Heidegger is deeply reactionary in the proper, not necessarily condemning sense of the word. of a civilization founded on scientific knowledge of the world and rational knowledge of value, which places the highest premium on individual human life and freedom, and believes that such freedom and rationality will lead to social progress through virtuous self-controlled work, creating a better material, political and intellectual life for all.

The positive self-image modern Western culture has often given to itself, a picture born in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Heidegger’s thinking is both a profound philosophy and a radical critique of the fundamental assumptions of modernity, understanding‘modernity’ with the critic Lawrence E. This is Heidegger’s massive claim, and his view of ‘Western metaphysics’ as being constituted in terms that call for ‘deconstruction’ has since become amplified in the work of the contemporary French thinker Jacques Derrida. This is something so deep and all-pervasive that it should not even be called a prejudice if that word implies choice and individual misjudgments rather than an unavoidable heritage into which people are born and receive their most seemingly immediate sense of themselves. Imagine that the whole of Western thought, since the time of the first philosophers in ancient Greece, has been in the grip of a prejudice affecting all its aspects and even what seems self-evident.

Heidegger’s thinking concerns things so fundamental that those coming to Heidegger for the first time should be warned that the bases of just about everything they think, assume, or take for granted are at stake in his texts. His thought has contributed to the recent turn to hermeneutics in philosophy and the social sciences and to current postmodern and poststructuralists developments. He transformed mainstream philosophy by defining its central task as asking the ‘Question of being,’ and he has had a profound impact on such fields as literary theory, theology, psychotherapy, political theory, aesthetics, and environmental studies. Martin Heidegger is now widely recognized alongside Wittgenstein as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century.

One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker. The purpose of the series is to provide comprehensive expository and critical surveys of the work of major philosophers. Share on WhatsApp Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Telegram Share on Reddit Share on Email

Being & time by martin heidegger