The history of Western philosophy can be read, without exaggeration, as the history of the forgetting of being. This is the thesis that runs through the entire work of Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) — arguably the most influential and most controversial philosopher of the twentieth century. Being and Time (1927), his magnum opus, did not propose yet another theory about the world, the mind, or morality: it proposed that philosophy as a whole — from Plato to Nietzsche — had left its most fundamental question unthought: what does it mean to be?
The radicality of that question, the originality of the answer, and the political shadow cast over the man who formulated it make Heidegger a unique case in the history of thought: a philosopher whose intellectual greatness and whose moral guilt are equally inescapable.
1. Historical context and formation
1.1 Origins and education
Martin Heidegger was born on September 26, 1889, in Meßkirch, a small Swabian town in southern Germany, into a modest Catholic family. He studied theology and philosophy at the University of Freiburg, where he was a student of Heinrich Rickert and, decisively, assistant to Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology.
Heidegger’s formation drew on three traditions: medieval Scholasticism (Duns Scotus, Thomas Aquinas), Husserlian phenomenology (the return “to the things themselves”), and Wilhelm Dilthey’s hermeneutics of life. From Husserl he inherited the phenomenological method; from Dilthey, attention to the historicity of existence; from Scholasticism, the obsession with the question of being.
1.2 The intellectual context
Heidegger wrote Being and Time in Weimar Germany — a period of political crisis, inflation, cultural ferment, and collapse of nineteenth-century certainties. Academic philosophy was dominated by Neo-Kantianism, which Heidegger considered sterile. His work was received as an earthquake: within a few years he became the most discussed philosopher in Europe.
2. Being and Time: the fundamental question
2.1 The forgetting of being
Being and Time opens with a diagnosis: Western philosophy has forgotten the question of being (Seinsfrage). Since Plato, philosophers have asked what beings are (things, substances, objects) — but never adequately asked what it means to be. The difference between being and beings — the ontological difference — is the starting point of the entire work.
Heidegger does not seek a definition of “being” (which would treat it as just another being) but asks about the meaning of being — about the prior understanding we always already have when we say that something “is.” This understanding is so self-evident that it has become invisible. The task of philosophy is to make it visible.
2.2 Dasein as point of access
To reopen the question of being, Heidegger chooses a phenomenological path: analyzing the being that understands being — the human being. But Heidegger refuses the traditional terms (“subject,” “consciousness,” “man,” “soul”): all carry metaphysical presuppositions that must be dismantled. Instead he uses the term Dasein — literally “being-there” (Da-sein) — to designate the being that we ourselves are, whose essence consists in being open to being, in understanding being as it exists.
Dasein is not a substance, not a self-enclosed consciousness: it is a being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein) — always already thrown into a situation, a context of meanings, a temporal horizon.
3. The existential analytic
3.1 Being-in-the-world
The concept of being-in-the-world destroys the subject/object dichotomy that has dominated modern philosophy since Descartes. There is not, first, an isolated subject that then relates to an external world: Dasein is its relationship with the world. The world is not a container of objects but a totality of significance — a web of practical references in which things appear as useful, threatening, attractive, familiar.
The beings we primarily encounter in the world are not theoretical objects (Vorhandenheit — “present-at-hand”) but equipment (Zuhandenheit — “ready-to-hand”): the hammer is experienced as something for hammering, not as an object with physical properties. The originary relation to the world is practical, not theoretical. The theoretical attitude — looking at things as neutral objects — is a derived modification of the practical relation.
3.2 Everydayness and “the They” (das Man)
Most of the time, Dasein does not live authentically: it lives immersed in everydayness (Alltäglichkeit), following what “they” (das Man) do, think, and say. “They” is nobody in particular: it is public opinion, common sense, the average. We speak as “they” speak, judge as “they” judge, die as “they” die — that is, as if death were always someone else’s.
Das Man is not simply negative: it is the structure through which we are socialized and learn to exist in a shared world. But it covers over Dasein’s singularity — its irreducible responsibility for its own existence.
3.3 Attunement, understanding, and discourse
Heidegger identifies three fundamental structures of being-in-the-world:
Attunement (Befindlichkeit): Dasein is always already attuned by a mood — joy, boredom, anxiety. We do not choose our moods; they disclose how we are situated in the world. Mood is not a subjective accessory: it is a fundamental mode of openness to the world.
Understanding (Verstehen): Dasein always understands its possibilities — knows itself as being-able-to-be. Understanding is not an intellectual act: it is the constant projection (Entwurf) of existential possibilities.
Discourse (Rede): the articulation of understanding in language. Discourse is not an instrument the subject uses to communicate inner ideas: it is the structure that makes possible the very openness to the world.
3.4 Falling (Verfallenheit)
Dasein tends to fall (verfallen) into everydayness — to lose itself in das Man, in idle talk (Gerede), curiosity (Neugier), and ambiguity (Zweideutigkeit). Falling is not a moral defect: it is a structural tendency of Dasein, which flees from itself, from its finitude, from its responsibility. But falling can be interrupted — by a phenomenon Heidegger calls anxiety.
4. Anxiety, being-toward-death, and authenticity
4.1 Anxiety
Anxiety (Angst) is distinct from fear. Fear is always fear of something determinate — an identifiable threat. Anxiety has no object: it is the experience of the entire world losing its familiarity, of all everyday meanings becoming fragile, of nothing grounding existence. In anxiety, Dasein is confronted with nothingness — with the absence of any ultimate foundation — and thereby delivered back to itself, to its freedom and responsibility.
4.2 Being-toward-death
Anxiety discloses Dasein’s most fundamental structure: being-toward-death (Sein-zum-Tode). Death is not a future event that has not yet occurred: it is Dasein’s ownmost, non-relational, and unsurpassable possibility — the possibility of the impossibility of all existence. In everydayness, “they” cover over death: “one dies,” we say, as if death were always someone else’s affair. The anticipatory resoluteness (vorlaufende Entschlossenheit) toward death — the recognition that I will die and that this possibility is certain yet indeterminate — wrenches Dasein from das Man and returns it to itself as a finite and singular being.
4.3 Authenticity and resoluteness
Authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) is neither a moral property nor a psychological state: it is the mode of existing in which Dasein assumes its finitude, its freedom, and its historical situation. Being authentic is not isolating oneself from society but relating to the world and to others from oneself — not dictated by das Man. Resoluteness (Entschlossenheit) is Dasein’s openness to its concrete situation, with lucidity about its real possibilities.
5. Temporality and historicity
5.1 Time as the meaning of Dasein’s being
The second division of Being and Time argues that the meaning of Dasein’s being is temporality (Zeitlichkeit). Dasein is not in time like a thing inside a container: Dasein is temporal — it constantly temporalizes itself from the future (projection of possibilities), the past (facticity, having-been), and the present (being-alongside entities).
Authentic temporality is organized from the future — from anticipating death and projecting toward ownmost possibilities. Inauthentic temporality is organized from the present — from letting oneself be absorbed by everyday occupations. The “vulgar” time — the linear sequence of nows (past-present-future) — is a leveled-off derivation of originary temporality.
5.2 Historicity
Dasein is essentially historical (geschichtlich): it always exists within a tradition, inherits possibilities from the past, and projects them into the future. Historicity is not simply the fact that things change over time: it is the structure through which Dasein happens — retrieving and transforming the heritage it has received.
6. The turn (Kehre) and the later thought
6.1 The unfinished project
Being and Time was supposed to have three divisions, but the third — which would make the transition from Dasein’s being (temporality) to the meaning of being in general — was never written. Heidegger acknowledged that the language and conceptual framework of Being and Time were still captive to the metaphysics he intended to overcome. From the 1930s onward, his thought underwent a turn (Kehre): the focus shifted from the analytic of Dasein to the history of being (Seinsgeschichte) — the way being manifests and conceals itself across epochs.
6.2 The question concerning technology
In The Question Concerning Technology (1953), Heidegger argued that modern technology is not simply a set of neutral instruments: it is a mode of revealing (Entbergung) that transforms all of nature into a standing reserve (Bestand) — raw material available for exploitation and control. The hydroelectric plant does not “stand” on the Rhine as the old wooden bridge once did: it transforms the Rhine into a supplier of energy. The danger of technology lies not in nuclear accidents or pollution but in enframing (Gestell) — the structure that leads us to see everything, including human beings, as available resource.
6.3 Language, poetry, and dwelling
In his later thought, Heidegger turned to language and poetry as privileged modes of access to being. “Language is the house of being” — his most celebrated formula from this period. Poets like Hölderlin and Rilke do not “decorate” the world with beautiful words: they open clearings (Lichtungen) where being manifests itself. Thinking and poetizing are kindred modes of “listening” to being — not of mastering it.
7. The political question: Heidegger and Nazism
7.1 The rectorship and party membership
In May 1933, Heidegger assumed the rectorship of the University of Freiburg and joined the National Socialist Party. His inaugural address — The Self-Assertion of the German University — linked the university’s mission to the “destiny of the German people” in terms that echo Nazi rhetoric. Heidegger resigned the rectorship in 1934 but remained a party member until 1945 and never made an unambiguous public retraction.
7.2 The Black Notebooks
The publication of the Black Notebooks (Schwarze Hefte) from 2014 onward revealed entries with anti-Semitic content — not the vulgar racial anti-Semitism of Nazism, but a “metaphysical anti-Semitism” that associated Judaism with calculability, technology, and uprootedness. These entries drastically aggravated the problem and reopened the debate.
7.3 Philosophy and biography
The central question is: can the adherence to Nazism be separated from the philosophy? Answers vary. For Emmanuel Levinas (who was Heidegger’s student), Heidegger’s philosophy is an “ontology of power” that leads to violence. For Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hannah Arendt, the philosophical greatness is indisputable — but the political blindness is real and must be named without mitigation. For Emmanuel Faye, the entire work is contaminated. For Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Derrida, one must read Heidegger against Heidegger — deconstructing the compromised elements without abandoning what is genuinely thoughtful.
8. Critical analysis
8.1 Strengths
Heidegger’s greatness lies in the radicality of the question of being — a question no philosopher before him had formulated with such persistence. The destruction of the subject/object dichotomy, the concept of being-in-the-world, the analysis of anxiety and being-toward-death, the critique of modern technology: each of these contributions transformed the philosophical landscape of the twentieth century.
Without Heidegger, there is no Sartre, no Merleau-Ponty, no Gadamer, no Derrida, no Levinas, no Foucault — at least not in the form we know them. Phenomenology, hermeneutics, existentialism, deconstruction, and the philosophy of technology are, in varying degrees, responses to questions Heidegger posed.
8.2 Weaknesses
Heidegger’s language is frequently charged with deliberate obscurity. Rudolf Carnap and the logical positivists judged that sentences like “the nothing nothings” are pseudo-propositions devoid of cognitive content. The criticism has some force: Heidegger at times confuses depth with opacity, and his prose can function as a barrier that only initiates overcome — conflicting with the philosophical ideal of clarity.
The existential analytic of Being and Time has been criticized for its implicit individualism: intersubjectivity (being-with, Mitsein) receives insufficient treatment. Levinas objected that the relation to the other — ethics — is more originary than the relation to being.
The absence of an explicit ethics and political philosophy is not accidental: Heidegger subordinated everything to the “question of being,” and this subordination rendered him blind to the ethical and political urgency of his time. The adherence to Nazism is not an isolated “mistake”: it is the symptom of a philosophy that thinks the “destiny of being” on a cosmic scale but cannot find conceptual resources to say “this is unjust.”
9. Legacy
Heidegger died on May 26, 1976, in Freiburg and was buried in Meßkirch. His work endures as one of the intellectual monuments of the twentieth century — and as a warning about the limits of any thought that claims to situate itself “beyond good and evil.”
Contemporary philosophy remains divided between heirs who radicalize Heidegger (Derrida, Nancy, Agamben), critics who confront him (Levinas, Habermas, Adorno), and pragmatists who ignore him (Rorty, in part). But the question he posed — what does it mean to be? — remains as open and as urgent as on the day it was first formulated.
Recommended Books
Being and Time — Martin Heidegger (trans. Joan Stambaugh)
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Basic Writings — Martin Heidegger (ed. David F. Krell)
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Introduction to Metaphysics — Martin Heidegger (trans. Gregory Fried)
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Heidegger: An Introduction — Richard Polt
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The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger
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