Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th century. Wikipedia

• Born: September 26, 1889, Meßkirch, Germany

• Died: May 26, 1976, Meßkirch, Germany

• Written: Being and Time, The Question Concerning Technology, The Origin of the Work of Art, Introduction to Metaphysics, Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister", Contributions to Philosophy, What is Called Thinking?, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, What Is Philosophy?

Great Thoughts Of Martin Heidegger

“The possible ranks higher than the actual.”

“Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking.”

“Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?”

“The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.”

“Everyone is the other and no one is himself.”

“Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy.”

“Anyone can achieve their fullest potential, who we are might be predetermined, but the path we follow is always of our own choosing. We should never allow our fears or the expectations of others to set the frontiers of our destiny. Your destiny can't be changed but, it can be challenged. Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.”

“What was Aristotle’s life?’ Well, the answer lay in a single sentence: ‘He was born, he thought, he died.’ And all the rest is pure anecdote.”

“The human being is not the lord of beings, but the shepherd of Being.”

“I know that everything essential and great originated from the fact that the human being had a homeland and was rooted in tradition.”

“The senses do not enable us to cognize any entity in its Being; they merely serve to announce the ways in which 'external' Things within-the-world are useful or harmful for human creatures encumbered with bodies....they tell us nothing about entities in their Being.”

“As the ego cogito, subjectivity is the consciousness that represents something, relates this representation back to itself, and so gathers with itself.”