Individual Research Exercise

Martin Heidegger

Submitted by: Velasqeuz, Ma. Janelle Anne V. BSIT 3-1

Submitted to: Prof. Rosicar E. Escober

September 17, 2013

Biography and Influences Martin Heidegger (18891976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy. They have also had an impact far beyond philosophy, for example in architectural theory, literary criticism, theology, psychotherapy and cognitive science.

Controversy Heidegger is a controversial figure, largely for his affiliation with Nazism, for which he neither apologized nor expressed regret, except in private when he called it "the biggest stupidity of his life." The controversy raises general questions about the relation between Heidegger's thought and his connection to National Socialism.

Being and Time His best known book, Being and Time, is considered one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century. In it and later works, Heidegger maintained that our way of questioning defines our nature. He argued that philosophy, Western Civilization's chief way of questioning, had lost sight of the being it sought. Finding ourselves "always already" fallen in a world of presuppositions, we lose touch with what being was before its truth became "muddled". As a solution to this condition, Heidegger advocated a return to the practical being in the world, allowing it to reveal, or "unconceal" itself as concealment. Being and Time is a long and complex book. The reader is immediately struck by what Mulhall calls the tortured intensity of Heidegger's prose, although if the text is read in its original German it is possible to hear the vast number of what appear to be neologisms as attempts to reanimate the German language. According to this latter gloss, the linguistic constructions concernedwhich involve hyphenations, unusual prefixes and uncommon suffixesreveal the hidden meanings and resonances of ordinary talk. In any case, for many readers, the initially strange and difficult language of Being and Time is fully vindicated by the

realization that Heidegger is struggling to say things for which our conventional terms and linguistic constructions are ultimately inadequate. Indeed, for some thinkers who have toiled in its wake, Heidegger's language becomes the language of philosophy. Viewed from the perspective of Heidegger's own intentions, the work is incomplete. It was meant to have two parts, each of which was supposed to be divided into three divisions. What we have published under the title of Being and Time are the first two divisions of (the intended) part one. The reasons for this incompleteness will be explored later in this article. Each of these aspects of Heidegger's framework in Being and Time emerges out of his radical rethinking of Aristotle, a rethinking that finds its fullest and most explicit expression in a 19256 lecture course entitled Logik. On Heidegger's interpretation, Aristotle holds that since every meaningful appearance of beings involves an event in which a human being takes a being asas, say, a ship in which one can sail or as a god that one should respectwhat unites all the different modes of Being is that they realize some form of presence (present-ness) to human beings. This presence-to is expressed in the as of taking-as. Thus the unity of the different modes of Being is grounded in a capacity for taking-as (making-present-to) that Aristotle argues is the essence of human existence. Heidegger's response, in effect, is to suggest that although Aristotle is on the right track, he has misconceived the deep structure of taking-as. For Heidegger, taking-as is grounded not in multiple modes of presence, but rather in a more fundamental temporal unity that characterizes Being-in-the-world. This engagement with Aristotlethe Aristotle, that is, that Heidegger unearths during his early years in Freiburg and Marburgexplains why, as Sheehan puts it, Aristotle appears directly or indirectly on virtually every page of Being and Time.

What does to exist mean nowadays? Let's back up in order to bring Heidegger's central concern into better view. Consider some philosophical problems that will be familiar from introductory metaphysics classes: Does the table that I think I see before me exist? Does God exist? Does mind, conceived as an entity distinct from body, exist? These questions have the following form: does x (where x = some particular kind of thing) exist? Questions of this form presuppose that we already know what to

exist means. We typically don't even notice this presupposition. But Heidegger does, which is why he raises the more fundamental question: what does to exist mean? This is one way of asking what Heidegger calls the question of the meaning of Being, and Being and Time is an investigation into that question.