Martin Heidegger

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Lore & Background

Heidegger was born on 26 September 1889 in rural Meßkirch, Baden, the son of Johanna (née Kempf) and Friedrich Heidegger. His father was the sexton of the village church, and the young Martin was raised Catholic. In 1903, he began to train for the priesthood. He entered a Jesuit seminary in 1909, but was discharged within weeks because of heart trouble. It was during this time that he first encountered the work of Franz Brentano, credited as first sparking Heidegger's interest in the question of Being. He went on to study theology and scholastic philosophy at the University of Freiburg. In 1911, he broke off training for the priesthood and turned his attention to recent philosophy, in particular, Edmund Husserl's *Logical Investigations*. He graduated with a thesis on psychologism, *The Doctrine of Judgment in Psychologism: A Critical-theoretical Contribution to Logic*, in 1914. The following year, he completed his habilitation thesis on Duns Scotus, directed by Heinrich Rickert and influenced by Husserl's phenomenology. He served in a meteorological unit on the western front during the last ten months of World War I. From 1919 to 1923, Heidegger taught courses at the University of Freiburg and became an assistant to Edmund Husserl. In 1923, he was elected to an extraordinary professorship in philosophy at the University of Marburg. His students at Marburg included Hans-Georg Gadamer, Helene Weiss, Karl Löwith, Hannah Arendt, Gerhard Krüger, Leo Strauss, Jacob Klein, Günther Anders, and Hans Jonas. In 1927, he published *Sein und Zeit* (*Being and Time*), which raised him to "a position of international intellectual visibility." When Husserl retired in 1928, Heidegger accepted Freiburg's election to be his successor, declining later offers including one from Humboldt University of Berlin. He remained at Freiburg im Breisgau for the rest of his life. His later work turned increasingly to questions of technology, language, art, and poetry, developing themes of human "dwelling" in the world and critiquing what he saw as the nihilistic trajectory of modern technological civilisation. Heidegger's legacy has been complicated and shadowed by his involvement with Nazism. In April 1933, he was elected rector of the University of Freiburg and joined the Nazi Party on 1 May, a membership he retained until 1945. In his inaugural address as rector on 27 May he expressed his support of a German revolution, and in an article and a speech to the students from the same year he also vocalized support for Adolf Hitler. In November 1933, Heidegger signed the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State. He resigned from the rectorate in April 1934 and pursued a teaching agenda aligned with Nazi cultural politics until 1945. After the war, he was banned from teaching following denazification proceedings, a ban later lifted in 1949, after which he returned to lecturing at the University of Freiburg. During this period of enforced withdrawal, he nevertheless continued to exert influence through private seminars and audiences at his home. His refusal to publicly repudiate his Nazi involvements or express remorse in unambiguous terms has continued to trouble interpreters of his work.

Reader's Guide

Heidegger's significance lies in his reorientation of philosophy toward the question of being, which he argued had been neglected or obscured throughout the history of Western philosophy since the ancient Greeks. Through his analysis of Dasein as being-in-the-world, he influenced phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism, shaping thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and Richard Rorty. His later critiques of technology and modernity have had lasting impact across the humanities and social sciences. However, his legacy remains shadowed by his enthusiastic support for Nazism as rector of Freiburg and his refusal to express remorse. The controversy over whether his philosophy is inherently connected to his political choices continues among scholars. His enforced withdrawal from teaching after the war did not halt his influence, as he continued to hold private seminars and audiences at his home. In 1966, he gave an interview to *Der Spiegel* attempting to justify his support of the Nazi Party; per their agreement, it was not published until five days after his death in 1976, under the title "Only a God Can Save Us."

Did You Know?

• Heidegger entered a Jesuit seminary in 1909 but was discharged within weeks because of heart trouble.
• He served in a meteorological unit on the western front during the last ten months of World War I, deemed unfit for combat.
• His habilitation thesis on Duns Scotus was directed by neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert and influenced by Husserl's phenomenology.
• Heidegger's *Contributions to Philosophy*, written between 1936 and 1937, was not published until 1989, 13 years after his death.
• In the autumn of 1944, Heidegger was drafted into the Volkssturm and assigned to dig anti-tank ditches along the Rhine.