Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) in his work Being and Time starts his investigation from the point his master had reached. Husserl had traced the elements of the world in their historical and psychological reality to the final state of "ideal essences" which, in turn, should give us the explanation of that historical and psychological reality.

For Heidegger, on the contrary, the existent reality should give us an understanding of the essence of reality. Thus every metaphysical investigation must start from reality as it is in our experience, i.e., from existent reality, and seek to determine what it is in its finiteness, i.e., in its existence and in its temporal possibilities for developing the different forms of its own existence.

Therefore, the initial problem of philosophy must be the following: Why am I here, rather than not existing at all? If I am able to determine the essence of the existent being, then I know what being is.

In his attempt to inquire into the nature of existence, Heidegger distinguishes two ways of living: the one, inferior, called the unauthentic; the other, superior, called the authentic. Unauthentic existence is an uncritical participation in the world as it is; authentic existence consists in an analysis of self. Although distinct, the unauthentic and the authentic life have some common characteristics:

* Actual participation in the world; this means that the existent being has a relationship to surrounding objects which he uses as instruments of his existence;
* Existence in a determined situation; this means that every situation is essentially individuated, limited and presents only one of the infinite number of possible ways of realizing existence. In this sense, the existent is in a state of inferiority, of privation, of radical poverty as regards plenitude of being.

On the other hand, the unauthentic life is distinct from the authentic life in many ways:

* The unauthentic life is characterized by its banality;
* The subject of such a life is not the individual, but an anonymous and featureless public ego ("das Mann"), the one-like-many, shirking personal responsibility and taking cues from the conventions of the masses;
* The result is a self-estrangement of human existence, which leads eventually to the blotting out of its possibilities and to its disintegration in the irrelevancy of everyday life.

Authentic existence is something decidedly different from everyday life. To live authentically means "to exist"; this in turn means to stand out -- from the Latin "ex-stare," i.e., to be outside the anonymous mass, to emerge from the world in which we find ourselves, and to accept our own situation with all its limitations.

To exist means both to stand apart (to withdraw) and to stand out (to be offered as a target for the fullness of being). Authentic existence, a conscious returning to oneself, is a means of discovering and disclosing that the surrounding banality of the world is vanity and disappears into "nothingness."

This universal sense of nothingness produces anguish. Anguish must not be confused with fear. Fear has as its object some determined thing, a determined danger; anguish, on the contrary, is a dread of that indefinite something which, because it is indefinite, is a dread of nothing in particular.

The struggle with anguish and the outcome of this struggle opens new horizons as regards the interpretation of being. Even though men and things are fashioned by "nothingness," I exist, I am not nothing; but I come from nothing. I accept my existence, with all the responsibilities involved in my present situation. I am aware that I am a finite being, and I can reach the fullness of my being only to the degree that my circumstances permit.

The scope of my potentialities depends on time (the second section of Heidegger's work). Time is what I am not yet; it is my present situation in so far as it is moving toward my possibilities. Time is the horizon open to me. But time tells me that every being has its own end. Being is for death. Thus I am an "existent being destined for death." And since I accept existence with all its ramifications, I accept my death without fear.

Heidegger's Existentialism is a valuable contribution to the understanding of individual life; but being guided by no spiritual principle, Heidegger ends with destruction and death.