Michael Watts - The Philosophy of Heidegger

Continental European Philosophy

This series provides accessible and stimulating introductions to the ideas of continental thinkers who have shaped the fundamentals of European philosophical thought. Powerful and radical, the ideas of these philosophers have often been contested, but they remain key to understanding current philosophical thinking as well as the current direction of disciplines such as political science, literary theory, social theory, art history and cultural studies. Each book seeks to combine clarity with depth, introducing fresh insights and wider perspectives while also providing a comprehensive survey of each thinkers philosophical ideas.

The Philosophy of Agamben
Catherine Mills

The Philosophy of Derrida
Mark Dooley and Liam Kavanagh

The Philosophy of Foucault
Todd May

The Philosophy of Gadamer
Jean Grondin

The Philosophy of Habermas
Andrew Edgar

The Philosophy of Heidegger
Michael Watts

The Philosophy of Hegel
Allen Speight

The Philosophy of Husserl
Burt C. Hopkins

The Philosophy of Kierkegaard
George Pattison

The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty
Eric Matthews

The Philosophy of Nietzsche
Rex Welshon

The Philosophy of Schopenhauer
Dale Jacquette

The Philosophy of
Heidegger

Michael Watts

With thanks to my parents and all the family for their considerable support.

First Published 2011 by Acumen

Published 2014 by Routledge
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Michael Watts, 2011

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ISBN: 978-1-84465-263-1 (hardcover)
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Contents

No Western philosopher since Socrates has attracted such varied, often totally opposed, views as Heidegger. In a popular history of philosophy by Bertrand Russell, the entry on Heidegger comprises only one short paragraph. The first line reads: Highly eccentric in its terminology, his philosophy is extremely obscure. One cannot help suspecting that language is here running riot (1989: 303). The analytic philosopher A. J. Ayer once accused him of charlatanism (1984: 228); Roger Scruton, a contemporary conservative British philosopher, described Heideggers most important work Being and Time as formidably difficult unless it is utter nonsense, in which case it is laughably easy (2001: 270). Against these dismissals, the American philosopher Richard Rorty (1981: 5) rates Heidegger as one of the three most important philosophers of the twentieth century, along with John Dewey and Wittgenstein.

Heidegger also, frequently, has been damned both as a man and as a thinker for his brief but enthusiastic support of the Nazis. This was symbolized by his acceptance of the post of rector of Freiburg University in 1933, where he proved a passionate advocate of subordinating the university to the new Nazi regime. Although he resigned the rectorship after only a year, and became increasingly critical of the direction taken by the Nazi party, he never uttered a full apology for his support of National Socialism, nor admitted guilt for having done so, during the thirty-one years he lived after 1945. If Heidegger could not, even with hindsight, accept that he had been wrong, many have questioned how much value should be placed on his work, particularly because his philosophy stresses the importance of a life lived as an experience in time and place, rather than as a collection of abstract theories.

For the English-speaker, such biographical problems are not the only drawbacks. Heidegger wrote a distinctive, notoriously dense prose that, when translated, can appear impenetrably Teutonic. Unsurprisingly, therefore, for a long time he was ignored in the Anglo-American world. But he was hailed as one of existentialisms founding fathers in continental Europe from the 1940s. Since his death in 1976 he has become almost as famed in the anglophone world, despite further controversies over his links with the Nazis and over his exploitative relationship with Hannah Arendt when she was his student. Some critics have seen him as both a Nazi and an unscrupulous seducer of a vulnerable teenager; for others, he appears a covert critic of Nazism and an intellectual mentor to Arendt as well as her lover. Above all, he is now held to have had vital insights into the central problems of modern life, including the uses and abuses of technology, literature, poetry, theatre, sociology and even architecture.

Deeply concerned with the way that language shapes human thought, Heidegger made a vital contribution to the development of phenomenology, founded by his teacher Edmund Husserl. But Heidegger outstripped his mentors achievement, finally passing beyond phenomenology to create a wholly new approach to thinking that profoundly influenced German philosophers such as Jrgen Habermas and Hans-Georg Gadamer, English-speaking philosophers such as Charles Taylor and Rorty, and French philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Indeed, he inspired Jean-Paul Sartre to create the twentieth centurys perhaps most famous philosophical school: existentialism. (This was despite Heideggers letter to Jean Beaufret in 1947 Letter on Humanism, in which he distanced his own philosophy from French existentialism.) For many, Heidegger is finally the ultimate philosopher of Being, who pursued the question of the meaning of Being relentlessly until death ended his quest.

Heidegger was remarkably prescient about some of the current ecological problems. Strongly opposed to many trends in industrial society, with its emphasis on technology and mass consumption, he attacked the mistreatment of livestock and the misuse of the planets resources. When even leading scientists (such as Martin Rees, one of Britains most respected astronomers) now give humanity a less-than-even chance of surviving the century, Heideggers declaration Only a god can save us, made in 1966, seems uncannily prophetic about the deepening ecological crisis. He now appears a timely philosopher, whose deep ontological thinking, revealed in Being and Time, his masterpiece of 1927, is still pressingly pertinent.