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Heidegger
Heidegger’s Ways of Being
Andrew Royle introduces Heidegger’s key ideas from his classic Being and Time, showing how they lead towards his concept of Being-towards-death.
“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself.”
Martin Heidegger
This article considers aspects of the philosophy of the German phenomenologist/existentialist Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), finally applying them in the context of bereavement. As Heidegger’s writings are filled with many highly technical terms, I’ll provide some background to his thinking, drawing from two rather technical texts: Heidegger’s 1927 magnum opus Being and Time [Sein und Zeit ] (Joan Stambaugh’s 1996 translation), and The Zollikon Seminars: Protocols, Conversations, Letters, edited by Medard Boss (1987).
The formidable task that Heidegger sets himself in Being and Time is to respond to the question ‘What is Being’? This ‘Question of Being’ has a long heritage in the Western philosophical tradition, but for Heidegger, to merely ask what is Being? is problematic, as that emphasis tends to objectify Being as a ‘thing’ – that is to say, it separates off ‘Being’ (whatever it is) from the questioner of Being. This for Heidegger is making unhelpful assumptions of the nature of Being even before interrogating what Being actually is.
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