The central theme of his work was the attempt to reorient the Western tradition away from metaphysics and epistemology, towards ontology. Ontology is the study of being in the world.
Heidegger used the phenomenological method that he inherited and developed from his teacher Edmund Husserl. The publication of his magnum opus Being and Time was a watershed event in twentieth-century European philosophy, influencing subsequent developments of phenomenology, but also existentialism, hermeneutics, deconstruction and post-modernism.
Heidegger’s Early Works
Prior to the publication of Being and Time in 1927, Heidegger evidenced a strong interest in the analogy between mystical experience and experience in general. By probing the dimensions of religious experience, Heidegger sought to uncover in the factitious life of Christianity a form of existence that is often glossed over by the philosophical tradition.
It was not until Heidegger was introduced to Husserlian phenomenology that he would have the methodological grounding for his religious interests. Phenomenology is the study of experience and the ways in which things present themselves in and through experience.
The Importance of Being and Time
Being and Time is composed of a systematic analysis of being (Dasein) as a preparatory investigation into the meaning of being as such. This analysis was originally meant as a preliminary stage of the project, but Part II of the book was never published.
Heidegger’s Later Works
Heidegger claimed that all of his writings are concerned with a single question, the question of being, but in the years after the publication of Being and Time the way in which he pursued this question developed. This change is often referred to as Heidegger's Kehre (turn or tack). One could say that in his later works, Heidegger shifts his focus from the way in which Dasein's practical involvement in the world is revelatory of being to the way in which this behavior depends on a prior ‘openness to being.’
Heidegger's important later works include Vom Wesen der Wahrheit (‘On the Essence of Truth,’ 1930), Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes (‘The Origin of the Work of Art,’ 1935), Bauen Wohnen Denken (‘Building Dwelling Thinking,’ 1951), and Die Frage nach der Technik (‘The Question of Technology,’ 1953) and Was heisst Denken? (‘What Is Called Thinking?’ 1954).
Criticism of Heidegger’s Philosophy
Heidegger's importance to the world of continental philosophy is probably unsurpassed. His reception among analytic philosophers, however, is quite another story. Saving a moderately favorable review of Being and Time in Mind by a young Gilbert Ryle shortly after its publication, Heidegger's analytic contemporaries generally regarded both the content and style of Heidegger's work problematic.
Heidegger and Nazi Germany
Heidegger joined the Nazi Party on May 1, 1933, before being appointed rector of the University of Freiburg. He resigned the rectorship in April 1934. However, he remained a member of the Nazi party until the end of the war.
Critics further cite Heidegger's affair with Hannah Arendt, who was Jewish, while she was his doctoral student at the University of Marburg. This affair took place in the 1920s, some time before Heidegger's involvement in Nazism, but it did not end when she moved to Heidelberg to continue her studies with Karl Jaspers.
Heidegger's involvement with the Nazi movement, and his failure to regret or apologise for having done so, complicated many of his friendships and continues to complicate the reception of his work. The extent to which his political failings are connected to and resulted from the content of his philosophy is still hotly debated. Still, the mere possibility that Heidegger's affiliation with the Nazi party might have been an unfortunate consequence of his philosophical thinking appears sufficient for some people to discredit him as a philosopher.
Source:
Rüdiger Safranski Heidegger, Between Good and Evil. Harvard University Press (1998), ISBN-13: 978-0674387096
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