Heidegger

Abstract

In the work of Martin Heidegger one can see the same features which emerged in Kierkegaard as characteristic of Existentialist thought. But it must be said that in more ways than one it is anomalous and perhaps unfair to class Heidegger as an Existentialist thinker at all. For one thing, as I have said already, he repudiates the description himself, and this ought to carry some weight; for another thing, there is one respect in which he comes at the opposite end of the philosophical scale from Kierkegaard. For he is above all an old-fashioned Hegelian system-builder, who aims to present the complete truth about the universe in absolute terms; and moreover his actual style of writing is pretentious, highflown, and dependent on technical jargon to an extent that would have disgusted Kierkegaard, the most hostile of all men to the pompous and self-important. Finally, although much of his description of human life seems, as we shall see, to be motivated by a Kierkegaardian desire to free his readers from illusion, and to explain how they may lead their lives in the truth, yet he himself denies any such motive, and claims that his terms of description are absolutely neutral and non-evaluative. I shall return to this later. For the moment it must be enough to say that on this point it seems impossible to take Heidegger at his word.