Martin Heidegger Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) was a highly influential German philosopher and thinker. With all that has been written by and about Heidegger, there is much that remains an enigma about both the man and his philosophy. Educated as a Catholic with the hope of going into the priesthood, he instead became a professional philosopher whose work would give little comfort to those who find faith in religious dogmas or the ideology of what Heidegger considered instrumental reason. The biggest puzzle regarding Heidegger is his relationship to politics and power and why a philosopher of nearly undisputed genius would lend his office as rector of the University of Freiburg in 1933 to support the rise of national socialism and the early triumphant stages of Adolf Hitler’s dictatorial leadership. There is also the question of legacy and whether or not Heidegger’s difficult style of writing and philosophizing clarifies more than it conceals about the human condition and the essentially political nature of human relations. It is, in part, because there are so many dimensions to Heidegger’s life and ideas that his thinking (if not his choices) remain as provocative as they are controversial.

Heidegger’s most well-known contribution to philosophy (and one with important implications for postmodern political theory) is his first book, Being and Time (1927). From the book’s opening question—whether the true meaning of “being” is understood—to its closing query—whether being exists outside time—Being and Time offers a revolutionary way of thinking about what it means to be a person, or what Heidegger calls Dasein. Heidegger’s central thesis is that people are beings who can never fully be explained rationally or scientifically, but are instead historical agents whose awareness, guilt, and anxiety over the absolute nature of death leads to a choice: lead an authentic existence in the resolve to care—often in the face of great danger—or live in authentically by substituting nonthinking everydayness for commitment.

For Heidegger, therefore, Dasein is never a static being, but is always in the process of “becoming” through the questions asked and the choices and commitments made. Though he resisted the label of existentialist, Heidegger’s Being and Time is considered foundational to modern existentialism, influencing such thinkers as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.

The problem with Heidegger’s phenomenological method of analysis, a method that suggests truth is best revealed as a product of choice and interpretation, is that there is no way to objectively verify (or falsify) reality, or what empirical social scientists call data. Second, when applied to politics, the danger of Heidegger’s methodology is that anything is possible because reality is indeterminate and commitment is based on resoluteness rather than ethics. As a result, Dasein can be equally authentic in choosing evil over good; in Heidegger’s case, this may have resulted in his choosing the promise of nationalism to revive the German spirit rather than the inherent messiness of liberal democracy. Finally, Heidegger’s method of investigation led him to a radical critique of technology, which he believed further alienated humanity from its roots.

Heidegger’s clearest statement of his contempt for a modern world built on instrumental reason and technology is found in his 1935 lecture, “The Fundamental Question of Being,” later published in 1959. Disillusioned with Hitler and the direction of contemporary society, and dealing with a nervous breakdown and public censor at a 1945 denazification hearing (during which he was banned from teaching until 1950), Heidegger spent his remaining years living, writing, and receiving visitors at his beloved “hut” at Todtnauberg in the Black Forest of southern Germany. Scholars have since recognized an aesthetic turn away from Heidegger’s earlier concern with being to a greater emphasis on the importance of place (dwelling) and poetics during this period.

Heidegger’s close readings of the ancient pre-Socratic philosophers, Aristotle, medieval scholasticism, Soren Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Nietzsche influenced him early in life. His teacher Edmund Husserl at Freiberg University and the writings of the seventeenth-century Japanese Zen poet Matsuo Basho also significantly impacted the development of his worldview. As a professor at the University of Freiberg, Heidegger taught numerous students who would make important contributions to political theory, including Karl Lowith, HansGeorg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse.

Bibliography:

Dreyfus, Hurbert L.“Heidegger on the Connection between Nihilism, Art, Technology, and Politics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, edited by Charles B. Guigonon. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Gelven, Michael. A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time. New York: Harper and Row, 1970.
Gillespie, Michael Allen. “Martin Heidegger’s National Socialism.” Political Theory 28, no. 2 (April 2000): 140–166.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Bobinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1962
Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowinig). Translated by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
An Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New Haven:Yale University Press, 1959
Poetry, Language,Thought. Translated by Albert Hfstadter. New York: Harper and Row, 1971
. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays.Translated by William Lovitt. New York: Harper and Row, 1977
Ott, Hugo. Martin Heidegger: A Political Life. New York: Basic Books, 1993. Sharr, Adam. Heidegger’s Hut: Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006.
Wollin, Richard. The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993.

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