortal becoming is theineluctably finite essence of human being. When one wakes up to that fact and accepts it (this iswhat Heidegger calls "resolve"), one becomes an "authentic" self rather than living as theinauthentic "anybody" of everyday existence.

Being and Time contends that Dasein's temporality, as the anticipation of death, is whatmakes possible being-in-the-world and the resultant understanding of being. The argument may beput as follows. Temporality means having one's own presence by being already thrown intoabsence (being-at-the-point-of-death). This means Dasein is always already thrown intopossibilities, right up to the possibility that ends all possibilities. But being thrown intopossibilities entails the ability to engage in practical knowledge and purposeful action. And thisability is being-in-a-world. Thus Dasein's anticipation of its own death makes possible being-in-a-world and the disclosure of being/significance. The "meaning" of being -- i.e., that which letsbeing occur at all -- is time.

Disclosure

Disclosure as the happening of being takes place on three distinct levels that run from theoriginal to the derivative: world-disclosure, pre-predicative disclosure, and predicative disclosure.The most original occurrence of disclosure is world-disclosure, the very opening up of the field ofsignificance in conjunction with Dasein's becoming absent. In turn, world-disclosure is whatallows entities to be meaningful present and to be known and used -- first of all, pre-predicatively-- within the various worlds of human concern. Finally, world-disclosure and the resultant pre-predicative disclosedness of entities, taken together, make possible the predicative disclosure ofentities in synthetic judgments and declarative sentences of the type S=P. Properly speaking, the

term "truth," taken as the correspondence between judgments and states of affairs, pertains only tothis third level of disclosure where reason, logic, and science operate. Heidegger argues that the"essence of truth" -- i.e., that which makes predicative truth possible -- is world-disclosure insofaras it issues in the disclosed entities against which predicative judgments must measure themselvesif they are to be true.

Heidegger calls the basic sense of disclosure (world-disclosure) "language," by which hedoes not primarily mean spoken or written discourse and the rules governing it. For Heidegger"language" means logos such as he thinks Heraclitus understood the term: the original "gathering"of entities into their meaningful presence so as to disclose them as what and how they are. Thisdisclosive gathering happens only insofar as Dasein is "gathered" into its own mortality."Language" in this original sense is what makes possible language/logos in the usual sense --human discourse as the activity of synthesizing and differentiating entities and their possiblemeanings.

Heidegger argues that the disclosure of being as world-disclosure is intrinsically hidden,and he calls this hiddenness the "mystery" of being. The point can be quite mystifying until onerealizes that Heidegger takes disclosure to be a unique kind of movement.

In Heidegger's interpretation, classical philosophy, and particularly Aristotle, understoodmovement not just as change but rather as the very being of entities that are undergoing change.Taken in this broad sense, movement refers to an entity's anticipation of something absent, suchthat what is absent-but-anticipated determines the entity's present being. For example, if you arestudying for a university degree, that still-absent degree, as your anticipated goal, determines yourcurrent status as being-a-student. Your current being is to be moving towards the degree.

Heidegger describes the still-absent goal of movement as "hidden" (i.e., not present). Butto the extent that it is anticipated, the "hidden" goal, while remaining absent, also becomes quasi-present by endowing the anticipating entity with its current being as "moving towards...."Movement is a matter of presence-and-absence: the absent, qua anticipated, both (a) remains absentby being still unattained and (b) becomes finitely present by "dispensing" being to the anticipatingentity. Anticipated absence "gives" presence (Es gibt Sein).

This structure of movement characterizes disclosure. To begin with, the movement ofabsence-dispensing-presence is the very structure of Dasein's temporality. Dasein exists byanticipating its final absence; and Dasein's absent/hidden death, insofar as it is anticipated inthrownness, determines Dasein's present being as mortal becoming. Thus, the absent core oftemporality discloses Dasein's true being while itself remaining absent/hidden. Moreover, sinceDasein is the sole locus of the disclosure of meaningful presence, Dasein's anticipation of its ownabsence is what discloses the meaningful presence of any entity it meets. The hidden disclosure ofbeing happens only in conjunction with Dasein's mortal becoming. That is, disclosure and Daseinare but a single movement that issues in being/significance.

Heidegger gives this single movement of disclosure the name "Ereignis." In GermanEreignis literally means "event." However, by playing on the adjective eigen (the "proper" in thesense of "one's own") Heidegger comes up with the neologism Ereignung, movement as theprocess of being "pulled" or "appropriated" into what is one's own. Dasein is "appropriated" by itsown death and "pulled forth" into its proper essence as mortal becoming. This movement of beingdrawn into one's absence, in such a way that a world of being/significance is engendered andsustained, is what Heidegger calls "appropriation" (Ereignis).

Although the term Ereignis emerges in Heidegger's work only in the 1930s, it is relatedto what he had earlier called thrownness. "Thrownness," "being appropriated," and even"anticipation" are different names for the same ontological fact: Dasein's being always already

thrust into, or claimed by, its ultimate possibility in such a way that a world of significance isopened up. The structural priority of Dasein's appropriation-by-absence over Dasein's projection-of-world is what Heidegger calls "the Turn" (die Kehre). During the 1930s Heidegger's growingunderstanding of this Turn at the heart of Ereignis led him to recast the form and style of hisphilosophy (without changing its central problematic) in order to emphasize the priority ofappropriation-by-absence. However, this shift in form and style, while it was prompted byHeidegger's growing awareness of the Turn, is not to be equated with the Turn. The shift tookplace within Heidegger's philosophy, whereas the Turn constitutes the very structure of Ereignis.

Overcoming metaphysics

Because its core is hidden, disclosure is easily overlooked and forgotten. When thathappens, one remains focussed on entities and their being while ignoring the disclosive movement-- Dasein's appropriation by absence -- which dispenses that very being. This focus on themeaningful presence of entities to the exclusion of the absence that dispenses it, is what Heideggercalls "metaphysics." It occurs both in one's personal life and in thematic philosophy. In bothcases, metaphysics is characterized not by the "forgetting of being" (which is virtually impossible,in any case) but by the forgetting of the hidden disclosure of being.

The goal of Heidegger's philosophy was to overcome the forgottenness of disclosure byrecovering its hidden core both in one's personal life and in thematic philosophy. (1) Overcomingone's personal forgetting of this hiddenness is called "resolve" or "resoluteness," and it issues in"authenticity." (2) The recuperation of the hidden core of disclosure in thematic philosophy iscalled the "overcoming of metaphysics" (or in an earlier formulation, the "destruction" ofmetaphysics), and it leads to what Heidegger called a "new beginning."

1. Resolve and authenticity are a matter of personally recuperating one's essence as finite.Although we are always in the process of mortal becoming, we are usually so caught up in themeaningful presence of the entities which we encounter that we forget the mortality that makessuch encounters possible. Heidegger calls this condition "fallenness." Nevertheless in special"basic moods" (such as boredom, dread, and wonder) we can rediscover our relation to theabsence that dispenses meaningful presence.

In these basic moods we directly experience not just things, or the significance of things,but the absence that appropriates Dasein and thereby issues in the significance of things. In contrastto things and the being of things, Heidegger calls this absence the "nothing." To experience thisnothing, he says, is to "hear the call of conscience," that is, to become aware of one's radicallymortal finitude. To flee that awareness is to live as an inauthentic or fallen self. To heed it bychoosing to embrace one's mortal becoming is to overcome one's oblivion of disclosure and thusto "overcome metaphysics" in one's everyday life.

2. The forgetting of the hidden core of disclosure also characterizes thematic philosophy.Heidegger reads the history of Western philosophy as a series of epochs in which philosopherselaborated different interpretations of the being of entities -- for example, being as idea in Plato, asenergeia in Aristotle, right down to being as eternal recurrence of the same in Nietzsche. Eachepoch is characterized by (a) its understanding of the presence of entities and (b) its oblivion of theabsence that dispenses that presence. For Heidegger, the last and climactic phase in this "history ofbeing" is our own epoch of technology and nihilism.

Today, Heidegger claims, the hidden core of disclosure is all but obliterated by thewidespread conviction that the significance of entities consists in their universal availability forexploitation. Entities are understood to be, in principle, endlessly knowable by an ideallyomniscient reason and totally dominable by a would-be omnipotent will. Here the meaningful

presence of entities takes on its most extreme form: it means the unreserved presence and totalsubmission of entities to human manipulation. Heidegger calls this state of affairs "nihilism"because the absence that dispenses meaningful presence (including today's presence-for-exploitation) now counts for nothing (nihil).

Nevertheless, the hidden core of disclosure is never completely obliterated, even when it isoverlooked and forgotten. Under metaphysics, Heidegger argues, the hidden "giving" of being stillgoes on giving, although in a doubly concealed way: it is both intrinsically hidden and forgotten.Heidegger thought traces of it could still be found in the classical texts of the great thinkers fromthe pre-Socratics to Nietzsche. In interpreting those texts, Heidegger attempted to retrieve andrearticulate the barely expressed "unsaid" -- the traces of the hidden core of disclosure -- that lurkwithin the "said" (the philosopher's text).

This is especially true of pre-Socratic philosophers such as Anaximander, Parmenides, andHeraclitus. Heidegger considers them to have been pre-metaphysical thinkers insofar as theirfragments evidence an inchoate awareness of the "mystery" of being under such titles as aletheia,physis, and logos. He characterizes these archaic Greek thinkers as a "first beginning" of non-metaphysical thought, and he hoped that his own work would prepare for a "second beginning" ofnon-metaphysical thought. This new beginning would consist in turning back to Ereignis by"recollecting" the hidden core of disclosure and its relation to Dasein. However, while recollectionentails overcoming the forgetting of disclosure, it does not undo the intrinsic hiddenness ofdisclosure, The point, rather, is to allow the hidden core of disclosure both to remain hidden and,as hidden, to empower the world of significance. The way to do that is to accede to one'sappropriation by absence.

Heidegger was convinced that the overcoming of metaphysics was less a matter of writingout a new theory of being (a "fundamental ontology" as he once called it) than of personallyrecuperating one's radical finitude. For a while he apparently thought that not just individuals butalso masses of people might achieve authenticity, virtually at a national level. Some parts of Beingand Time make that suggestion, as do certain remarks he made as a Nazi partisan in the 1930s. Atone point he even expressed the sentiment that the Germans alone, in their essential relation todisclosure, had a mandate to save Western civilization from nihilism.

Finally, however, Heidegger distanced himself from such empty hopes. He saw the end ofmetaphysics not as a future achievement of large groups of people, let alone of humankind as awhole. Rather, metaphysics comes to an end only for individuals -- one at a time and withoutapparent relation to each other -- as each one, in splendid isolation, resolutely achieves the"entrance into Ereignis." For all the broad historical sweep of his philosophy, for all the boldnessof its call for the "destruction of metaphysics," Heidegger's thought ends where it began, with acall to the lone individual to achieve his or her radical and solitary authenticity: "Werdewesentlich!" (GA 56/57, p. 5) -- "Become your essence."

Bibliography

Heidegger, M.: Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1975-).[The collected edition of Heidegger's books and lecture courses. Over forty volumes havebeen published so far, many of which have been translated into English. Abbreviated"GA."]

------- Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962);new translation by J. Stambaugh (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press,1996). [Heidegger's most famous work, Sein und Zeit, originally published in 1927.]------ Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A. Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).

[Collected essays, including "Origin of the Work of Art."]

------ On the Way to Language, trans. P. D. Hertz and J. Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row,1971). [Collected essays on language, all dating from the 1950s.]

------ Early Greek Thinking, ed. D.F. Krell and F.A. Capuzzi [New York: Harper & Row, 1975.)[Essays on the pre-Socratics.]

------ The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, ed. W. Lovitt New York: Harper &Row, (1977).

______ Nietzsche, 4 volumes, trans. D. F. Krell and F. Capuzzi, (New York: Harper & Row,1979-1987. [Lecture courses and notes from 1936 to 1946.]

------- The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. A. Hofstadter, Bloomington, Indiana:Indiana University Press, 1982). [Lecture course, summer, 1927.]

------ The Metaphysical Foundations of Logik, trans. M. Heim (Bloomington, Indiana: IndianaUniversity Press, 1984). [Lecture course, summer, 1928.]

------ History of the Concept of Time: Prologomena, trans. T. Kisiel (Bloomington, Indiana:Indiana University Press, 1985). [Lecture course, summer, 1925.]

------ Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. R. Taft (Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, 1990). [Originally published in 1929.]

______ Basic Writings, revised edition, ed. D.F. Krell (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,1993). [Collected essays. Largely but not entirely overlaps with Pathmarks.]

------ Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected "Problems" of "Logic", trans. R. Rojcewicz and A.Schuwer (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994). [Lecture course, winter 1937-38.]

------ The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. W. McNeilland N. Walker (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1995). [Lecture course, winter,1929-30.]

------ Pathmarks, ed. D.F. Krell, W. McNeill, J. Sallis (New York: Cambridge University Press,1998. [A collection of key essays including "What is Metaphysics?" "On the Essence of Truth,""Plato's Doctrine of Truth," and "Letter on Humanism."]

______ An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. R. Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press,1959).

*Note to editor: a new translation of this is forthcoming.

Further Reading

Richardson, W.J.: Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought. (The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1963). [The best study of Heidegger's work in any language.]Sass, H.-M.: Martin Heidegger: Bibliography and Glossary. Bowling Green, Ohio: PhilosophyDocumentation Center, 1982.