born Sept. 26, 1889, Messkirch, Schwarzwald, Ger.
died May 26, 1976, Messkirch, W.Ger.
German philosopher.
He taught at the universities of Marburg (192327) and Freiburg (192744). In 1927 he published his magnum opus, Being and Time . It strongly influenced Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialists, and, despite Heidegger's protestations, he was classed as the leading atheistic existentialist. His declared purpose in the work was to raise anew the question of the meaning of being. His preliminary analysis of human existence ( Dasein , or "being-there") employed the method of phenomenology . In the early 1930s his thought underwent a Kehre ("turning around"), which some have seen as an abandonment of the problem of Being and Time . Heidegger joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and supported Hitler's policies as rector of Freiburg (193334) and less actively through the end of the war. His complicity with the Nazis, which he never publicly disavowed, has prompted debates about whether his philosophy is inherently "totalitarian." Heidegger's work strongly influenced hermeneutics and poststructuralism .
Martin Heidegger.
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