Martin Heidegger on the Nature of Being

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the work of the philosopher Heidegger, whose central concern was with the nature of Being, and discusses the origins of his lifelong fascination with this foundational, ontological issue. The paper relates that Heidegger made a massive contribution to ontology, forcing others to think about the nature of Being from the foundations up. The paper concludes that Heidegger left an important legacy, in that he re-opened key questions that to this day still have not been answered satisfactorily.

From the Paper:

"Many philosophers are concerned with the key question of "Why is there anything, rather than nothing at all?" In other words, they are interested in why things have Being, or exist. Such philosophers are often interested in ascertaining who or what was the Prime Mover - the first thing that had Being, and that subsequently caused other things to have Being (commonly thought of as God). Other philosophers are concerned with how we can know about Being. This is referred to as epistemology, or the theory of knowledge. In Heidegger's time, many philosophers attempted to follow in the Kantian tradition, and were primarily concerned with asking "What can we know?" They frequently posed this question in relation to knowledge as the foundation of science.
"However, Heidegger was never part of any herd. He dismissed epistemology, saying that it "continually sharpens the knife but never gets round to cutting" (Being and Time, p. lviii, quoted in Inwood, p. 13). Heidegger seems to have been more concerned with cutting, with penetrating right into the meat of reality. He was concerned with the nature of what is, i.e. with the nature of Being. This is known as ontology, or the study of existence. While this is sometimes conceived of as the most general branch of metaphysics, it can also be seen as the most particular branch of metaphysics - and certainly the latter is truer of Heidegger's approach to ontology. His study of the nature of Being is one of the key concepts in his work, and potentially the most useful to subsequent students of philosophy. Certainly, Heidegger envisaged his examination of the concept of Being as a radical re-visioning which would impact not only the future, but the past. He planned to re-examine past philosophers and (and possibly show how they had erred), in a Second Part to his seminal Being and Time. Unfortunatley he never achieved the latter, as he never wrote this Second Part. Nevertheless, he did address many issues which have impacted philosophers that have come after him - most notably, of course, the concept of Being, and also the related concept of time."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Inwood, M. (2000). Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Krell, David Farrell. (1993). Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings. Revised & Expanded Edition. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
• Mulhall, S. (1996). Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time. New York: Routledge.

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