Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger
Heidegger in 1960
Born	26 September 1889 Meßkirch, Baden, Germany (German Empire)
Died	26 May 1976(1976-05-26) (aged 86) Meßkirch, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany
Education	Collegium Borromaeum [de] (1909–1911) University of Freiburg (PhD, 1914; Dr. phil. hab. 1916)
Spouse	Elfride Petri (m. 1917)
Partner(s)	Elisabeth Blochmann (1918–1969) Hannah Arendt (1924–1928)
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy Existentialism Hermeneutics Phenomenology
Institutions	University of Marburg University of Freiburg
Theses	The Doctrine of Judgment in Psychologism: A Critical-theoretical Contribution to Logic (1914) Duns Scotus's Doctrine of Categories and Meaning (1916)
Doctoral advisor	Arthur Schneider (PhD advisor) Heinrich Rickert (Dr. phil. hab. advisor)
Main interests	Art Greek philosophy Language Metaphysics Ontology Poetry Technology
Political party	Nazi Party (1933–1945)
Signature

Martin Heidegger (/ˈhaɪdɛɡər, ˈhaɪdɪɡər/;^[1] German: [ˈmaʁtiːn ˈhaɪdɛɡɐ];^[1] 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is often considered to be among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th century.

In April 1933, Heidegger was elected as rector at the University of Freiburg and was widely criticized for his membership and support for the Nazi Party during his time as rector. After World War II he was dismissed from Freiburg and was banned from teaching after denazification hearings at Freiburg. There has been controversy about the relationship between his philosophy and Nazism.

In Heidegger's first major text, Being and Time (1927), Dasein is introduced as a term for the type of being that humans possess. Heidegger believed that Dasein already has a "pre-ontological" and concrete understanding that shapes how it lives, which he analyzed in terms of the unitary structure of "being-in-the-world". Heidegger used this analysis to approach the question of the meaning of being; that is, the question of how entities appear as the specific entities they are. In other words, Heidegger's governing "question of being" is concerned with what makes beings intelligible as beings.

After the publication of Being and Time, Heidegger lectured on and wrote about subjects such as technology, Kant, metaphysics, and humanism.