Martin Heidegger (18891976) German philosopher, born in Messkirch, Baden, studied under Husserl, taught at Marburg and Freiburg.

Heidegger developed Husserls phenomenology and was a central figure in the development of existentialism and hermeneutics. In Being and Time (1927), Heidegger sought to understand the meaning of being in general, but addressed this central question through revealing the fundamental features of the being of human beings, which he termed Dasein (being there). He held that Dasein is the only kind of being that can raise the question of being and wonder about itself as existing. Instead of being a thing-with-properties, Dasein is being-in-the-world. One is authentic through living in a selfdetermining way rather than following the crowd. Dasein is historical and temporal, with a life story unfolding between birth and death. Within this context, authenticity, care, dread, finitude, and death become major themes of his philosophy. He intended his philosophical terminology, which he traced to pre-Socratic and German origins, to support a fundamental ontology to replace what he saw as a mistaken metaphysical tradition. Heidegger did not complete his original project. Important works of his later period include Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929), The Origin of the Work of Art (1950), An Introduction to Metaphysics (1953), What is Called Thinking? (1954), On the Way to Language (1959) and Nietzsche, 2 vols. (1961). His accounts of poetry and technology have initiated extensive discussions. Heideggers brief period as Rector of the University of Freiburg under Hitler and his membership of the Nazi Party raise questions about the relationship between his discredited political allegiance and his philosophical views. He was, nevertheless, one of the most original and influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Martin Heidegger (18891976), now widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers in recent history, radically redirected phenomenology by applying it to the question of the meaning of being and the structure of human existence. Overview of The Existentialism of Heidegger Two years earlier one of Husserls pupils had published a book that was to have a much greater impact on philosophy than either of Cartesian Meditations and Logical Investigations. The Sein und Zeit of Martin Heidegger (18891976) claimed that phenomenology, up to this point, had been too halfhearted. It purported to examine the data of consciousness, but it employed notions like subject, object, act, and content which were not items that it had discovered in consciousness, but items inherited from earlier philosophy. Most importantly, Husserl had accepted the framework of Descartes in which there were the two correlative realms of consciousness and reality. Only one of these, consciousness, was the subject matter Husserl had adopted for phenomenology. But the first task of phenomenology, Heidegger maintained, was to study the concept of Being (Sein) which was prior to the cleavage between consciousness and reality. The experience that leads us to contrast these two as polar opposites is the primary phenomenon to be examined. We must therefore go back behind Descartes in order to get clear about the nature of philosophy, and take as our starting point not consciousness but Being. But it will not suffice, Heidegger warns us, simply to return to the categories of Plato and Aristotle, which already have an element of artificial sophistication. The Presocratics provide the best examples for a thoroughgoing phenomenalist to imitate, because they pre-date the formation of a professional philosophical vocabulary with all the

presuppositions such a vocabulary entails. Heidegger would set himself the task of inventing a pristine vocabulary that would enable us, as it were, to philosophize in the nude. The most important of Heideggers coinages is Dasein. Dasein is the kind of being that is capable of asking philosophical questions, and as Heidegger expounds Dasein it sounds initially suspiciously like the Cartesian ego. But whereas Descartess ego was essentially a thinking thing, a res cogitans, thinking is only one, and not the most fundamental, of the ways in which Dasein has its being. The primitive element of Dasein is being-in-the world, and thinking is only one way of engaging with the world: acting upon it and reacting to it are at least as important elements. Dasein is prior to the distinction between thinking and willing or theory and practice. Dasein is caring about (besorgen)1. Dasein is not a res cogitans, but a res curans: not a thinking thing, but a caring thing. Only if I have some care about, or interest in, the world will I go on to ask questions about it and give answers to those questions in the form of knowledge-claims. Concepts and judgments can be thought of as instruments for coping with the world. But there are more primitive such instruments, things that are tools in a literal sense. A carpenter relates to the world by using a hammer. He does not need to be thinking about the hammer to be using it well; consciousness of the hammer may indeed get in the way of the concentration on his project that is his true engagement with reality. Entities that we cope with in this transparent mode are called by Heidegger ready-to-hand.2 The distinction between what is and what is not ready-to- hand underlies our construction of the spatiality of the world. Heidegger emphasizes the temporal nature of Dasein: we should think of it not as a substance but as the unfolding of a life. Our life is not a self- contained, selfdeveloping entity: from the outset we find ourselves thrown into a physical, cultural, and historical context. This thrownness (geworfenheit) is called by Heidegger the facticity3 of Dasein. Nor is my life exhausted by what I am now and have hitherto been: I can be what I have not yet been, and my potentialities are as essential to my being as my achievements are. Indeed, according to Heidegger, in defining what I am the future has priority over the past and the present. Dasein, says Heidegger, is an
1

*German Sorge+ For Heidegger, care is the state in which Dasein is concerned about its Being. Since Daseins essence lies in its existence, that is, in fulfilling its possibilities, its concern with the movement from any present actuality to another future condition must raise the question, What shall I do? This is care, which lies in the capacity of Dasein to choose its Being. Care is viewed as the fundamental relationship between Dasein and the world and is the basis of Daseins significance in the world. It is the state that underlies all of Daseins experiences. Since all choice has to be made in the world, care characterizes Daseins Being as Bei ng-in-the-world. Care comprises existence (Being-ahead-of-itself ), facticity (Being-alreadyin), falling (Being-alongside), and discourse and shows Dasein in its entirety. It is essentially connected with temporality, that is, the time structure of human life. The division Dasein and Temporality in Being and Time attempts to reveal temporality as the basis of all the elements of care. 2 Ready-to-hand, Heideggers term for entities within-the-world which we make use of as equipment or as instruments. The Being possessed by this kind of entity is called readiness- to-hand, which Heidegger contrasts to presence- at-hand, that is, the Being of the determinate and isolable entities investigated by science. The same entity can be ready-to-hand or present-at-hand, depending upon our attitude or relationship to it. The attitude that determines an entity as ready-at-hand is concern (German Besorgen). 3 Heidegger held that facticity comprises the concrete situations and the cultural and historical contexts into which Dasein finds itself thrown a priori, and which constitute the concrete limitations of human possibilities. As one component of care, facticity is a mode of Being of Dasein. In contrast, Heidegger called what are merely material and non-human conditions factuality. Dasein exists not factually, but factically.

ability to be and what I am aiming at in my life determines the significance of my present situation and capacities. But whatever my achievements and potentialities are, they all terminate in deathbut though death terminates them, it does not complete them. Any view of my life as a whole must take account of the difference between what I will be and what I might have been: hence comes guilt4 and anxiety5. If Heidegger is right, there is something absurd in the attempts of philosophers, from Descartes to Russell, to prove the existence of an external world. We are not observers trying, through the medium of experience, to gain knowledge of a reality from which we are detached. From the outset we are ourselves elements of the world, always already being-in-the-world. We are beings among other beings, acting upon and reacting to them. And our actions and reactions need not at all be guided by consciousness. It is, in fact, only when our spontaneous actions misfire in some way that we become conscious of what we are doing. This is when the ready-to-hand becomes unready-to-hand. The activity of Dasein, for Heidegger, has three fundamental aspects. First, there is what he calls attunement: the situations into which we are thrown manifest themselves as attractive, or alarming, or boring, and so on, and we respond to them with moods of various kinds. Second, Dasein is discursive: that is to say, it operates within a world of discourses, among entities that are articulated and interpreted for us by the language and culture that we share with others. Third, Dasein is understanding in a special sensethat is to say, its activities are directed (not necessarily consciously) towards some goal, some for-the-sake-of which will make sense of a whole life within its cultural context. These three aspects of Dasein correspond to the past, present, and future of time: the time that gives Sein und Zeit the second part of its title. Though Dasein operates within a biological, social, and cultural context, there is no such thing as a human nature that gives rise to the activities of the human individual. The essence of Dasein, says Heidegger, is its existence.6 In saying this, he became the father of existentialism, the school of
4 5

Does not mean sin, but the awareness of lack. Heidegger distinguished anxiety from fear. Fear arises from a specific threat, and there is some external entity about which to be afraid. Anxiety, on the other hand, is a state of mind arising not from any particular and determinate affliction, but from ones own indefinite existence. Anxiety comes to us from nowhere and in the face of nothing. For Heidegger, it is simply concerned with our thrownness in the world, that is, with Being-in-theworld itself. Anxiety reveals to us how we are in the world and brings us to face the alienated, not-home-like world. The framework in which we make sense of our own existence and of the world is not given once and for all. For each of us, anxiety makes our individuality, our determinate self and our own possibility. In particular, it reveals to us that no individual can escape death with the aid of the public. For Heidegger, anxiety is closely related to Dasein (the Being of human beings, which is Being-in-the-world). Thus through individuating Dasein, anxiety is a distinctive way in which Dasein is disclosed. Anxiety discloses Dasein as Being-possible, and in the meantime, as a state of mind it is also a basic kind of Being in- the-world. The affirmative or passive attitude toward anxiety may lead respectively to authentic or inauthentic existence. -Heidegger uses the same term (here usually translated as anxiety) to describe a sense of unease concerning the structure of ones life which, because it does not arise from any specific threat, is to be diagnosed as a manifestation of our own responsibility for this structure. 6 Etymologically, existence (existere) means standing out or standing outside. On this basis, Heidegger claimed that not all actual entities can be said to exist. Existence is not, as traditionally conceived, something one simply encounters or comes across in the world (what Heidegger called presence-at-hand). Rather, it is the mode of being

philosophy that emphasizes that individuals are not mere members of a species and are not determined by universal laws. What I essentially am is what I freely take myself to be. The ungroundedness of such a choice is alarming, and I may well take refuge in unthinking conformity. But that is an inauthentic decision, a betrayal of my Dasein. To be authentic I must make my own life in full awareness that there is no ground, either in human nature or in divine command, for the choices I make, and that no choice is going to bring any transcendent meaningfulness to my life. Being and Time is a difficult book to read, and any interpreter who wishes to make its ideas seem readily intelligible has to write in a style very different from Heideggers own. It is a matter of dispute whether Heideggers idiosyncratic vocabulary and convoluted syntax were essential to his project or were an unnecessary piece of self-indulgence. But there is no doubt that his work was not just original but important. One of Heideggers most pungent opponents, Gilbert Ryle, admitted at the end of a critical review of the book that he had nothing but admiration for his phenomenological analysis of the root workings of the human soul. As a work of phenomenology, Sein und Zeit enjoyed a greater e clat than any of the works of phenomenologys founder, Husserl. The relationship between the disciple and his master had an unhappy ending. In 1929 Heidegger succeeded Husserl as Professor of Philosophy at Freiburg and in 1933 he became Rector of the university. In a notorious inaugural address in May of that year he welcomed Nazism as the vehicle through which the German people would at last carry out its historic spiritual mission. One of his first acts as Rector was to exclude from the University Library all Jewish faculty members, including Emeritus Professor Husserl, who still had five years to live. After the war Heidegger had to do penance for his support of Hitler and was himself prevented from teaching in the university from 1945 to 1950. However, his thought remained influential up to and beyond his death in 1976. Martin Heidegger taught philosophy at Freiburg University (1915-23), Marburg University (1923-8), and again at Freiburg University (1928-45). Early in his career he came under the influence of Edmund Husserl, but he soon broke away to fashion his own philosophy. His most famous work, Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) was published in 1927. Heideggers energetic support for Hitler in 1933-4 earned him a suspension from teaching from 1945 to 1950. In retirement he published numerous works, including the first volumes of his Collected Edition. His thought has had strong influence on trends in philosophy ranging from existentialism through hermeneutics to deconstruction, as well as on the fields of literary theory and theology. Heidegger distinguishes between an entity (anything that is) and the being of an entity. He calls this distinction the ontological difference7. The being of an entity is the meaningful presence of that entity
of Dasein (human existence), for only Dasein can stand out from its own occurrence in the world and reflect on itself. For Heidegger, existence is Daseins awareness that it is. Daseins essence lies in its existence because we make ourselves be what we are in the course of living out our possibilities. For Heidegger, existence in this sense is also the ground of presence, that is, the mode of being of the world. 7 ontico-ontological distinction, Heideggers distinction, two levels of analysis of Dasein. The ontic level is concerned with the concrete, specific, and local matter of Dasein, that is, the factual matter open to observation, which Heidegger calls existentiell. The ontological level is, on the other hand, concerned with the deep structure that underlies and instantializes the ontical or existentiell matter and provides a phenomenological description. This deep structure is called by Heidegger existentiale. Dasein has three main existentiales, namely existentiality,

within the range of human experience. Being has to do with the is: what an entity is, how it is, and the fact that it is at all. The human entity is distinguished by its awareness of the being of entities, including the being of itself. Heidegger names the human entity Dasein and argues that Daseins own being is intrinsically temporal, not in the usual chronological sense but in a unique existential sense: Dasein eksists (stands-out) towards its future. This eksistential temporality refers to the fact that Dasein is always and necessarily becoming itself and ultimately becoming its own death. When used of Dasein, the word temporality8 indicates not chronological succession but Daseins finite and mortal becoming. If Daseins being is thoroughly temporal, then all of human awareness is conditioned by this temporality, including ones understanding of being. For Dasein, being is always known temporally and indeed is temporal. The meaning of being is time. The two main theses of Being and Time - that Dasein is temporal and that the meaning of being is time - may be interpreted thus: being is disclosed only finitely within Daseins radically finite awareness.

Life and works Martin Heidegger was born on 26 September 1889 in Messkirch, Southwest Germany, to Roman Catholic parents of very modest means. From 1899 to 1911 he intended to become a priest, but after two years of theological studies at Freiburg University a recurring heart condition ended those hopes. In 1911 he switched to mathematics and the natural sciences, but finally took his doctorate in philosophy (1913) with a dissertation entitled Die Lehre vom Urteil im Psychologismus (The Doctrine of Judgment in Psychologism) (1914). Hoping to get appointed to Freiburgs chair in Catholic philosophy, he wrote a qualifying dissertation in 1915 on a theme in medieval philosophy, Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus (Duns Scotus Doctrine of Categories and Meaning) (1916). However, the job went to someone else, and in the autumn of 1915 Heidegger began his teaching career at Freiburg as a lecturer. At this time Heidegger was known as a Thomist, but his 1915 dissertation was strongly influenced by the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl. When Husserl joined the Freiburg faculty in the spring of 1916, Heidegger came to know him personally, if not well. Their relation would blossom only after the First World War. Heidegger was drafted in 1918 and served as a weatherman on the Ardennes front in the last three months of the war. When he returned to Freiburg his philosophical career took a decisive turn. In a matter of weeks he announced his break with Catholic philosophy (9 January 1919), got
facticity, and fallingness. The problem of traditional metaphysics is to confuse these two levels by taking being as entity. Heideggers own fundamental ontology is both ontical, that is, the analysis of the actual existence of Dasein, and ontological, that is, the analysis of the general conditions of possibility for existence. This is because Dasein itself is both ontical (as an entity), and ontological (the only entity that can ask the question of Being). In these terms, his thought contrasts with Husserls phenomenology, which brack ets the phenomenon. By indicating Daseins ontico-ontological priority in this provisional manner, we have grounded our demonstration that the question of Being is ontico ontologically distinctive. Heidegger, Being and Time 8 For Heidegger, Dasein exists in relation to three temporal dimensions at once. Its Being is constituted by taking the past with it, by being concerned with the present, and by being the projection of the future. Hence, its Being is necessarily temporal. Temporality makes up the primo rdial meaning of Daseins being. The fundamental structures of Dasein, existentiality, facticity, and fallingness, are modes of the temporalizing of temporality. They respectively correspond to three ecstasis of temporality: the past, the present, and the future.

himself appointed Husserls assistant (21 January), and began lecturing on a radical new approach to philosophy (4 February). Many influences came to bear on Heideggers early development, including St Paul, Augustine, Meister Eckhart, Kierkegaard, Dilthey and Nietzsche. But the major influences were Husserl and Aristotle. Heidegger was Husserls protg in the 1920s, but he never was a faithful disciple. He preferred Husserls early work, Logische Untersuchungen (Logical Investigations) (1900-1), to the exclusion of the masters later developments. Moreover, the things that Heidegger liked about Logical Investigations were generally consonant with the traditional scholastic philosophy he had been taught. Heideggers career entered a new phase when the Nazis came to power in Germany. On 30 January 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor, and within a month the German constitution and allimportant civil rights were suspended. On 23 March Hitler became dictator of Germany, with absolute power to enact laws, and two weeks later, harsh anti-Semitic measures were promulgated. A conservative nationalist and staunch anti-Communist, Heidegger supported Hitlers policies with great enthusiasm for at least one year, and with quieter conviction for some ten years thereafter. He was elected rector (president) of Freiburg University on 21 April 1933 and joined the Nazi Party on May 1, with the motive, he later claimed, of preventing the politicization of the university. In his inaugural address as rector, Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitt (The Self-Assertion of the German University) (27 May 1933), he called for a reorganization of the university along the lines of some aspects of the Nazi revolution. As rector he proved a willing spokesman for, and tool of, Nazi policy both foreign and domestic. Heidegger resigned the rectorate on 23 April 1934 but continued to support Hitler. His remarks in the classroom indicate that he backed the German war aims, as he knew them, until at least as late as the defeat at Stalingrad in January 1943. The relation, or lack of it, between Heideggers philosophy and his political sympathies has long been the subject of heated debate. After the war Heidegger was suspended from teaching because of his Nazi activities in the 1930s. In 1950, however, he was allowed to resume teaching, and thereafter he occasionally lectured at Freiburg University and elsewhere. Between 1950 and his death he published numerous works, including the first volumes of his massive Gesamtausgabe (Collected Edition). He died at his home in Zhringen, Freiburg, on 26 May 1976 and was buried in his home town of Messkirch. His literary remains are held at the German Literary Archives, at Marbach on the Neckar. Heidegger, a Catholic, married Elfride Petri (18931992), a Lutheran, on 21 March 1917. They had two sons, both of whom served in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War and were taken prisoner on the Eastern Front. In February of 1925 Heidegger began a year-long affair with his then student, Hannah Arendt. In February of 1950 they resumed a strong but often stormy friendship that lasted until Arendts death. Being Like Plato and Aristotle, Heidegger particularly emphasizes being as the subject-matter of philosophy. However, the meaning of being for him differs considerably from traditional conceptions. The Western metaphysical tradition has been centered on the question, What is Being?. For Heidegger, the question up to his time not only lacks an answer, but is also obscure and without direction. All traditional approaches to being, Heidegger says, are concerned not with Sein (Being itself), but Seinede (beings). Seinede is translated as existents, entities, beings, or assents, that is, as individual existents or as essential properties. Thus a concern with beings has led to a forgetfulness of Being. The

distinction between Being and entities is prior to the traditional distinction between being as essence and being as existent. Thus we not only lack a proper answer to the meaning of Being, but the question of Being as well is not properly constructed. Traditional metaphysics or ontology since Plato and Aristotle has changed the study of being into the study of entities. Heideggers distinction leads him to reinterpret the history of Western philosophy, in particular to destroy the history of ontology. His Being and Time seeks to provide a disclosure of Being through unlocking what the forgetfulness of Being hides from us. For Heidegger himself, Being is the Being of entities, but it is not itself a kind of entity. Rather it determines entities as entities. He never gives an explicit answer to what Being itself is, but says that this inquiry should proceed through an analysis of an entity that enjoys a privileged relationship with Being in general. This entity is Dasein, the only entity that can question its own existing and raises the question of Being. To distinguish his own philosophy from traditional metaphysics and ontology, he calls his own metaphysics fundamental ontology, that is, philosophy that is concerned with the foundations of any other ontology. The study of Dasein is supposed to be preliminary to understanding Being in general. But Heidegger never finished his work to show how such a general understanding is reached. Indeed, Heideggers original conception of phenomenology cannot be understood apart from his deeper commitment to a question that remained foreign to Husserl, and indeed to much of the history of Western philosophy, according to Heidegger: the question concerning the meaning (Sinn) of being (Sein). Whereas traditional ontology concerns itself with entities, or what is (das Seiende), Heidegger asks what it means for anything to be. He sets out to shed light on the question by investigating phenomenologically our understanding of being, which is constitutive of human beings, which Heidegger calls Dasein (literally being-there). The question of being, then, boils down to the question what do we understand when we understand that and what entities are, including ourselves? The Greek philosophers who preceded Socrates and Plato were, in Heideggers view, pre-metaphysical in so far as they had at least a penumbral awareness of disclosure-as-such and at least named it (Heraclitus, for example, called it logos, althia, and physis). However, none of these thinkers thematically addressed disclosure-as-such or understood the correlative notions of ek-sistence and Dasein. Heidegger calls the penumbral awareness of disclosure-as-such among archaic Greek thinkers the first beginning. And he hoped that a new beginning would follow the end of metaphysics. If the first beginning was not yet metaphysical, the new beginning will be no longer metaphysical. Heidegger considered his own work a preparation for that new beginning. Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word being? Not at all. So it is fitting that we should raise anew the question of the meaning of Being. Heidegger, Being and Time Dasein [German being-there] A crucial term for Heidegger, but it is generally left untranslated. In traditional German philosophy, Dasein is broadly every kind of being or existence, and narrowly the kind of being that belongs to

persons. Heidegger uses the term solely for the modes of human being. Human being must have a place there in the world and must be considered as Being-in-the-world. This Being is a human structure rather than the being of this or that particular man (der Mensch). Heidegger claimed that the meaning of Being is the subject-matter of philosophy. Dasein is the only kind of Being that can raise the question about Being and wonder about itself as existing. By making the understanding of Being possible, it is ontologically distinctive. Rather than being an object of some sort, Dasein is defined as being-in-theworld. By being viewed as a life story unfolding between birth and death, it is associated with the conception of historicity or temporality. For Heidegger, any inquiry about Being must start with the investigation of Dasein. The analysis of Dasein is the inquiry into the conditions for the possibility of understanding Being in general. Instead of being an epistemological study that is concerned with our way of knowing Being, the study is an ontological investigation into what Being is. The study of Dasein, which is the theme of Heideggers Being and Time, constitutes a necessary preliminary to the question of Being in general. The book begins with an examination of the static or formal structure of Dasein, and then discusses its temporal structures. To describe ourselves as Dasein is sharply distinct from the Cartesian view of human beings as an external combination of mind, as an isolated subject, and body. German compound from da (there, here) and sein (to be), thus literally to be there and, as a substan tival infinitive, being there. Heidegger uses it for the entity which each of us himself is and the being of man. He does so for several reasons. Dasein is a neutral term: it does not commit us to viewing man as a biological entity, as consciousness (Bewusstsein, a formation parallel to Dasein), or as essentially rational. Dasein has no determinate essence; its being consists in its possibilities, in what it can make itself be: for Dasein, To be or not to be, that is the question. It is there in the world. Heidegger calls human being Dasein, the entity whose being consists in disclosing and understanding being, whether the being of itself or that of other entities. In so far as Daseins being is a disclosure of its own being, it is called existence or ek-sistence: self-referential standing-out-unto-itself. Daseins very being consists in being related, with understanding and concern, to itself. The nature of Dasein There has been a great deal of argument over exactly what Heidegger means by Dasein. Does he mean the concrete individual human, something like an essence of human nature in general, or perhaps a set of transcendental conditions which make human existence possible? Heidegger himself made use of the term in his lectures in the 1920s. In Being and Time he first introduces Dasein in terms of his discussion of the formal structure of the question of Being: Thus, to work out the question of Being adequately, we must make an entitythe inquirertransparent in his own Being. The very asking of this question is an entitys mode of Being; and as such it gets its essential character from what is inquired aboutnamely, Being. This entity which each of us is himself and which includes inquiring as one of the possibilities of its Being, we shall denote by the term Dasein. (BT 27; 7) Dasein then names human being in so far as it is individualised as myself or someone else and in so far as questioning is its essential mode of relating to Being. Dasein then specifically picks out our individual

possession of our existence and the fact that it is a question for us, a question which concerns the nature of Being as such. Introduced in this manner, Dasein refers to the specific mode of Being of humans, emphasising its individuality and its role in the disclosure of Being. Dasein does not just occur factually like rocks and trees; its Being is an issue for it. But Heidegger does not think our deepest grasp of ourselves comes in some kind of self-reflection of a Cartesian kind; in fact, he thought that concentration on this kind of self-giving can lead existential analysis astray (BT 25, 151; 115). Access to Dasein comes through living out a life. Heidegger then is interested in analysing human existence, but since he thinks the terms German life philosophy has used are shallow and ill-considered, he sets out on his own enquiry into the kind of Being of this Dasein, which he calls his fundamental analysis of Dasein. The aim of this analysis is to show up Dasein as having the fundamental structure of Being-in-the-world, being with things and with others in such a way that its whole existence is structured by care (Sorge). As Heidegger puts it, the existential meaning of Dasein is care (BT 41). In examining the manner of Daseins Being-in-the-world it becomes clear that it is essentially a kind of disclosing of the world. In understanding Dasein as care we seek its structure as falling and facticity. The human questioner always lives with a certain understanding which also includes a projection of certain possibilities: Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existencein terms of a possibility of itself: to be itself or not itself. Dasein has either chosen these possibilities itself or got itself into them, or grown up in them already. (BT 4, 33; 12) Human beings already inhabit a certain understanding of themselves, although this need not necessarily be thematised or made conscious or explicit. It may not be theoretically transparent to the individual Dasein. We dont necessarily know in what way we already understand ourselves. But our very existentiality is already one of understanding. In part what Heidegger is saying here can easily be grasped: I already understand myself and the world by my approach, by my own situationas a twentieth- century middle-aged male, as a young girl, as a poor or rich person, as a teacher or as someone who is unemployed, or whatever. My life presents itself in terms of the set of possibilities which I am. Of course, a lot of the way my life presents itself to me is given by the culture I have grown up in, or is simply carried along by a kind of unquestioned horizon of acceptance. But, as Heidegger here indicates, I can choose certain possibilities for myself. This part of Heideggers analysis was seized on by the existentialists, especially by Sartre, who took from it the view that humans can make themselves who they are by seizing their possibilities, as we shall see in a future chapter. Sartres account, however, is much more action oriented than that of Heidegger, who is really giving a phenomenological description of how we encounter ourselves in our own lives. The etymological sense of the Greek word for truth, aletheia, is unconcealment or unhiddenness. On this ground, Heidegger claims that truth in its most primordial sense is Daseins disclosedness or uncoveredness, that is, Daseins openness to its possibilities. Being true means being uncovered. At this primordial level, untruth is the fallingness of Dasein being closed off. Truth is the basic constitution of Dasein and its existentiale. Heidegger begins with a kind of definition: He says that human reality (= Dasein = being- in-the-world) is being-with (= Mitsein.) The famous slogan is: Dasein ist Mitsein. This is the universal and necessary structure of human being.

Mitsein A central feature of Heideggers Dasein, according to which we are not isolated from other humans, but are so constituted that our being is available in principle to one another even prior to our experience of others. Being-with aims to reject the isolation of the individual in the social world through the constitution of Dasein, in the way that the concept of being-in-the-world rejects the isolation of the individual in the world. Being-with thus seeks to overcome the account of the isolated self in the Cartesian tradition and especially in the works of Husserl. For Heidegger Dasein is not an isolated self, but is absorbed in relationship with others. He also shows that we are always born into a community, and our understandings, tastes, and opinions are formed in that community. Heidegger recognizes that birth takes place in social setting. We do not come into the world by ourselves. We are brought into the world in the context of the community. We are always already with others. It is not true to say that Heidegger ignores the experience of the other or that he privileges the solitary Dasein in his existential analytic in Being and Time. For him, it is part of our most primordial experience of being-in- the-world that we experience it as a world shared with others: the world of Dasein is a with-world (Mitwelt, BT 26, 155; 118), where we relate to others. Even when we encounter things in our practical concerns, we encounter them in a world already humanised. The hammer is encountered according to a set of concerns which I share with others, which take their meaning from relations with others. Others are encountered as belonging to the environment. Heidegger points out that we should not immediately assume that when we talk of others we are opposing everyone else to myself. There are lots of occasions when I too am included in this they (BT 26, 154; 118). Furthermore, the claim is not simply the factual claim that there are other human beings besides me, for Heidegger being-with-others is an a priori existential category of Dasein even if no others exist at all (BT 26, 156; 120). In that case, others are experienced as missing. The manner of our relation to others is best understood under the notion of care (Sorge). Heidegger wants to identify the basic category of beingwith-others in the world and then see how this is actually filled out in different situations, such as in caring for others in a charity situation, for instance. There is a kind of being-with where we will fill in or leap in for the other. However, it is true that Heideggers account of our connection with others in Being and Time largely stresses that we encounter them in the domain of the public, in idle talk. Thus Heidegger says that Idle talk is the kind of Being that belongs to Being-with-one-another itself (BT 38, 221; 177). There is a tendency is his analysis to oppose the authenticity and wholeness of the individual to the manner in which we fall into the public and into the common. Heideggers communal vision, however, is developed in the second half of the published part of Being and Time. Here he talks about the manner in which humans live in communities and that there is a need in individuals to pattern their lives by choosing a hero (BT 74, 437; 385) and following the path opened up by the hero. This account of communal life has come under scrutiny recently as to whether it is a blueprint for political quietism at the very least or perhaps even worse, in that it provided a model of political life which left Heidegger openeven enthusiastic about the heroic, people-leading qualities of Hitler and the Nazis. At the heart of Heideggers analysis in Being and Time is the temporal dimensions of human living. Dasein is primarily historical (BT 73, 433; 381). We are thrown into history and can experience this as a kind of fateful acceptance, repeating what is handed down in the tradition, or we can try to achieve a

moment of resoluteness, projecting ourselves into possibilities. Heidegger ends the book with some rather scattered meditations on the way in which various philosophical conceptions of time, including those found in Aristotle, St Augustine, and Hegel, all develop from partial insights into human historicality and temporality in its fundamental sense. Unfortunately, Heideggers fascinating reflections on the nature of history and the meaning of time are beyond the scope of this discussion. Being-in-the-world, the world is always the one that I share with Others. The world of Dasein is a withworld [Mitwelt]. Being-in is being-with Others . . . Heidegger, Being and Time Being-in-the-world [German In-der-Welt-sein] A central term in Heideggers Being and Time. To say that Dasein is being-inthe-world does not mean that Dasein is spatially contained in the world. The world here does not mean the universe or the connections of real things, but is an existential-ontological concept, referring to the historical and cultural contexts in which Dasein exists or is formed. This world is not external, but belongs to Daseins own structure. Dasein, as Being-there, must have a place. Being-in-the-world is the basic state or the fundamental existential constitution of Dasein. It is a unitary phenomenon. By this term Heidegger indicated the inseparability of human being from the world and was thus opposed to the traditional approach to a human being an isolated agency. The structure of Being-in-the-world is characterized by care, and is revealed by existential analysis. In the preparatory stage of the existential analytic of Dasein, we have for our leading theme this entitys basic state, Being-in-the-world. Heidegger, Being and Time Being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein) is, for Heidegger, the determining character or basic state of *Dasein (the kind of being which humans have). The hyphens signal that it is a unitary phenomenon, for world (human) being and the relation of being-in are only provisionally distinguishable. Human beings cannot be understood apart from a world that, in turn, is intelligible only as what they are in. The world, in this primary sense, is not the spatio-temporal one of physics, but a totality of significance which we are in, not as peas in a pod, but as meaningfully and practically engaged with. (Compare Hes in the world of motor-racing.) Heideggers term world does not mean planet earth, or the vast expanse of space and time, or the sum total of things in existence. Rather, world means a dynamic set of relations, ultimately ordered to human possibilities, which lends meaning or significance to the things that one deals with - as in the phrase the world of the artist or the world of the carpenter. A human being lives in many such worlds, and they often overlap, but what constitutes their essence - what Heidegger calls the worldhood of all such worlds - is the significance that accrues to things by their relatedness to human interests and possibilities. Although being-in and world can be distinguished, they never occur separately. Any set of meaning-giving relations (world) comes about and remains effective only in so far as human being is engaged with the apposite possibilities (being-in). Being-in holds open and sustains the world. Authentic and Inauthetic Existence Authenticity

[German Eigentlichkeit, from eigen, own, literally, my ownness, what is mine] -Authentic (eigentlich) is one of Heideggers favorite words, and it occurs throughout Being and Time in both technical and non-technical senses. -When it functions as a technical term, by contrast, the word plays two very differ- ent roles in Being and Time, one evaluative and the other not, though regrettably Heidegger conflates the two throughout. On the one hand, the word eigentlich is cognate with eigen, which means own, proper, peculiar. What is eigentlich, then, is what is most Daseins own, what is most proper or peculiar to it. Indeed, one of the archaic senses of the English word authentic, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is precisely belonging to himself, own, proper. Thus Chapmans Iliad and Miltons Eikonoklastes have Nestor and Justice wielding and putting their authentic that is, their own swords here and there, to various purposes. The point was not that the swords were not forgeries, or unreal, but that they were not someone elses. Words like proper and peculiar similarly refer to what is authentic to something, what is its own, yet carry unmistakable evaluative content, just as strange can mean either otheror wrong. One could accordingly translate Eigentlichkeit as ownedness. -Heideggers response to this dilemma is in effect to change the subject in a subtle but profound way by replacing the very idea of human existence understood as a unified whole with a concrete phenomenological account of Dasein owning up wholly that is, wholeheartedly to itself in its existence. To own up to oneself in ones existence is to exist authentically. Anxiety, the feeling arising from our sense of freedom (Sartre), reveals to us that each person is uniquely himself or herself and no one else. According to Heidegger, each of us has our own potentialities to fulfill and has to face our death on our own. If, as Heideggerian Dasein, one has a resolute attitude in facing this lonely condition and holds a responsible position toward ones uniqueness and individuality, that person is said to lead an authentic existence and to be aware of what this condition means. Authenticity holds onto both the future and the past and provides a constancy of the self. It also requires Dasein to accept its own death. Indeed, Heidegger claims that the real authentic self is revealed when one encounters ones own death. In authenticity, I always comes first, although this I is not a Subject. If one is led by anxiety to protect oneself through absorption into the mass and the anonymous they, as people generally do, then that person leads an inauthentic existence. In inauthenticity, they comes first, and ones own existence is lost. This attitude is what Heidegger calls Daseins fallingness, that is, Daseins turning away from itself and allowing itself to be engrossed in day-to-day preoccupations and to drift along with trends of the crowd. As modes of Being, authenticity and inauthenticity (these expressions have been chosen terminologically in a strict sense) are both grounded in the fact that any Dasein whatsoever is characterized by mineness. Heidegger, Being and Time Heidegger notes that existing in-the-world means existing alongside others. Without them to structure and create the worlds you can live in, you couldnt exist in a meaningful way. The They, or the faceless masses or others, make human life

possible. Without Them, youre nothing. Of course, its easy to lose this point because Heidegger also thinks that we get lost and entangled in our worldly immersion and thus living an inauthentic existence, and he thinks we also have to be capable of understanding our existence in a way not defined by the They, that is to live an authentic existence. Authenticity. The condition of those, according to Heidegger, who understand the existential structure of their lives. Heidegger held that each of us acquires an identity from our situationour family, culture, etc. Usually we just absorb this identity uncritically, but to let ones values and goals remain fixed without critical reflection on them is inauthentic. The authentic individual, who has been aroused from everyday concerns by Angst, takes responsibility for their life and thereby chooses their own identity. But Heidegger also holds that some degree of inauthenticity is unavoidable: the critical assessment of values presupposes an uncritical acceptance of them, and the practical necessities of life give a priority to unreflective action over critical deliberation. So, as Heidegger makes clear, authenticity is like Christian salvation: a state which fallen individuals cannot guarantee by their own efforts. M. Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. J. MacQuarrie and E. Robinson (Oxford, 1962), sects. 38, 41, 616. Heidegger also maintains that our understanding of entities is mediated by an anonymous social normativity, which he calls the one (das Man), a term alluding to everyday locutions describing and prescribing what is proper, that is, what one does. Heidegger maintains that das Man is a primitive existential structure of being-in-the- world, but he also associates it with Daseins tendency to lapse into an inauthentic or disowned (uneigentlich) mode of existence, in which we fail to come to grips with the concrete particularity and finitude of our individual existence. To exist authentically, by contrast, is to recognize the groundlessness of ones being and to anticipate ones eventual death in a mood of anxiety (Angst), but with an attitude of openness and resolve (Entschlossenheit). Although the They are necessary to our existence, we must not forget that part of what being-in-theworld means is to maintain a sense of self apart from Them. We dont need to get lost in the world of Them. Can you be authentic? Is conformity your fate? Heidegger seems to stress that without a background of conformity, you as an individual couldnt really exist. Still, authenticity is possible if you can succeed in living in-the-world in a way that discloses what you are fully, and part of what you are is an individual. On the other hand, inauthentic people hide what theyre capable of by happily living in a contented way as part of the They. Heidegger maintains that Dasein not only encounters others in the world, Dasein is absorbed in the world of these others. He says, we are absorbed in the they. For Heidegger, the being of the human being is always a being which is a being- with others: Dasein, being-there, is always Mitda-sein, being-there with. These others, with whom a person exists, are neither objects, nor facades behind which one must infer an human intentionality just like ones own, nor tools. They are completely different from tools and things. 164 Rather, they are beings who have the being of human beingsthey are beings who exist, or whose being is care. The others are like the very Da-sein which frees [discloses] themthey are there too, and there with it. 165 On the other hand, these others do not compose a group of distinct individuals. These others are distinct only in their indistinction: they mesh together into a crowd in which no one is distinct from any one else. In this

crowd, *e+veryone is the other, and no one is himself. The they *das Man+ is the nobody 166 Beingwith others, a person is with das Man, the impersonal crowd. i. Authenticity and the They As we become initiated into the practices of our community, we are inclined to drift along with the crowd, doing what one does, enacting stereotyped roles, and thereby losing our ability to seize on and define our lives. In inauthenticity, they comes first, and ones own existence is lost. This attitude is what Heidegger calls Daseins falleness, that is, Daseins turning away from itself and allowing itself to be engrossed in day-to-day preoccupations and to drift along with trends of the crowd. Falling is the term that Heidegger uses to describe the entanglement of Dasein in the superficialness of the they. Authenticity is through living in a self-determining way rather than following the crowd. To be authentic is to clear-sightedly face up to ones responsibility. The they knows only the rules and public norms and it therefore deprives the particular Dasein of its responsibility for what it does (BT 165, 334). To be authentic is to decidedly make a choice to do something as ones own and not dictated by the they. The marriage can illustrate this point. Perhaps those who are marrying are simply caught up in the they. They are caught up in the idle chatter that surrounds romantic love. It is also possible that being caught up in the they in the social pressure to marry, inauthentic aspects of the social institution itself. They end up perpetuating social practices that keep individuals from being authentic and that also keep communities from authentic traditions. In inauthenticity Dasein is under the control of what Heidegger calls, Das man or the they. It is a kind of existence where Dasein simply follow what the they prescribes. Dasein is succumbed to follow the they. Instead of drifting along with the crowd and doing what the they do, you can become authentic and resolutely face up to the task of realizing your life story in a way that is truly your own. Heidegger claimed that the individual man has fallen into the they. That is why man has to stand out from his falleness into the they so that man can soar up and make his existence his own. So when Dasein relates himself to others, he must see to it that he is himself. Man has to establish a relation with others, but not that he has to depend on others in terms of realizing his existence. Authentic existence is an existence wherein one is not under the control of the they, it is an act of owning ones existence. The moment Dasein realized he is a finite being and his existence is own by the others or the they, and Daseins resoluteness or decidedness to own that existence is authenticity. Resoluteness is the firm result of Dasein to make himself authentic. It is the firm resolve to free yourself from the they. To own up to one self in ones existence is to exist authentically. ii. Sensing others all around you Heidegger thinks that one of the essential components of your existence lies in the fact that youre what he calls being-with. What Heidegger means by this is that existing in-the-world means also existing alongside other entities just like you. Youre with them in the very way that you go about living your life, engaging with your daily existence, taking on roles, and working with tools. Simply by being-in-theworld, youre always sensing the existence of others in what you do. You make houses for them with the

hammers they build. The electricity in your own house tells you that they are still at the job. At the end of your property lies the boundary with the others. In short, engaging with your experience in a meaningful way demands that you sense them. In fact, even when youre physically alone, youre never by yourself. For human beings, existing at all always points to their presence. Youre never really alone, even when theres no one actually around. According to Heidegger, being inauthentic is perfectly natural. Its where you start. Never forget the social character of what you are. Without a social environment that makes the meaningful character of human life possible, you couldnt exist in a significant fashion. However, we must not forget to strive for authentic existence. Yet, as is well known, there is also another side of Being and Time that seems to point toward a quite different picture of our being as humans. This other perspective, which later became central to existentialism, focuses on Heideggers concept of authenticity as a possible way of being for Dasein. Thanks to the writings of existentialists and pop psychologists during the last century, we have come to think of authenticity as a matter of getting in touch with and expressing our unique being as individual selves, and this conception suggests that each of us has a substantial self we can access and express. Such a conception of humans as individual selves seems to draw support from Being and Time. We are told, for instance, that Dasein has to be addressed with a personal pronoun (e.g., I am, you are), because Daseins being is characterized by in each case mineness (Jemeinigkeit). And we find frequent references to an authentic Selfthat is said to underlie and make possible all the various ways of being that are possible for Dasein. Heidegger even goes so far as to say that being a They-self in our everyday practical lives is only an existentiell *that is, particular, specialized+ modification of the authentic Self (317) As the description of everyday agency unfolds, we find that proximally, it is not I, in the sense of my own Self, that am, but rather the Others, whose way is that of the They (167). Seen from this standpoint, Heidegger can conclude that authentic being- ones-Self [is] an existentiell modification of the They-of the They as an essential existentiale ( 168). The everyday practical lifeworld is also always a shared, social world. As we are engaged in our ordinary involvements, we act according to the norms and conventions of the common world in such a way that there is no sharp distinction to be made between ourselves and others. The public world is the medium through which we first find ourselves and become agents. Heidegger says that this common world, which is there primarily and into which every maturing Dasein first grows,. . . Governs every interpretation of the world and of Dasein. Even working alone in a cubicle involves being attuned to the pat- terns and regularities that make possible the coordination of public life. It follows that in our dayto-day lives we are not so much centers of experience and action as we are the They or the one (das Man) as this is defined by our culture. We find ourselves first and foremost as crossing-points or placeholders in familiar public contexts. This social mode of being is itself a product of history. As Heidegger says, Whatever the way of being it may have at the time, and thus with whatever understanding of being it might possess, Dasein has grown up both into and in a traditional way of interpreting itself in terms of this it understands itself proximally and, within a certain range, constantly. By this understanding, the possibilities of its being are disclosed and regulated.

Since our possibilities of understanding and self-evaluation are all drawn from the ongoing flow of our shared historical context, our own identity as agents is something that arises from, and only makes sense in relation to, our cultures history. In this sense we are all, at the most basic level, placeholders in the ways of understanding and acting opened up and sustained by the They. In Heideggers view, being a Self is an accomplishment rather than a given. Selfhood is something we have to do rather than something we find. We can get clearer about the concept of the authentic Self by focusing on the account of Daseins most basic essential structure, understanding. Heidegger defines Daseins understanding as a self-projective being toward its ownmost ability-to-be (236). This definition brings together some of the key notions built into Heideggers conception of human existence. It suggests, first of all, that each of us has a life lying before us as something we can and will be. Second, the definition of understanding tells us that, in each of our actions, we are taking some stand on the life we have to live. Even a seemingly trivial action can be a self-definition to the extent that it undertakes a commitment concerning the sort of person I am becoming in my life as a whole-for example, being a punctual person, being a lifelong bachelor, or being a careless driver, In projecting ourselves into the future in our involvements, our existence is essentially futural. It is because Dasein exists as a bringing itself to fruition (sich zeitigen) that temporality (Zeitlichkeit) characterizes its being. Finally, to say that we exist as selfprojections is to say that our own choices at any moment are defining us as beings of a certain sort. We are, for this reason, self-making or self-constituting beings; we just are what we make of ourselves in the course of living out our lives. This is what Heidegger means when he says that the essence of *Dasein+ is existence Heidegger distinguishes two basic orientations a self-projection can have. Dasein can understand itself primarily in terms of the world and others, a form of projection in which one is dispersed and lost in the whirlwind of daily involvements. Or Dasein can disclose itself to itself in and as its own-most abilityto-be (264). This second form of projection is called authentic disclosedness, and it is described as a form of projection that shows the phenomenon of the most primordial truth. In Heideggers words, The most primordial, and indeed the most authentic disclosedness in which Dasein, as an ability-to-be can be, is the truth of existence (264). As this description makes clear, authentic and primordial truth, the truth of existence, just is what is dis- closed in Daseins disclosive projection when it is projected toward its own- most ability-to-be. Our account so far has shown that the authentic Self, understood as Daseins ownmost ability-to-be, only gains its specific content or filling as being-in-theworld by taking up and incorporating concrete possibilities of self-interpretation. But, as we have seen, the concrete possibilities of self-understanding we can take over in being-in-the-world all come from the They. For the most part in our everyday lives, we are dispersed into They-possibilities, doing what one does as anyone might do such things. Being a They-self in this way promotes a mode of existence Heidegger calls inauthentic. The German word for authentic, eigentlich, comes from the stem eigen which means own, so an inau- thentic life would be one that is unowned or disowned. As inauthentic, my life is not my own but rather that of the They. Such a life is characterized by falling, fleeing, and forgetting; it is a life in which one is blind to ones ownmost ability-to-be and to the possibility of realizing what, as an authentic Self, one truly is. Drifting with the flow of the latest fads and preoccupations, an inauthentic life is fragmented and disjointed, lacking any cohesiveness or focus.

In the same way, Heidegger says that we can get the whole of Dasein into our phenomenological view only if we grasp it as it is from its beginning to its end. That is, we must be able to understand Dasein as it is between birth and death (276). But this formulation seems to suggest that we can grasp Daseins being only when it has actually become a whole-that is, when its life has run its course and it has reached death. And this surely would be absurd, for it would mean that Daseins being is intelligible only when it is no longer, that is, when its being has terminated and Dasein no longer is. To avoid this absurdity, Heidegger suggests that we think of death not as an impending event, but as a way of being of Dasein. What is at issue in the notion of death is not the idea of Daseins being at its end, but rather Daseins being toward-its-end in a way that imparts continuity and wholeness to its being. In Being and Time, authentic existence is described in terms of the idea of anticipatory resoluteness. Each of the two components of this conception of authenticity, anticipation and resoluteness, contributes to making visible the wholeness and unity of Daseins being. The first, anticipation, makes manifest the wholeness of Dasein in the specific way of anticipating or, more literally, running forward toward death. In Heideggers use, the term death refers to the fact that, as finite beings, our lives are going somewhere or are adding up to something as a whole. Daseins being is fundamentally futural to the extent that it is always already under way toward making something of its life as a totality. Whether we realize it or not, each of us exists as a movement directed toward the fulfillment of an entire life. The conception of life as being-toward- the-end means that our lives are moving toward achieving some configuration of meaning as a whole-some Gestalt or, as Heidegger calls it later, some morphi-and that the overall shape our lives take is at issue for us. Authentic running-forward toward this totality consists in projecting oneself toward ones being-a-whole in a way that imparts coherence, continuity, and cohesiveness to ones life. Such a life has what Heidegger calls constancy and steadiness. Only in a focused, clear-sighted pressing forward into the whole of its life can Dasein fully realize its being toward-the-end and so show up as a whole. The second component of authentic existence, resoluteness9, brings to light both the wholeness and the unity of Daseins being. The concept of resoluteness presupposes the notion of being simplified. Since Daseins lack of unity and wholeness in everydayness results from its being dispersed and strewn out over an endless multiplicity of possibilities which offer themselves as closest to one (453), Heidegger says that the mode of disclosure in which Dasein brings itself before itself must be such that in it Dasein becomes accessible as simplified in a certain manner (226). This simplifying is achieved when Dasein pulls itself back from its forgetful dispersal in the world and makes a resolute commitment to something that gives its life a defining content. As resolute, Heidegger says, Dasein gives itself the current factical Situation (355) with a degree of clarity and focus that is lacking in average everydayness. In such a resolute commitment, Dasein overcomes its uprootedness and groundlessness by becoming its own ground, and it thereby achieves the constancy (Stiindigkeit) of having taken a stand (369). Taking an authentic stand on ones Situation makes it possible to fully realize what one is as an abilityto- be-as Heidegger says, Dasein becomes essentially Dasein *only+ in. . . Authentic existence (370).
9

Heideggers description of resoluteness does not always sound particularly Aristotelian, since he ties it to his own somewhat idiosyncratic notion of guilt (Schuld). Resoluteness means letting oneself be called forth to ones ownmost (eigenste) being-guilty. The word Entschlossenheitmeans decisiveness or resolve, but it also literally means unclosing, or disclosing, which is to say remaining open.

Or, as he puts it later, resolute commitment is an explicit self-choice (ausdriicklichen Sichselbstwiihlen) which involves a constantly repeated and complete self-commitment to what Dasein already always is (MFL 190). Through resoluteness and repetition, Dasein devotes itself in a coherent, simplified way to what is world-historical in its current Situation (442). Anticipatory resoluteness pulls Dasein away from its entanglement in beings and brings Dasein back to its ownmost ability-to-be-a-Self (354). Indeed, it is only in resoluteness that one becomes a Self--that is, has an identity in the fullest sense of that word.I2 It is in this sense that resoluteness constitutes the primordial truth of existence (355). What this means is that, when one is resolute, one no longer simply intends Daseins basic structures in an empty, formal way. Instead, in actually living out what is projected in the fore-having of ones structures of being, what is projected in the formal indication is now given content and fulfilled. Resoluteness realizes Daseins being as a unified temporal unfolding and so brings its being-a-whole into a concrete form for the first time. Resolute disclosure is the primordial truth of existence, because what is to be discovered in such a disclosure is nothing other than the disclosure itself. This seems to be what Heidegger means when he says that, in resoluteness, Dasein is revealed . . . in such a way that Dasein is this revealing and being-revealed (355). One has become the very thing one hoped to find in this search for the truth about the being of Dasein. Since there is, in this case, a perfect coincidence of knowing and what is to be known, Heidegger says that in resoluteness, ones ability-to-be becomes authentic and wholly transparent (354). But the hortatory tone of Division I1 of Heideggers greatest work makes it clear that Heidegger also regards an authentic existence as one that is higher and more fulfilling than inauthentic everydayness. As we saw, the German word for authenticity comes from the stem meaning own, and it suggests that an authentic existence is one that is owned up to in a unique way. In- stead of drifting aimlessly into various They roles and doing what one does, authentic Dasein seizes on its mineness and lives in a way that takes over the decisions it is already making as a participant in the They. Heidegger says that authenticity is a matter of choosing to choose, that is, of making ones choices ones own and so being answerable or responsible (verant wortlich) for ones life (313, 334). What makes it possible for us to take ownership of our own lives is the experience of anxiety. In anxiety, according to Heidegger, we are faced with the ultimate contingency of the They-possibilities we pick up from the public world. Anxiety brings us face-to-face with our being-toward-death, with the fact that we exist as a task of making something of our lives as a whole. Facing up to our existence as finite projections, we see that each of our actions contributes to composing our life stories as a whole. Confronting death can lead you to see the weightiness of your own existence. Recognizing that not everything is possible, you see that it is up to you to decide what form your life is taking and will take overall. To take a stand on your own death, then, is to live in such a way that, in each of your actions, you express a lucid understanding of where your life is going-of how things are adding up as a whole. A life lived in this way becomes simplified, focused, and coherent in its future-directedness: As Heidegger says, one is liberated from ones lostness in those possibilities which may accidentally thrust themselves upon one; and one is liberated in such a way that for the first time one can authentically understand and choose among those factical possibilities lying before ones death (308). Facing death,

and recognizing the ultimate contingency of the ways of living made accessible by the They, we are able to see possibilities as possibilities, something we choose, and we see our lives as something we are defining through our choices. It should be obvious that this conception of authenticity has nothing to do with getting in touch with some inner reality. Instead, authenticity is a matter of living in such a way that your life has cumulativeness, purposiveness, and wholeheartedness. By achieving a sober understanding of what are factically the basic possibilities for Dasein (358), you can focus on what is truly worth pursuing in your life. Only through such a decisive appropriation of possibilities does Dasein first become individuated and so a true Self. Heidegger emphasizes the fact that authenticity does not detach us from everyday social existence. The authentic individual is deeply implicated in and obligated to the historical context in which he or she lives. But becoming authentic does transform the way we live in the world. In our ordinary lives, our actions generally have an instrumentalist means ends structure. We do things in order to win the rewards that come from having performed in a socially acceptable way. These rewards are thought of as something external to the action itself, for example, the cocktail at the end of the day, the two-week vacation each year, a comfortable retirement in later years. Given such a mean ends orientation to life, we tend to live as strategic calculators, trying to figure out the most cost-efficient means to obtaining the ends we desire. In contrast, the authentic individual experiences actions as contributing to the formation of a life as a whole. Life then has a constituent/whole structure: I act for the sake of being a person of a particular sort, and I experience my actions as constituents of a life that I am realizing in all I do. In this sort of life, the ends of acting are not external rewards that might be obtained in some way other than by performing this action. They are instead internal to the action and hence define the meaning of that action. Thus, although both the means/ends and constituent/whole styles of life may consist in the same actions, there is an important qualitative difference in the actions themselves. There is an obvious difference between helping others in order to feel good and helping others for the sake of being a caring, decent person. And there is an important difference between telling someone the truth in order to gain her trust and telling the truth as part of being a truthful person. In each example, the action is the same, but the quality of life expressed in the action is different. In the authentic way of living, I take responsibility for the character I am forming through my actions, and I assume my identity by being answerable for the kind of person I am. The concept of authenticity therefore provides the basis for making sense of the connectedness, continuity, and coherence of life. The integrity of a life history-its self amenes+is grounded not in some enduring substance, but in what we do in the world. Acting is a matter of resolutely drawing on the pool of possibilities opened by ones culture and remaining firm and whole- hearted in ones commitments. Such a life has a narrative structure. Just as a narrative gains its meaning from the direction the course of events is taking as a whole, so an authentic life gains its meaning from the way the events and actions are focused on realizing something as a totality. In Heideggers view, it is only by living in this way that one can be an individual or a Self. - For Heidegger, the authentic person possesses the autonomy of being able to anticipate making independent choices. But the anticipation of this ability primarily involves a resistance to following the prescriptions of das Man, the impersonal crowd. In order to anticipate this ability, a person only needs

to resist the prescription, by the impersonal crowd, of that and what he chooses. According to Steven Crowell, therefore, in Being and Time [t]he kind of subject who can be an agent while being absorbed in the world is a self whose identity is normatively achieved not by overcoming the passivity in its nature in order to constitute itself as a unified person, but rather by overcoming its anonymity to take responsibility for its own self as a task. - For this common interpretation, which I will call the conformity interpretation, the inauthentic person is anonymous because the inauthentic person conforms his abilities and understanding to the kind of abilities and understanding characteristic of what Heidegger calls das Man, the one, the they, or, more straightforwardly (and the formulation I will use in the following), the impersonal crowd. The kinds of abilities that the inauthentic person understands and chooses, and the very fact that the inauthentic person makes choices at all, is determined by the impersonal crowd. The impersonal crowd exercises a dictatorship (Diktatur) 162 over the life of the inauthentic person, who, as a result, is anonymous. - Immersed in the social world, I do not own myself, but rather am, in Heideggers language, dispersed in the public. Heidegger contrasts such dispersal with self-ownership, ownedness *authenticity+ - for Heidegger, conformity to the impersonal crowd not only prevents a person from choosing abilities that are outside of what is merely average; conformity to the impersonal crowd also prevents a person from making choices itself. Not only does the impersonal crowd prescribe the specific abilities that a person will possess; the impersonal crowd also prescribes the very fact that an individual will choose these abilities. The impersonal crowd, Heidegger suggests, disburdens a person of the faculty of individual choice. Disburdening results in a kind of general moral impotence, and even in a kind of moral force. An individual, whose autonomy has been ceded to the impersonal crowd, cannot find any individual power of choice in himself. However, the members of the impersonal crowd, who constantly refer responsibility to one another, cannot find the power of choice in themselves, either. Everyone is anonymous, because what would constitute each persons individualitythat a person can make individual choicesis passed around like a hot-potato, until, through wear, it crumbles into nothing. Even more, the inauthentic person follows the average norms of the impersonal crowd, and therefore is not, in any way, unique. And the inauthentic person is disburdened of any autonomy, and therefore does not have an individual power of choice. -In our ordinary everydayness we simply pass information along, not getting wrapped up in it, and our speech is merely idle talk (Gerede) like commenting on the latest disaster on the news without really taking the time to experience the event authentically. In this everyday mood, we are not really ourselves at all, we are simply the same as everyone else; we are in the state of das Man or the one, anyone. This is for Heidegger an inauthentic state but we have to be careful how we understand this. Being inauthentic does not mean being morally bad (as Sartre would later interpret it). Indeed in order to be authentic we must first of all be inauthentic. These are necessary modes of Dasein according to Heidegger. In our everyday mood we are absorbed in the world, caught up in our tasks; we dont reflect on who we are, we are thrown (Geworfen). We are also peculiarly constructed so that we actually run away from facing up to aspects of our existence. This structural feature of running away Heidegger calls

falling. Falling means getting caught up in the public self, so that we no longer have proper access to our authentic sense of our lives. Death The experience of death has been a chief concern for existentialism. In Heideggers analysis of Dasein, death reveals the terrible temporality of our existence. In this revelation, he claimed, we find the ground of our authentic existence. Everyone dies his or her own death. As an experience entirely of ones own, death cannot be shared. This experience makes one focus on ones finitude, on ones uniqueness and on ones determinate self. The analysis of death is not only the ground of authenticity and freedom, but also the ground for the totality of Dasein. A total perspective of Dasein can only be reached when one is dead. This complete account is not possible until my death actually takes place. But we may provide an account of the required sort from the first-person standpoint by being aware that I am going to die. Death is hence characterized as Being-towards-the-end. This Being is the way one comports oneself in pondering when and how this possibility of death may be actualized. It has been widely proposed that the finitude imposed by death is part of what gives life meaning and that an immortal life is morally meaningless. Death reveals itself as that possibility which is ones ownmost, which is non-relational, and which is not to be outstripped. Heidegger, Being and Time The ultimate possibility into which one lives is the possibility to end all possibilities: ones death. Human beings are essentially finite and necessarily mortal, and so ones becoming is an anticipation of death. Thus, to know oneself as becoming is to know oneself, at least implicitly, as mortal. Heidegger calls this mortal becoming being-unto-death. Awareness of ones finitude. Human being is always already the process of mortal becoming. However, one is usually so absorbed in the things one encounters (fallenness) that one forgets the becoming that makes such encounters possible. It takes a peculiar kind of experience, more of a mood than a detached cognition, to wake one up to ones finitude. Heidegger argues that such an awakening comes about in special basic moods (dread, boredom, wonder and so on) in which one experiences not things but that which is not-a-thing or no-thing. Each of these basic moods reveals, in its own particular way, the absential dimension of ones pres-abs-ence. Heidegger often uses charged metaphors to discuss this experience. For example, he describes dread as a call of conscience, where conscience means not a moral faculty but the heretofore dormant, and now awakening, awareness of ones finite nature. What this call of conscience reveals is that one is guilty, not of some moral fault but of an ontological defect: the fact of being intrinsically incomplete and on the way to absence. The call of conscience is a call to understand and accept this guilt. Choosing ones finitude. One may choose either to heed or to ignore this call of conscience. To heed and accept it means to acknowledge oneself as a mortal process of presabsence and to live accordingly. In that case, one recuperates ones essence and thus attains authenticity by becoming ones proper (or authentic) self. To ignore or refuse the call does not mean to cease being finite and mortal but rather to live according to an improper (inauthentic or fallen) self-

understanding. Only the proper or authentic understanding of oneself as finite admits one to the concrete, experiential understanding that all forms of being, all ways that things can be meaningfully present, are themselves finite. Some existentialists, such as Martin Heidegger, do think facing death is extremely important if you hope to live an authentic life. Death reveals to man that he is a finite being which causes to anxiety and results to decidedness or resoluteness that man has to own or to take direction of his own life. Heidegger says that death limits and determines Daseins possibilities. If we are to understand ourselves, we must grasp our mortality. But as long as Dasein is, death is still outside of or beyond it. As long as we are alive, we are projecting possibilities for ourselves. Even though we are aware that we are mortal, or at least become aware of this the older we become, we continue to think of the future. We plan what we will do this afternoon, tomorrow, next week, and next year. As Heidegger has pointed out, we are always ahead of ourselves. One possibility is that Dasein can observe the death of others. Certainly much can be learned by observing the death of another person. When we watch another person die, we observe a transition from one kind of being to another. But we can never experience anothers death. Heidegger think that a meaningful, authentic life requires an embrace of your own mortality. Heidegger agrees that although you cant know the actual event of your death, you can face up to the awareness that your end is an inevitable part of your future. This means recognizing that death is a possibility for you at each moment. Thus, authentic living is living toward death, actively embracing the fact that the death is always right up ahead. That, is anticipating death. Authentically embracing death doesnt mean waiting for the event to occur; it means running toward it. Anticipation is the authentic attitude towards death. If we anticipate death, we face ourselves authentically. Heidegger says that we can live our lives with freedom towards death. (BT 266) Anticipation10 is an existential attitude towards ones death and the future. Heidegger distinguished anticipation from expectation. In the face of death, that is, in confronting that ones existence is limited and finite, expectation seeks a secure and stable relationship with other human beings and the world of the they, forgetting ones past and passively awaiting the occurrence of death. Anticipation, on the other hand, views death as revealing ones uttermost possibility and seeks the meaning of what lies ahead. In anticipation Dasein finds itself moving toward itself as its own most potentiality-for-Being.

10

[German Vorlaufen, an existential attitude towards ones death and the future+ Heidegger distinguished anticipation from expectation *German, Erwarten+. In the face of death, that is, in confronting that ones existence is limited and finite, expectation seeks a secure and stable relationship with other human beings and the world of the they, forgetting ones past and passively awaiting the occurrence of death. Anticipation, on the other hand, views death as revealing ones uttermost possibility and seeks the meaning of w hat lies ahead. In anticipation Dasein finds itself moving toward itself as its own most potentiality-for-Being. It faces up to ones past. Rather than maintaining or continuing the process already dominant in the past and present, anticipation contains the possibility of drastic changes in ones future life. While the authentic future is called anticipation, the authentic present is called moment-of-vision, and the authentic past is called repetition. Anticipation turns out to be the possibility of understanding ones own most and uttermost potentiality -for-Being that is to say, the possibility of authentic existence. Heidegger, Being and Time

Anticipation does not release us from our finitude and mortality, but it does release us from the illusions that take place in the they. In the everyday mode of being, Das ein interprets the phenomenon of death as an event constantly occurring in the world. It is a case that happens to others. The general comment is One of these days one will die too, in the end; but right now it has nothing to do with us. Dying remains anonymous and it has no connection with the I. In our everyday lives death is usually concealed. According to Heidegger Daseins tendency to become lost in the they can result in Daseins trying to avoid death by concealing it. Contemporary activities in relation to death exemplify this. We seldom say that someone died. Instead we say that a person passed or indicate that the person has gone somewhere such as heaven, or to be with God or someone who has died before. We also assure people, even those we know are dying, that they have a long time to live. This freedom is sometimes seen in people who have had near-death experiences or who have been deeply touched by the death of someone else. As they recognize their own mortality, they are freed to enjoy the present. They may try things they have never tried before. They may give opinions that earlier they would have held back because they were too caught up in what others would think. We say that they have accepted death. But this acceptance does not make them morbid or depressed. In the light of death, each moment is valued and each decision is viewed in its appropriate significance. Only by taking the bull by the horns and taking an active stance on death can you live a life thats truly yours. Odd as it may sound, you have to learn to make death into a way to live. However, Heidegger isnt advocating suicide. Running toward death doesnt mean youre seeking it out or trying to make it more likely in the near future. Instead, it means pushing into the future, or choosing among your possibilities while keeping in view the fact that one of those possibilities is always that youll die. You acknowledge that the possibility of your own impossibility, or the fact that one day your possibilities will end, is always present now; you live with it, so its not a distant, future event. If you can seriously do that, Heidegger thinks, death may well have a serious impact on the way you live. For Heidegger, however, its neither dying nor the actual event of death that he thinks you need to face up to. Instead, whats central to living authentically is facing up to what the event implies: One day, you wont be around. If you think about it, its a curious fact that only human beings are capable of realizing this aspect of their finitude (the fact that theyll one day end). Being-towards-death simply means never losing sight of your future finitude; it means letting that awareness affect the way you live your life. Heidegger puts it this way: Death is a possibility o f being that Dasein always has to take upon itself. With death, Dasein stands before itself in its own most potentiality of being. Essentially, Heidegger wants us to see that we shouldnt treat death as an event thats coming closer to us with every passing moment, like a train slowly approaching from the distance. Thinking this way has the effect of putting distance between you and your death, making it something foreign and external to you and to what it means to live your life now, for you to exist. Its inauthentic because: It makes death an external event instead of an internal way of being. It makes death a passive happening as opposed to an active way in which you can actually live. It reveals to us that no individual can escape death with the aid of the public. Heidegger says that in our everyday lives, absorbed as we are in the they, we flee from death. But this very fleeing reveals our understanding that death is certain and indefinite. We know that we will die, and we know that when we will die is not definite. We

also know that we will die alone. Heidegger writes, death, as the end of Dasein, is Daseins own most possibility-non relational, certain and as such indefinite, not to be outstripped. According to Heidegger, each of us has our own potentialities to fulfil and has to face our death on our own. It also requires Dasein to accept its own death. Indeed, Heidegger claims that the real authentic self is revealed when one encounters ones own death. In Heideggers analysis of Dasein, death reveals the terrible temporality of our existence. In this revelation, he claimed, we find the ground of our authentic existence. Everyone dies his or her own death. As an experience entirely of ones own, death cannot be shared. This experience makes one focus on ones finitude, on ones uniqueness and on ones determinate self. Heidegger says Dasein cannot experience its own death. As long as Dasein exists, it is not complete, that is, there are still some of its possibilities outstanding. If, however, Dasein dies, then it is no-longer there. Anxiety and being-towards-death Human nature is radically finite. It ends in death. Each of us is directed towards death, as the annihilation of all our projects, as that which casts a shadow over all our projects and engagements. Influenced by Kierkegaard, Heidegger recognizes the centrality of being-towards-death (Sein-zum-Tode) in humans. Moreover, death can only be authentically experienced by us if we become totally secure with our first-person experience of dyingour genuine anticipation of death. We cannot experience other peoples deaths in the same authentic manner (BT 47, 282; 238). Heideggers account of anxiety also is a secularisation of Kierkegaards account. Anxiety leads us to drop the mask of our everyday familiarity with the world. Anxiety makes everything of such little significance that even our own sense of self is lost. Anxiety is the recognition of a certain nothingness, a groundlessness in our existence. As Sartre will later describe it, anxiety leads us into a kind of vertigo where we literally have no ground beneath our feet. For Heidegger, this is not properly understood as a subjective psychological phenomenon, but a structural possibility of our existence which brings us face to face with the problematic nature of our lives and the meaning we attach to living. Anxiety is distinctive in its world-disclosing possibilities. In this sense, following Kierkegaard, Heidegger sharply distinguishes fear (Furcht) from anxiety (Angst). Fear is always fear of something, and for the sake of something, for example, one fears for ones life (BT 30, 180; 141), or one fears about some possibility. Anxiety, on the other hand, is a rather shapeless mood which does not have a precise object. In fact, anxiety is precisely anxiety over nothing, that is no object, other than our very Being-in-the-world itself: Being-anxious discloses, primordially and directly, the world as world (BT 40, 232; 187). Anxiety shows up precisely the way in which we are free to choose and take hold of ourselves. Anxiety makes manifest in Dasein its Being towards it ownmost potentiality-for-Beingthat is, its Beingfree for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself. (BT 40, 232; 188) Anxiety reveals to us a certain homelessnesswe are not at home in the world, the world faces us as something weird, or uncanny (the German for uncanny is unheimlich, which carries the meaning of something being unfamiliar, un-homely). Our only way of understanding this is to turn away from it; hence its disclosive, enlightening power for us must always get covered up after the moment of insight has passed. But anxiety thus serves to reveal that we are caught up in a structure of care about the world; that is, it is

not a matter of indifference for us. Heideggers account of care and of human experiences such as anxiety and facing death would interest and influence the existentialists, especially Sartre, but Heidegger himself wants to emphasize how these experiences offer us a peculiar disclosure of the nature of time, and he hoped later in Being and Time to go back over these experiences and to analyze their relation to time and temporality.

Heideggers influence The influence of Heidegger on twentieth-century philosophy has been so enormous that it is almost impossible to measure it. Even Ludwig Wittgenstein acknowledged that he could easily understand what Heidegger meant by Being and by anxiety or dread (Angst). As Wittgenstein says: I can readily understand what Heidegger means by Being and Dread. Man has the impulse to run up against the limits of language. Think for example of the astonishment that anything exists. Similarly Charles Taylor has said that Heideggers importance lies in the fact that he is one of the few contemporary philosophers who have helped to free us from the grip of rationalism. Heidegger first had an extraordinary influence on his students through his meticulous lectures and illuminating seminars, which played exceptionally close attention to reading the text and dwelling with its fundamental problem. Among Heideggers own students were Hans-Georg Gadamer, who studied with Heidegger from 1923 to 1929, Herbert Marcuse, who studied with Heidegger from 1928 to 1932, Hannah Arendt, who studied with Heidegger in Marburg from 1924 to 1925, Karl Lwith, and Ernst Tugendhat. Apart from his direct influence on his own students, Heideggers writings had an enormous influence on the development of philosophy in Germany and also in France. In Germany, he influenced the theology of Rudolf Bultmann. The Frankfurt School of Social Criticism, which was reinstituted after the war with Adorno and Habermas, developed largely in reaction to Heidegger, often juxtaposing the young Marxs view of human alienation and domination by ideology against Heideggers account of man and the domination of technicity. Herbert Marcuse, in particular, sought to link the analysis of man in Marxs early 1844 writings with Heideggers analysis of Dasein and saw Heideggers analysis as an account of how bourgeois social life deconstructs from within. As Marcuse said, he saw in Heidegger a new beginning, the first radical attempt to put philosophy on really concrete foundationsphilosophy concerned with human existence, the human condition, and not merely with abstract conditions and principles. Furthermore, for Marcuse, Heidegger had articulated the principles of human historicity, a necessary part of the Marxist attempt to explain man with reference to historical movement. Theodor Adorno met Heidegger once in 1931 but in the 1960s wrote a number of books, including Jargon of Authenticity and Negative Dialectics, that were deeply critical of Heideggers project and his language. In 1953 Jrgen Habermas was one of the first to criticise Heideggers failure to renounce or withdraw statements in support of Nazism which he made in his 1935 Introduction to Metaphysics lectures which were published in 1953. In The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity Habermas is highly critical of Heideggers inability to separate the enlightenment conception of modern reason from self-assertive elements of racism and nationalism, but acknowledges the originality of Heideggers invocation of the concept of world in order to criticise the philosophy of consciousness. Habermas sees Heideggers

existential analysis as a kind of heroic nihilism in the face of finitude, and concludes that Heidegger remains trapped within the enchanted circle of the philosophy of the subject.

Heidegger had less success among the followers of positivism. The Vienna Circle in particular targeted Heidegger as a woolly and inflated thinker whose propositions were devoid of substantial meaning. Thus Rudolf Carnap explicitly took issue with the account of nothingness in What is Metaphysics?. The influence of Ayer, Russell, and Ryle meant that Heideggers thought did not gain prominence in Britain until recently. However, there is now considerable interest in Heidegger in analytic circles where his holism is often compared with that of Donald Davidson. In the USA, Heidegger has had an important influence on philosophers such as Richard Rorty and Hubert Dreyfus. Rorty reads the Heidegger of Being and Time as essentially a pragmatist in the tradition of Dewey. Rorty also believes that Heideggers mission in philosophy is basically a world- disclosing one rather than a problem-solving approach, such as one encounters in Aristotle or Russell. Dreyfus believes, on the other hand, that Heideggers anti-subjectivist stance can offer a new model for understanding consciousness which escapes the problems of representationalism which has dogged philosophy of mind since Descartes. In France Heideggers influence came chiefly through the mediation of Emmanuel Levinas, who had studied with Heidegger at Freiburg in 1928, and after the war through Jean Beaufret and Jean-Paul Sartre. Heideggers philosophy was enthusiastically absorbed in French existentialism and later reinterpreted in Derridas deconstruction and Foucaults anti-humanism. Foucault has said: For me Heidegger has always been the essential philosopher My entire philosophical development was determined by my reading of Heidegger. Heidegger will continue to be valued as an original thinker who laid enormous stress on the importance of thoughtful questioning over and against the construction of philosophical systems. Heidegger himself emphasised the role of the thinker as seeking what is unthought (das Ungedachte) in that which is announced. Heidegger is always looking for the thought behind our thoughts. Though this seeking after depth can easily be caricatured and satirised (as Adorno, for example, has done), Heidegger inspired a new and radical way of reading philosophical texts. Heideggers violent destructions of classical texts is the source of Derridas deconstruction and continues to offer a model of a reading of texts which is tied neither to authorship and authority, nor to the social and historical context, but to the text as embodying the matter (die Sache) for thought. Heideggers later attention to the nature of poetic speaking can be seen as a kind of mysticism which many see to be the abandonment of the Greek ideal of philosophy as rational dialogue. Heidegger proclaims that questioning is the piety of thinking, but often his later thought seemed more concerned to be a kind of poetic response to a Being whose movements only Heidegger seemed able to hear. Despite his claim to be in dialogue with the great thinkers, Heideggers dialogue consists of one-sided pronouncements on the state of Being, or the withdrawal from Being, which can seem to be groundless. Heidegger will undoubtedly always be seen as one of the most important and controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. Among those he influenced directly were Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hannah Arendt.