Martin Heidegger Essay, Research Paper

? Martin Heidegger

Philosophy

?A major influence in the areas of phenomenology and ontology: they are the study of human behavior.

Background

?Born Sept. 22nd 1889

?Born in Messkirch Baden

?Died on May 26th 1976 in birth place

?Central figures in the existentialist movement

?He study Roman Catholic theology and philosophy at the university of Freiburg

Past influences

?Student of Edmund Husserl. (The founder of Phenomenology)

?Also by pre-Socratics, and by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and by the German philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche.

Philosophy in detail

?Most important work was being and time Written in 1927

?He concentrated on the philosophical and human question what is the meaning of being this lead to the question off what kind of ?being? human beings have.

?This is what he believed that human beings are thrown in to a world that they have not made but that consists of potentially useful things.

?He formed a relation between the mode of being of objects and of humanity and the structure of time. The individual is in danger of being submerged in a world of objects, which brings a fear; a fear of death and ultimate meaninglessness of life. Only if you comfort this fear you can experience a real sense of being and freedom.

?In 1953 he wrote a introduction to metaphysics. (Which was an interpretation of western concepts of being)

?He thought that modern technological society had an attitude that deprived being and human life of meaning, a condition he called nihilism.

?He thought that humanity had forgotten its true vocation which was to recover the deeper understanding of being that was achieved by the early Greek philosophers

?He wrote a book ?the question concerning technology? 1977 in which deals with the dehumanization in modern society.

Convincing Arguments

?He was greatly concerned with nihilism and thought that Nazism could provide the solution. But after WWI he describe the catastrophe as, ?the confrontation of humanity with global technology?

?But he was careful to approach technology with neither praise nor blame.

?He believed that machines would alter the human existence.

?He did die before the personal computer was invented but he foresaw the computer and called it the language machine.

?He believed the furthering of technology would in fact destroy the human understand and reasoning of what it is to be.

What happen to him?

?He died of natural death at 87 year of age.