Texts of Western Philosophy: 

Heidegger's Philosophy  
30.03.2018 
─  

Mayank Chari 
B.A (Honours) Philosophy  
Third Semester 
Texts of Western Philosophy, Roll no. 566 

 
 1 
 

Overview 
 
One of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, this assignment seeks to explore 
Heidegger’s philosophy with reference to his contributions in Phenomenology, 
Epistemology and Hermeneutics.  

Contents 
 
❖ Introduction to Heidegger 
➢ Personal Life 
❖ Heidegger’s works  
➢ Being and Time  
❖ Phenomenology 
❖ Epistemology and Hermeneutics 
❖ Conclusion 

Introduction to Heidegger  
 
Born in Germany in 1889, Martin Heidegger is considered to be one of the greatest and 
most original philosophers of the 20th century for his works on Phenomenology and 
Existentialism1. Heidegger is revered for his works as a continental philosopher and 
celebrated for his contributions in philosophical Hermeneutics.  
His Magnum Opus published in 1927, Being and Time2, laid down the philosophical basis of 
his thought despite being unfinished. Heidegger’s brilliance is reflected in his texts 
attempting to shift focus from factual notions ​Being​ to more existential notions of the 
same, seeking to explore the hidden nature of the frame of reality in relation to the ​Being​. 
Heidegger’s philosophical revelations centered around notions of exploring the ​Being ​as 

1
"Heidegger, Martin | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." ​https://www.iep.utm.edu/heidegge/​. 
Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
2
"Heidegger, Martin | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." ​https://www.iep.utm.edu/heidegge/​. 
Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
 2 
 

more than just its existence but what it means to be. His works​ attempt to access b ​ eing 
(-Sein)​ by means of phenomenological analysis of the human existence of ​being-there 
(-Dasein)​ in respect to its temporal and historical character. His book, Being and​ time 
catapulted Heidegger to a position of international intellectual visibility and provided the 
philosophical impetus for a number of later programmes and ideas in the contemporary 
European tradition, including Sartre's existentialism, Gadamer's philosophical 
hermeneutics, and Derrida's notion of ‘deconstruction’3. His works made him turn to the 
plethora of historical texts, from the great Presocratics to the likes of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche 
and Hölderlin, and even to poetry, architecture, technology, and other subjects. Instead of 
looking for a full clarification of the meaning of being, he tried to pursue a kind of thinking 
which was no longer “metaphysical”, hence solidifying his phenomenological approach 
towards B ​ eing​.  

Personal Life 
 
Martin Heidegger was born to a sexton in a church in Meßkirch (Messkirch), Germany, on 
September 26, 1889. Messkirch was a quiet, conservative, religious rural town, and had a 
formative influence on Heidegger and his philosophical thought. In 1909 he spent two 
weeks in the Jesuit order before leaving (probably on health grounds, what the director and 
doctor of the seminary described as a psychosomatic heart condition) to study theology at 
the University of Freiburg. In 1911 he switched subjects, to philosophy largely being 
influence by Neo-Kantians. He began teaching at Freiburg in 1915. It was also at that time 
that he first became influenced by Edmund Husserl. He studied Husserl's ​Logical 
Investigations​. In 1913 he completed a doctorate in philosophy with a dissertation on T​ he 
Doctrine of Judgement in Psychologism​ under the direction of the neo-Kantian philosopher 
Heinrich Rickert. 
In 1933 Heidegger joined the Nazi Party and was elected Rector of Freiburg University, 
where, some say that he enthusiastically implemented the Nazi policy of bringing university 
education into line with Hitler's nauseating political programme.4 On the contrary, some 
also say that he allowed that policy to be officially implemented while conducting a partially 
underground campaign of resistance to some of its details, especially its anti-Semitism. 
Heidegger gave a number of public speeches in which Nazi images plus occasional 
declarations of support for Hitler are integrated with the philosophical language of B
​ eing 
and Time​. After 1934, Heidegger distanced himself from Nazi politics. Although he never 
5

3
"Martin Heidegger (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)." 12 Oct. 2011, 
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/​. Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
4
"Heidegger, Martin | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." ​https://www.iep.utm.edu/heidegge/​. 
Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
5
"Martin Heidegger (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)." 12 Oct. 2011, 
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/​. Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
 3 
 

left the Nazi party, and always received attention from its enthusiasts.Post the fall for Hitler 
and German governments clamping down on Nazism, a university denazification 
committee at Freiburg investigated Heidegger. This committee banned him from teaching 
but didn’t remove him from the staff roll. Heidegger was allowed to teach only after 1949.  

Heidegger died in Freiburg on May 26, 1976. He was buried in his hometown Messkirch. 
 

Heidegger’s Philosophy  

Being and Time 

 
Being and Time​ (German: ​Sein und Zeit​) was written in 1927 by Martin Heidegger.6 
Heidegger maintains that since the time of the Ancient Greeks, philosophy has 
avoided the question, ”What is the meaning of being?”, turning instead to the 
analysis of particular beings. Heidegger attempts to revive ontology through a 
reawakening of the question of the meaning of being. He approaches this through a 
fundamental ontology that is a preliminary analysis of the being of the being to 
whom the question of being is important, i.e., ​Dasein​, or the human being in the 
abstract. 
Heidegger's philosophy is often considered to be extensive and difficult to interpret. 
His book Being and Time is textually verbose and often considered to be 
academically strenuous. His works seek to explore what he considers two 
fundamental insights: The first is his observation that, in the vast and passing fields 
of history, philosophy has attended to all the beings that can be found in the world 
(including the world itself), but has forgotten to ask what Being itself is​. The second 
is that ​philosophy could and should be is a description of experience (hence the 
phenomenological slogan, "to the things themselves"). this meant understanding 
that experience is always already situated in a world and in ways of being.7  

​In any case, for many readers, the difficult language of B

​ eing and Time​ is fully 
vindicated by the realization that Heidegger is struggling to say things for which our 
conventional terms and linguistic constructions are ultimately inadequate. In B ​ eing 
and Time​, Heidegger criticized the abstract and metaphysical character of traditional 
ways of grasping human existence as rational animal, person, man, soul, spirit, or 

6
"Heidegger, Martin | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." ​https://www.iep.utm.edu/heidegge/​. 
Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
7
"Martin Heidegger (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)." 12 Oct. 2011, 
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/​. Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
 4 
 

subject. ​Being and time​ looks at D ​ asein ​(an ordinary German word literally meaning 
"being-there," i.e., existence)​, which according to Heidegger, is ​being​. In his existential 
work, Heidegger argues that ​Dasein​ is who finds oneself thrown into the world 
(​Geworfenheit​) amidst things. One is thrown with others and is thrown into the 
world’s possibilities, including the possibility and inevitability of one's own mortality. 
In simpler terms, ​Dasein i​ s an intricate reflection of man’s modern day life, where 
one finds meaning in being for one’s own sake. The need for D ​ asein​ to assume 
different possibilities, that is, the need is to be responsible for one's own existence. 
This is the basis of Heidegger's notions of authenticity and resoluteness- to escape 
the "vulgar" temporality of calculation and of public life. 
Heidegger largely credited Edmund Husserl's L​ ogical Investigations​ (1900–1901) as 
one of the backbones of Being and Time, and dedicated the book to Husserl "in 
friendship and admiration". Although Heidegger did not complete the project 
outlined in the introduction,, ​Being and Time​ remains his most important work. It 
was recognized as an original and groundbreaking philosophical work, and later 
became a focus of debates and controversy. Being and time has had a profound 
influence on 20th-century philosophy, particularly existentialism, hermeneutics, 
deconstruction, and the enactivist approach to cognition.8 
 

Heidegger’s Phenomenology  
 
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Phenomenology is the study of 
structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central 
structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is 
an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by 
virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate 
enabling conditions.9 Heidegger’s notion of the being, as expressed earlier, is a 
fundamentally different one as it’s deviating from traditional notions of Being from a 
Metaphysical lens. Heidegger’s being is a serious enquiry into evaluating the being as a 
product of circumstances and at the same time, also one which shapes the world around 
us. With that being said, His works give us the beautiful expression of D ​ asein​, which loosely 

8
​"Is Heidegger Contaminated by Nazism? | The New Yorker." 
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/is-heidegger-contaminated-by-nazism​. 
Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
9
"Martin Heidegger (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)." 12 Oct. 2011, 
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/​. Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
 5 
 

translates as ‘being-there’.10 His enquiry into the being also stems from an ontological 
perspective. This conception is thus, a reflection of a fundamental unity of the expressions 
of a world one sees and at the same time one’s interaction with the world allows him to 
perceive the world in that manner to begin with. Heidegger proposes to understand being 
itself, as distinguished from any specific entities. "'Being is not something like a being." 
Being, Heidegger claims, is "what determines beings as beings, that in terms of which 
beings are already understood." Heidegger is seeking to identify the criteria or conditions 
by which any specific entity can show up at all.11  
In this light, the point of existence for a person then is simple, to explore all the possibilities 
that one can be, given the circumstances. This is a serious responsibility, as Heidegger also 
shows an extreme skepticism towards the idea of living a life at someone else’s terms. His 
conception of b ​ eing​ is then powerful as it asks one to seek freedom on two accounts, 
freedom from a life of influence from others and the freedom from the fear of death. He 
explains his notion of being in close relation to oneself, saying that one understands 
existence only upon realising one’s own mortality. For example, a blacksmith uses a 
hammer everyday to ply his/her trade without ever thinking about the existence of the 
hammer. For her/him, the hammer is an extension of her/his will and needs no 
deliberation. However, the day his /her hammer breaks the blacksmith is forced to 
reconcile with the hammer’s temporal nature. Heidegger speaks of human life in a similar 
fashion, saying that when one lives life under the influence of others, one’s own being is 
depersonalized from her/him and her/his actions. In such a case, one’s actions are a 
product of the societal pressures. Heidegger calls them the “they”. Freedom from this can 
be obtained only when one confronts other perspectives of life. For example, the rise of 
technology has been detrimental to the environment and has even aided in the creation of 
weapons of mass destruction resulting in the death of many. If one were to look at 
Heidegger’s works, one would not be surprised at all, since the society and people who 
created this technology were far removed from the ideas of a greener earth or possibly, the 
lives of the people whose death was a consequence of the creators of this technologies’ 
actions.12  
Heidegger’s fundamental analysis of Dasein from ​Being and Time​ points to temporality as 
the meaning of being. Its temporal character is derived from the tripartite ontological 
structure: e​ xistence​, t​ hrownness​, and f​ allenness​ by which Dasein’s being is described. 13 
Existence means that Dasein is potentiality-for-being (​Seinkönnen​); it projects its being upon 

10
"Martin Heidegger - Wikipedia." ​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger​. Accessed 31 Mar. 
2018. 
11
"Heidegger, Martin | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." h​ ttps://www.iep.utm.edu/heidegge/​. 
Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
12
"Heidegger In Twelve Minutes - YouTube." 22 Feb. 2014, 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A04RhtR0imY​. Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
13
"Heidegger, Martin | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." h ​ ttps://www.iep.utm.edu/heidegge/​. 
Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
 6 
 

various possibilities.​ ​Existence represents thus the phenomenon of the future. In 
Thrownness, being thrown in a fixed context with none of our will, Dasein always finds 
itself already in a certain spiritual and material, historically conditioned environment. Thus 
In short, in the world in which the space of possibilities is always somehow limited, 
Heidegger in context of fallenness talks of Dasein as existing in the midst of beings which 
are both Dasein and not Dasein. The encounter with those beings, “being-alongside” or 
“being-with” them, is made possible for Dasein by the presence of those beings 
within-the-world.  
 

Heidegger’s Epistemology and Hermeneutics 

 
Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. Understood 
more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and 
dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry.14 Heidegger uses the word 
Aletheia15 (Ancient Greek: ἀλήθεια) to denote his notion of truth. In its crudest form, 
Alethia translates to ‘clearing’ or ‘disclosure’. According to him, the phenomenological 
truths of our being appear to us in the same way perceptual truths do. Heidegger thinks 
that because we’re radically thrown in this world, the truth one sees is always perspectival. 
We see and shape things in a such a manner that our perception of truth is molded by the 
world around us. Consequently, every truth we see also conceals another truth that we 
can’t see given our circumstance. Thus, the exploration of truth is constantly between 
concealment and revelation. For example, we walk into a dark room with nothing but a 
flashlight. Every place where one thinks of throwing the light, we might get to experience a 
part of the truth. However, the existence of light (in one place) guarantees darkness (in 
another place) as well. Thus, the function of truth ironically, is to hide things as well. This 
notion of truth, when studied in relation with Heidegger’s concepts of phenomenology and 
being bring forth interesting questions. One must not regard perspectival truths as the 
inability of individuals to every see larger truth. Even if it may never be possible for one to 
see the complete truth, one can constantly broaden the horizon of one’s knowledge by 
utilising the never ending possibilities of one’s being. Hermeneutics is a the study of 
interpretation. In simple terms, Heidegger’s philosophy has been largely influenced by his 
hermeneutics.16 His philosophy is an important reflection that allows one to evaluate the 

14
"Epistemology | Definition of Epistemology by Merriam-Webster." 
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epistemology​. Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
15
"PHILOSOPHY - Heidegger - YouTube." 10 Sep. 2014, 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br1sGrA7XTU​. Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
16
"Hermeneutics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)." 22 Jun. 2016, 
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/​. Accessed 31 Mar. 2018. 
 7 
 

life one sees as truly authentic. As his philosophical doctrines go, the perception of truth is 
based on the world we see and how we see the world is the result of out perceptions of the 
truth. Our experiences influence our understanding, which influences our experiences. This 
circular interpretation of Hermeneutics sets an enquiry into the b ​ eing​ as an infinite project 
without a definite end-point.  
 

Conclusion 
Heidegger’s works when looked at from the different branches of philosophy it affects 
enables us to draw a compelling picture of what it means to live an authentic life. For 
Heidegger, although we’re definitely in the world, we’re never in the world neutrally or 
indifferently. A crucial element of D​ asein​ is to​ care​. Care not in the conventional sense of 
affection but to care even for things that make us discomforted or angry. In this, Heidegger 
talks of Facticity, Falleness and Existentiality. Facticity is the “givens” of our existence which 
can not change. For example, we were born in a certain time and era and not otherwise. 
This also calls for thrownness, which refers to us being thrown in a world which has 
nothing to do with our ability to consent to this happening to us. Secondly, comes 
fallenness, which speaks of the misfortune of living a life that is not really determined by 
us. For example, we must get a job, work and pay taxes. We unthinkingly imitate others and 
obey “them”. We fall from our deeper destinies in life because we live inauthentic lives 
made for us by “them” (​Das man​). Last, and the most important is existentiality, which 
refers to our ability to live authentic lives. This calls for a consonance between how one is 
living a life and how one ought to live being free and engaging in all the infinite possibilities 
of life. Authenticity revolves around the potentiality of one’s life irrespective of deriving 
philosophical insight, this is because, according to Heidegger, one’s life is authentic if it is 
closest to extracting the most possibilities. Thus, even someone who is mentally 
handicapped has the potentiality of living an authentic life, if its a life closest to true 
potential. H ​ eidegger talks of death as also something beautiful in realising one’s state of 
being. According to him, death compels one to face mortality head on. After all, the 
realisation of the transient nature of life pushes one to be reflective of one’s life. ​This is 
makes Heidegger’s philosophical thought uniquely unplifting.