The Essence Of Truth

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. He is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. In Heidegger's fundamental text Being and Time (1927), "Dasein" is introduced as a term for the specific type of being that humans possess. Dasein has been translated as "being there". Heidegger believes that Dasein already has a "pre-ontological" and non-abstract understanding that shapes how it lives. This mode of being he terms "being in the world". Commentators have noted that Dasein and "being in the world" are unitary concepts in contrast with the "subject/object" view of rationalist philosophy since at least René Descartes. Heidegger uses an analysis of Dasein to approach the question of the meaning of being, which Heidegger scholar Michael Wheeler describes as "concerned with what makes beings intelligible as beings. Heidegger's later work includes criticism of the view, common in the Western tradition, that all of nature is a "standing reserve" on call, as if it were a part of industrial inventory. Heidegger was a member and supporter of the Nazi Party.[19][20] There is controversy as to the relationship between his philosophy and his Nazism