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Existentialism

Heidegger, Metaphysics & Wheelbarrows

Richard Oxenberg gives a poetic introduction to Heidegger’s Being and Time.

so much depends upon
a red wheelbarrow
glazed with rainwater
beside the white chickens

William Carlos Williams

In order to appreciate Heidegger’s thought it is necessary to see it in relation to the Western metaphysical tradition from which it has emerged. This would be true, of course, for any thinker, but it is especially so for Heidegger, because Heidegger’s thinking represents a radical challenge and correction to the tradition itself. Heidegger does to the traditional view of ‘Being’ and ‘the world’ what Marx is said to have done to Hegel’s dialectic: he stands it on its head. He stands it on its head – so he might contend – in order that we may finally see it right-side-up.

The problem with the traditional view, from Heidegger’s perspective, is not that it fails to comprehend the most abstract and remote issues, the Alpha and Omega of Being, but that it fails to properly grasp what is most obvious, what is ‘everyday’, what is right before our eyes; what is, perhaps, so close that it is ‘uncomfortably’ close.

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