DE Weekly: Heidegger, Temporality, & Retracing the Past
Martin Heidegger, the German phenomenologist who had a huge influence on existentialism, wrote about time and temporality, what he saw as the structure of his Dasein––human existence.
Heidegger lifted the term Dasein from the German word for “existence” and molded it into a concept explaining the human condition; namely, our “Being-in-the-world.”
DE Weekly: Finitude, Nothingness, & Meaning
In existentialism, there are some concepts with relative consensus, and others with lots of varying theories. Life itself (specifically the meaning of life) is one of those major questions with many answers. Another is Death itself. We’ve all heard the question “What is the meaning of life?”, but here’s another question: what is the meaning of death?
The existentialists had widely differing views on the importance of death and on the meaning of death, each with their own unique input. The two authors I’ll discuss today are Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger.
DE Weekly: Heidegger, Dasein, & Temporality
“Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing? That is the question,” wrote Martin Heidegger in his Introduction to Metaphysics. “. . . this is obviously the first of all questions,” he continued.
Heidegger was right; questioning our being certainly is the “first” of all questions, for every other question about the nature of being arises from it.