Existentialism has the basic tenet that existence precedes essence. Soren Kierkegaard is the father of existentialism.
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is one of the Big Four of the existentialists; the other three being Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriel Marcel, and Karl Jaspers. Martin Heidegger was born in a devout Catholic family at Messkirch, Baden, Germany. He was so attached to his home soil, that he even refused lucrative offers at Bonn and Munich. At the age of seventeen, he read Franz Bentano's dissertation. This was one of his first awkward attempts to penetrate into philosophy. Bentano deals with the question "
Ti to on" (What is being?) in this work.
In 1913 he completed his Ph.D. He then enlisted himself in the war though only for two months. Heidegger was a Greek scholary, an expert in medieval philosophy (especially Duns Scotus). He was also interested in mathematics. In 1917 he was back in the army, then he married Elfride Petri. Between 1920 and 1923 he was assistant to Husserl in Freiburg. In 1927 he hastily published
Being and Time, only to revise it in 1953. Heidegger succeeded Husserl in 1928, and became the Rector of the university in 1933.
One of the darkest and the most painful moments for many biographers is to deal with Heidegger's support of Adolf Hitler. Though his support of Hitler lasted only ten months, some can never forgive him that. Heidegger wouldn't dismiss the opposing professors in the university, he eventually resigned his post. In 1944 he was even sent to dig trenches by the same Nazi regime. After 1945 Heidegger retired.
Some of his notable friends were W.K. Heisenberg, Hannah Arendt, Rudolf Bultmann, and Viktor Frankl.
A major hurdle in understanding Heidegger would be his language - poetic, flowery, twisted, and even convoluted. Heidegger is difficult, often obscure. Even a fellow German would find him difficult. E.g., Die Welt weltet (= The world worlds); Things think; Blessing muses. Hannah Arendt calls him a "secret king of thought." Heidegger had an old eagle's mind.
Here we shall deal with the following four topics:
(a) Being
(b) Dasein: Understanding and Truth
(c) Being-in-the-World
(d) Authenticity
Being
Heidegger was concerned about the ontological question about the originary meaning of being and its main articulations. According to Heidegger, Nietzsche was the last great metaphysician of the West. He was pre-Socratic in his thought. In fact, Heidegger, along with Nietzsche, considers the pre-Socratic age as the golden age. The pre-Socratics, especially Parmenides, engaged in the study of Being, not beings. After that in the West, there has been a forgetfulness of Being. Heidegger says we have forgotten what it is to attend to Being, for we have lost our amazement at Being, our wonder. Being is a wonder, something wonderful, and yet we do not feel that wonder any more. Modern man does not understand the question of Being.
Therefore, true metaphysics should focus on existence, not existents or concretely existing things. Unfortunately in history we see metaphysics has been involved in distractions by abandoning the original quest to focus on Being, existence. (Let us not forget his attempt at understanding Franz Bentano's dissertation which dealt with the question "What is being?") So to correct this wrong approach, according to Heidegger, the conventional usage of words need to be broken.
Heidegger grew up not far from the centre of Black Forest and retained a deep love for earth and soil (
Grund) of his native place.
We can never come upon pure existence as such.
Dasein: Understanding and Truth
Since Be-ing (the to-be) does not manifest itself directly, we must settle for questioning it through a manifestation of it. This is best provided by the human person,
der Mann. S/he is the best link between beings and Be-ing; s/he is the Dasein (there-to-be).
"Dasein" is a term coined by Heidegger. In German "da" means "there" and "sein" means "to be" or "Sein" means "being." So literally we can Dasein is "there-to-be." Dasein therefore signifies presence, thereness, thrownness.
The human person is the only being that questions Be-ing. S/he is Existenz; s/he ex-sists; s/he is the only being that has a greater role with regard to consciousness in this world.
The analytic of Dasein, therefore, is a central feature of Heidegger’s thought. Dasein becomes important because of its peculiar ontological structure. It is characteristically different from other entities, as it has an understanding of Being and can raise the question of Being. In other words, in its being, this being itself is an issue for it. Heidegger says that Dasein understands itself in its being. Another feature that distinguishes Dasein from other entities is the fact that it is a being-in-the-world. Dasein finds itself in the world, but in a very different way than other entities are in it. Dasein’s comporting to the world is different. It understands the world as a range of possibilities and it always has understood itself in terms of its possibilities.
This factor makes Dasein’s engagements with the world and its entities very different. It cannot escape from the world, as its facticity and throwness are inevitable and inescapable. But again, as mentioned above, its relationship with the world is also different. Unlike other entities it needs a world populated with entities for it to engage with.
Now, what is "understanding" for Heidegger? According to Heidegger, human understanding takes its direction from the fore-understanding deriving from its particular existential situation, and this fore-understanding stakes out the thematic framework and parameters of every interpretation. Rarely has anyone given much thought to the question of what this fore-structure is really “fore” to, and so (to put it awkwardly) the “wherefore” or “thereafter” of the fore-structure has remained for the most part in the dark. Forestructure is “fore” to assertion, if not language itself. Fore-structure means, then, that human Dasein is characterised by an interpretive tendency special to it that comes be-fore every statement. It has a fundamental character of care but very often concealed by the fact that propositional judgments tend to take centre stage.
For Heidegger, understanding should be divested itself of its purely "epistemic" character. Earlier, understanding had been understood as a theoretical
intelligere that concerned itself with construing meaningful entities in an intelligible manner. But for Heidegger such epistemological understanding is secondary and derivative from a still more universal hermeneutical understanding. This understanding is "being at home with something" (sich auf etwas verstehen), which refers to a kind of understanding that is more like readiness or facility than knowledge. It is a "knowing one's way around." "To understand something" in this sense means to be equal to or master of it. This understanding is a mastery or an art. For instance, we understand how to get along with people, to care for things, to kill time, and so forth, without having any special knowledge at our disposal. This "practical" understanding Heidegger calls "existential" because it is a way of existing, a fundamental mode of being, by the power of which we deal with and try to find our way around in our world. This everyday understanding almost always remains implicit.
Being-in-the-World
A human individual is not solitary or alone, s/he is a being-in-the-world, i.e., s/he finds herself within a group of other men and women. Dasein is also "Mitsein" (being-with). Being in a group is always a mixed blessing - sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse. That is, one could become one among the crowd, and abandon the quest. In other words, there is a possibility that instead of being
der Mann, s/he could settle down to be an anonymous, impersonal "one,"
das Man. In other words, while Everydayness is the lived context of Dasein's being-in-the-world, ironically it also refers to the natural tendency of Dasein to conceal things, to regard them superficially often accepting what everyone say about them. This propensity of Dasein to dissipate itself in the crowd is expressed through Heidegger's notion of
das Man (the 'They').
Das Man renders everything common, comparable, interchangeable. A levelling effect takes place; all that is unique and creative is stifled. A certain drive towards homogeneity takes place, which in turn encourages mediocrity and complacency. Because of Dasein's already constituted immersion in this they-self, Dasein automatically and unreflectively surrenders its own potentiality for being a true Self in order to dwell in tranquillized familiarity. In short, the they-self relieves Dasein of the burden of its own Being.
The human person therefore has two choices: either to take responsibility as
der Mann (
der Mann implies authentic Existenz) or surrender to anonymity and be lost in the crowed as
das Man (
das Man implies inauthentic Existenz). The former signifies personal conviction, the latter false security and assurance.
Sorge (concern, care) for the other is basic to man's being. According to Heidegger the very structure of Dasein's being is one of care. "Dasein's Being is care." Moreover, man is a care-taker, shepherd, and is thus open to Being. He has a vague notion of Being already. However hazy, he can develop and deepen this notion.
Throwness (Dasein's facticity) also implies finitude and abandonment. Being is therefore finite and temporal according to Heidegger. (Remember the title of his magnum opus:
Being and Time.) This also signifies that man is destined for death, which creates an existential experience of
Angst (dread). On the face of this experience, the human person has again two responses: to be authentic or to be inauthentic. Acceptance and recognition of his finitude is needed from the part of man. That is an authentic response.
Authenticity
It is Heidegger who is most instrumental in making the question of human authenticity prominent within and without philosophical circles. For Heidegger the importance of authenticity (
conversio vitae) resides in the need to provide a foundation for fundamental ontology - the question of Being. We have already mentioned the dialectic of authenticity and inauthenticity in our discussion above. Authentic historicity is by overcoming such a dialectical relationship and thus bring to light the truth of human existence.
(Sources: Cyril Desbruslais,
Western Philosophy Notes; Brian J. Braman,
Meaning and Authenticity.)
