Notes and Fragments 1.
Five of the most important thinkers in the history of Western philosophy.
Yet the framework of Being and Time is suffused by a sensibility—derived from secularized Protestantism—that stresses the paramountcy of original sin. Rather than facing up to their own finitude—represented above all by the inevitability of death —they seek distraction and escape in inauthentic modalities such as curiosity, ambiguityand idle talk.
Another distinguishing feature of Being and Time is its treatment of temporality Zeitlichkeit. Heidegger believed that traditional Western ontology from Plato to Immanuel Kant had adopted a static and inadequate understanding of what it means to be human.
From that standpoint one of the distinctive features of inauthentic Dasein is that it fails to actualize its Being. Its existential passivity becomes indistinguishable from the nonecstatic, inert being of things.
The problem of historicity, as discussed in Division II of Being and Time, is one of the most poorly understood sections of the work. Being and Time is usually interpreted as favouring the standpoint of an individual Dasein: Nevertheless, with the concept of historicity Heidegger indicated that historical questions and themes are legitimate topics of ontological inquiry.
As such, Dasein possesses a heritage on which it must act. Historicity thus means making a decision about how to actualize or act upon salient elements of a collective past.
Heidegger stresses that Dasein is future-oriented: That kind of historicism failed to understand history as a project that humans consciously undertake in order to respond to their collective past for the sake of their future.
Later philosophy Shortly after finishing Being and Time, Heidegger became dissatisfied with its basic approach. His doubts centred on the notion of Dasein, one of the chief innovations of Being and Time. In retrospect, Heidegger found it too redolent of the subjective and anthropological preconceptions he had been trying to surmount.
More and more, he tended to regard Western metaphysics as hopelessly riddled with errors and missteps rather than as a useful point of departure. In Heidegger accepted the chair of philosophy at Freiburg formerly occupied by Husserl, who had retired.
He served as rector of the university from to see below Heidegger and Nazism.
From to he delivered a series of important lectures on Nietzsche, though they remained unpublished until the early s. In that text the worldly and practical involvements of Dasein seem like a dim and distant memory. The last anthropological residues have been permanently effaced. Instead, Heidegger resolutely philosophizes from the standpoint of Being itself, to which he claims a kind of privileged and direct access.
He makes portentous and mysterious proclamations, some of which are barely intelligible e. In a rare interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel, he was pressed to offer a bit of practical wisdom that philosophy might bestow on a troubled age. Heidegger shrugged in despair: In his view, technology had come to dominate all aspects of modern life.
One month later he became a member of the Nazi Party ; until he resigned as rector in Aprilhe helped to institute Nazi educational and cultural programs at Freiburg and vigorously promoted the domestic and foreign policies of the Nazi regime.
Already during the late s he had criticized the dissolute nature of the German university system, where specialization and the ideology of academic freedom precluded the attainment of a higher unity.
During the first month of his rectorship, he sent a telegram to Hitler urging him to postpone an upcoming meeting of university rectors until Gleichschaltung—the Nazi euphemism for the elimination of political opponents—had been completed.
As he proclaimed in one speech: The ban was lifted in In later years, despite pleas from friends and associates to disavow publicly his Nazi past, Heidegger declined to do so.Existentialism Here and Now. By Alfie Kohn.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago, existentialism was a hot piece of intellectual property. A wide reading public was buying up such new books as William Barrett’s Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy and Viktor Frankl’s From Death Camp to Existentialism (later republished under the title Man’s Search for Meaning).
Jacques Lacan (—) It would be fair to say that there are few twentieth century thinkers who have had such a far-reaching influence on subsequent intellectual life in the humanities as Jacques Lacan.
Trauma and Human Existence effectively interweaves two themes central to emotional trauma - the first pertains to the contextuality of emotional life in general, and of the experience of emotional trauma in particular, and the second pertains to the recognition that the possibility of emotional trauma is built into the basic constitution of human existence. very comprehensive list of Herbert Marcuse's publications, with tables of contents and links to full texts available on the web. Martin Heidegger (/ ˈ h aɪ d ɛ ɡ ər, -d ɪ ɡ ər /; German: [ˈmaɐ̯tiːn ˈhaɪdɛɡɐ]; 26 September – 26 May ) was a German philosopher and a seminal thinker in the Continental tradition and philosophical hermeneutics, and is "widely acknowledged to be one of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th century." Heidegger is best known for his contributions to.
Existentialism Here and Now. By Alfie Kohn. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago, existentialism was a hot piece of intellectual property.
A wide reading public was buying up such new books as William Barrett’s Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy and Viktor Frankl’s From Death Camp to Existentialism (later republished under the title Man’s Search for Meaning).
JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. Books about Heidegger. The Apocalypse of Being The Esoteric Gnosis of Martin Heidegger. Mario Enrique Sacchi, translated by Gabriel Xavier Martinez, South Bend, Indiana, St. Augustine's Press, very comprehensive list of Herbert Marcuse's publications, with tables of contents and links to full texts available on the web.