Martin Heidegger
In The You On AI Encyclopedia
Heidegger was born in Meßkirch, Baden, in 1889. He began his studies in theology at Freiburg, intending to become a Catholic priest, before turning to philosophy under the influence of Edmund Husserl. His 1916 habilitation thesis examined the logic of medieval scholasticism. He joined the philosophy faculty at Marburg in 1923, where he produced the lecture courses that became Being and Time.
The publication of Being and Time in 1927 established Heidegger as a major philosophical figure and secured him the chair at Freiburg that Husserl had held. His early work was characterized by the transcendental analytic of Dasein — the analysis of human existence as the being for whom its own being is an issue. The work remained formally incomplete; the projected second volume was never published.
Heidegger's political commitments cannot be separated from his philosophy, however one assesses their relationship. He joined the Nazi Party in May 1933, shortly before accepting the rectorship at Freiburg. His rectoral address 'The Self-Assertion of the German University' has been subjected to intense scrutiny. He resigned the rectorship in April 1934 but remained a party member until 1945. The publication of the Black Notebooks beginning in 2014 revealed antisemitic passages that have intensified long-standing debates about the ethical and philosophical implications of his political commitments.
Heidegger's later thought (often designated das Späte Denken) turned away from the subject-centered transcendental analytic of Dasein toward a more receptive analysis of Being's self-disclosure through language, technology, and art. The 1936–38 Contributions to Philosophy, published posthumously, mark this turn. The major later essays — on technology, language, Hölderlin, the thing, dwelling — develop the frameworks that have become most influential in philosophy of technology and AI critique.
Origin
Martin Heidegger was born on September 26, 1889, in Meßkirch, a small town in Baden, in the southwest of Germany. He died on May 26, 1976, in the same town. His complete works (Gesamtausgabe) are projected to fill 102 volumes and are still being published by Vittorio Klostermann.
Key Ideas
Being and Time (1927). The transcendental analytic of Dasein that reopened the question of Being and established phenomenology as a method for fundamental ontology.
The later turn. The shift from subject-centered analysis to receptive engagement with Being's self-disclosure through language, art, and technology.
The Question Concerning Technology (1954). The mature framework for understanding technology as a mode of revealing and the Ge-stell as the essence of modernity.
Political compromise. Nazi Party membership (1933–45) and antisemitic passages in the Black Notebooks remain matters of serious philosophical and moral debate.
Influence across disciplines. Continental philosophy, hermeneutics, existentialism, philosophy of technology, environmental thought, architecture, and the philosophy of AI — particularly through Hubert Dreyfus.
Debates & Critiques
The question of how to read Heidegger given his political commitments is itself a live philosophical question. Some argue his philosophy must be discarded or deeply revised in light of his political compromise. Others argue that the philosophy can be separated from the man, read critically but taken seriously for what it discloses. A third position — increasingly influential — is that the Black Notebooks reveal structural connections between Heidegger's ontological commitments and his political failures, requiring a reading that neither rejects the work nor accepts it uncritically but works through the contamination.
Further Reading
- Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie and Robinson (Harper, 1962)
- Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (Harper, 1993)
- Rüdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil (Harvard, 1998)
- Charles Guignon, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge, 2006)
- Peter Trawny, Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy (Chicago, 2015)