PHILOSOPHERS - MARTIN HEIDEGGER

<BODY> <CENTER><FONT SIZE=5><B><FONT SIZE=6>MARTIN HEIDEGGER</FONT><BR> (1889-1976)</B></FONT></CENTER><P> <BLOCKQUOTE>"The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking."<P> ("Being and Time")</BLOCKQUOTE> Studying philosophy at Freiburg university brought Heidegger into contact with <A HREF="../21/21f01.html" TARGET="_top">Husserl</A> and his concept of <A HREF="../t03/g038.html" TARGET="_top">phenomenology</A>. For a while, Husserl was mentor to Heidegger, but the student outstripped the master. While Husserl's Jewish ancestry hampered his career, Heidegger's support for National Socialism found him favour with the authorities. He replaced Husserl as professor at Freiburg and was later made rector of the university. His rectorial address expressed hope for "a complete revolution of German existence". He resigned from the post in the following year and withdrew from active politics. Heidegger finally responded to the reproaches aimed at his brief alliance with the Nazi party in an interview in 1966 but he refused to allow its publication until after his death. Apart from some rare visits to France and Greece, Heidegger spent his mature years in seclusion in his native Bavarian village of Messkirk where he died.<P> Heidegger was concerned with the question of Being. He saw himself as philosopher with a mission to redeem a civilisation that had sold out to technology and scientific rationality. Man had come to be seen, to see himself, as a commodity, as object not subject. Being had become a mere abstraction. His major work <I>Being and Time </I> examines our human reality or mode of "being-in-the-world". His emphasis on anxiety as an essential element of human existence and on the need to lead an authentic existence inspired later <A HREF="../t03/g018.html" TARGET="_top">existentialists</A>, although he himself denied this label. <BR clear=left><BR> <HR width=100%> <A HREF="http://www.creatorix.com.au"><IMG SRC="../creatorix.gif" WIDTH="85" HEIGHT="40" BORDER="0" ALT="Creatorix" align=right></A> </BODY>