Martin Heidegger : The forgetfulness of Being DAVID E . COOPERTLS , July 18 , 2018 Martin Heidegger ’ s writings owe their fascination to their fusion of radical criticism of the Western philosophical tradition with a dark , trenchant diagnosis of the “ homelessness ” and “ destitute ” condition of human beings in modernity . Heidegger ’ s work has enjoyed unrivalled influence in a wide range of twentieth - century philosophical movements or fields – phenomenology and existentialism , pragmatism and postmodernism , hermeneutics and poetics , theology and environmental ethics . Phenomenologists and pragmatists could applaud his “ destruction ” of Cartesian rationalism , existentialists his call to “ authenticity ” , and environmentalists his reflections on “ the devastation of the earth ” . Heidegger ’ s influence might have been greater still if potential admirers had not been deterred by his challenging vocabulary or by his connection to Nazism . With the exception of his Nazi association , Heidegger ’ s life was relatively uneventful . Born in the Black Forest region , to which he would always remain strongly attached , he studied Theology at Freiburg University with entry into the priesthood in mind , but switched to Philosophy when he judged Catholicism to be “ problematic ” . He became the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl ’ s assistant , succeeding to his mentor ’ s Chair in 1928 . In 1933 Heidegger joined the Nazi party , a few days after being made Rector of his university , a position he resigned from a year later . Although he was to become disillusioned with the Nazis , his behaviour during the 1930 s – including his treatment of Jewish colleagues – was often self - serving . His recently published Black Notebooks , moreover , suggest a sympathy for anti - Semitic attitudes that he always denied . Heidegger continued to teach at Freiburg until the end of the Second World War , when he was banned from doing so for his support of the Nazis . Made an Emeritus Professor in 1951 , he continued until the 1970 s to give lectures , to write , often in his “ mountain hut ” in the Black Forest , and to enjoy his growing international reputation as a sage . Heidegger died in 1976 . That Heidegger ’ s writings were so diversely influential might suggest that they are a hodgepodge of discussions on unrelated topics . While the hundred or so volumes of his Collected Works indeed address many issues , there is nonetheless a considerable unity to them , for they revolve around a central question . Is it possible to reconcile the uniqueness of human existence with being “ at home ” in the world ? Can we live authentically human lives – ones fundamentally different from those of any other beings – without being compelled to regard ourselves as “ aliens ” , set apart from the rest of reality ? To this question , Heidegger gave a single answer throughout his career , albeit one that was significantly modified . This answer was that we must overcome “ the forgetfulness of Being ” , for to “ recall ” and reflect on Being ( Sein ) enables us both to appreciate our uniqueness and to feel at home in the world . This talk of Being may sound obscure , but at least in his most famous work , Being and Time ( 1927 ) , what he means by it is fairly straightforward . The Being of entities is “ that on the basis of which they are already understood ” by us , however implicitly and inchoately . In other words , the Being of an entity is the condition under which we can recognize it as an entity of a certain kind . For example , as we ’ ll soon see , it is only on the basis of forms of human practice that entities like hammers can be recognized and understood . To “ forget ” Being is , therefore , to ignore the conditions – forms of practice , for instance – that make it possible for us to experience things , for anything to “ show up ” for us . This failure of attention , Heidegger argues , is endemic in Western philosophical tradition , most strikingly in the Cartesian picture that , he maintains , nearly all philosophers since Descartes have broadly endorsed . With its strict division between selves and the world , subjects and objects , or mind and nature , this picture sets us against the world , in effect treating it as alien to us . And it is a bad picture , since in reality , Heidegger argues , we and the world cannot , even notionally , exist without one another : “ self and world ” are not “ two beings ” , but mutually dependent . The Cartesian picture results from viewing us in an over - intellectual way – as , essentially , “ thinking things ” who observe objects and mentally represent them . Phenomenological attention , undistorted by theory , to “ things themselves ” yields a very different picture of how we relate to the world , however . We do so , not as “ spectators ” or “ thinkers ” , but “ primordially ” as agents , for whom things are revealed as “ equipment ” , as things – like hammers – that we use and which owe their identity to their place in purposive human activities , such as carpentry . The world is intelligible to us , in the first instance , as a “ relational totality ” of “ ready - to - hand equipment ” , in which each thing has significance for us through its location in this “ sign - like ” whole . The hammer is implicated in a whole form of life – of working , building , bringing up a family and so on . To be sure , it is possible to stand back from this practical involvement and simply look at and examine objects . But this detached standpoint is parasitic on practical engagement . Nothing would show up for examination unless it had first been “ uncovered ” through our everyday practices . Necessarily , then , we are beings - in - the - world , integrally connected with the world through our skilful “ coping ” with it . This account of our being - in - the - world , Heidegger recognizes , does not do justice to the unique character of human existence : after all , animals also cope with , and to a degree understand , their environments . What is missing is the appreciation that creatures with our kind of Being ( Dasein ) are not only “ absorbed ” in everyday practices , but are able to regard their lives as an “ issue ” for them – to take stock of these lives and make them “ their own ” , by giving them sense and direction . only when we choose to do this are our lives “ authentic ” , and no longer the “ inauthentic ” ones we lead when we allow , as we do for the most part , our practices , tastes and interests to be dictated by “ Them ” ( Das Man ) , the faceless “ public ” that dominates in the “ average everydayness ” of human life . The capacity for authentically seizing hold of one ’ s life is intimated by Angst – an “ uncanny ” mood in which “ everyday familiarity collapses ” , so that previously entrenched convictions lose their hold . Precisely because Angst is a disturbing mood , however , people are more than ready to suppress or “ flee from ” it , back into the reassuring arms of “ Them ” . The authentic life , for Heidegger , is not – as it was for some later existentialists – one of making groundless “ commitments ” in an “ absurd ” world and accepting responsibility for them . It is , instead , “ anticipatory resoluteness ” – a quiet readiness to respond to one ’ s “ situation ” , free from “ Their ” facile opinions and “ idle chatter ” . How a person should respond , Heidegger proposes , is to be guided by “ heritage ” , by the authority of traditions that can be recalled and pitted against the “ comfortable shirking ” ways of “ Them ” . It is through heritage , the tried and tested “ source ” of the “ possibilities ” available to us – through , for example , recalling the past “ heroes ” of that heritage – that we obtain a “ clear vision ” of our historical situation and achieve distance from the conventions and diktats of the present . The call for a people to “ take over ” its heritage helps to explain Heidegger ’ s perception of Hitler ’ s accession to power in 1933 as a “ new dawn ” . Hitler liked to compare himself with past heroes of German history , such as Siegfried , and in the nostalgic , bucolic ideology of many of his supporters , Heidegger – always happier in the countryside than in the city – discerned an antidote to the “ enfeeblement of the spirit ” caused by Bolshevism and American - style capitalism . His subsequent disillusion with National Socialism in turn helps to explain the recessive character of the theme of a people ’ s heritage in Heidegger ’ s later writings . But this left a gap in his ambition to reconcile the ability of people to be at home in their world with their living authentically human lives . For without the appeal to heritage as the authority for the decisions I must make , it seems I must choose between inauthentic submersion in the ways of “ Them ” and anxious , unresolvable fretting about my situation and the direction of my life . There were other developments in Heidegger ’ s thinking during the 1930 s , which also led him to reconsider the question of “ homelessness ” and the “ forgetfulness of Being ” . For one thing , he now recognises that the kinds of Being described in Being and Time were not exhaustive . Art works , for example , are neither “ equipment ” nor mere physical objects . Their form of Being is to “ open up ” significant aspects of the world , or even – as in the case of Greek temples – to inspire a people ’ s understanding of their environment and themselves . Moreover , he now sees that none of the ways in which things are revealed to people – none of the conditions that enable experience and understanding – is universal or timeless . There has , Heidegger argues , been a long “ history of Being ” : in effect , a history of the ways in which the world has , in different epochs , been revealed to and experienced by people , from Presocratic Greeks to medieval Christians to Cartesian scientists to ourselves . “ Being ” has now become the name of something more recessive than the conditions under which things are encountered and understood . Alongside other terms that Heidegger sometimes prefers , such as “ The Event ” , “ The Giving ” or simply “ It ” , “ Being ” refers to the ineffable source of all the various ways in which the world is revealed . In a remark that indicates Heidegger ’ s debt to Asian thought , especially Daoism , this source is called the Way or Dao that “ gives all ways ” and “ makes way for everything ” . Heidegger ’ s history of Being has a direction . It is the story of our increasing forgetfulness of Being and , correspondingly , of the increasingly powerful “ stamp ” of human purposes and predilections on how the world is conceived . one episode , for example , was the Cartesian picture of the world as one whose only objective properties – such as extension – are those that are scientifically measurable . The world was , in effect , determined by a “ ground plan ” , a pre - emptive determination to allow only certain entities as real . But it is the final episode in his history on which Heidegger focuses , the epoch of “ technology ” . By this term , he does not mean technological enterprises , but a way of revealing the world that is manifest in such activities . Technology reveals the world as “ standing reserve ” that is “ on tap ” for humankind to exploit . “ The earth reveals itself as a coal mining district , the soil as a mineral deposit ” , the Rhine as both a “ water power supplier ” and a tourist attraction . With technology , the forgetfulness of Being is complete . For , with the world experienced as stuff for human use , all sense of its source in something mysterious and beyond human control is lost . The very idea that technology is only one way of revealing is itself suppressed . Homelessness , too , is complete in the age of technology . It is not simply that technological frenzy uproots populations from “ their native soil ” , but that nothing guides the whole process . The only aim is “ maximum yield at minimum expense ” , but no one knows what is supposed to be the yield , so that “ man stumbles aimlessly about ” in a world that he does not understand and cannot feel secure in . Several of Heidegger ’ s essays in the 1950 s and 60 s – elusive , haunting , beautiful – ask how we might respond to technology and retrieve a sense of Being so as to enable an authentically human existence within this “ monstrous ” epoch . There is no prospect , of course , of putting a stop to technology , so it is pointless to rail against it as “ the work of the devil ” . This resignation is confirmed , rather than countered , by his famous remark that “ only a God can save us ” . Heidegger does , however , think it possible for individual men and women , “ here and now and in humble things ” , to loosen the grip of technology on their lives . This is to be achieved by what he calls “ releasement ” ( Gelassenheit ) to “ things ” . The word “ thing ” now has a special resonance . A “ thing ” – a jug , a Black Forest farmhouse , a tree or a heron – is something experienced in its power to “ gather ” various dimensions of the world . A jug , say , is a “ gathering ” of what Heidegger poetically refers to as the “ fourfold ” of “ earth , sky , mortals and gods ” . To be “ released ” to the jug – to “ let it be ” and experience it for what it essentially is – is to step back from the technological perspective and to see the jug in its rich array of relationships to nature , social and family life , ritual and the life of the spirit . There are echoes here of the earlier talk of “ ready - to - hand ” entities , like hammers , as “ sign - like ” items that have meaning through their place in a network of practices and “ equipment ” . But the meaning of a “ thing ” is richer and wider – its role in “ gathering ” all dimensions of the world . There are echoes , too , of the idea of authenticity as liberation from prevailing interpretations and perspectives , so as to stand receptive to heritage . The “ releasement ” Heidegger now envisages , however , is openness to Being itself . In an authentically human existence , a person is “ the shepherd of Being ” , a “ clearing ” in which “ things ” show themselves for what they are , no longer regimented and distorted by technology or any other anthropocentric way of revealing . Heidegger ’ s final name for an authentic comportment towards a world in which one feels at home is “ dwelling ” – “ the basic character of Being in keeping with which mortals exist ” . To “ dwell ” is to “ protect and care for ” , not only in the sense of tending , but in that of honouring the integrity of “ things ” and “ setting them free ” from all - too - human preconceptions . It is to do so , moreover , in the quiet confidence that “ things ” – and , indeed , human beings – have their “ source ” in an ineffable “ hidden stream that makes way for everything ” . To “ dwell ” is to have overcome the forgetfulness of Being and cultivated a sense of the “ source ” . The language here is strikingly close to that of the Daoist sages , for whom the special destiny of humankind is to “ nourish ” the things whose source , like its own , is the Dao . on a wall of Heidegger ’ s study hung a scroll with words from the Daodejing , a work on whose translation , later abandoned , he once embarked . “ Heidegger the existentialist ” , “ Heidegger the pragmatist ” , “ Heidegger the postmodernist ” . . . these titles are not without warrant . But it is “ Heidegger the latter - day Daoist ” that best captures the tone of his final reflections on mystery , homelessness and the only salvation to which , in the absence of a God , we might aspire . The long “ path of thinking ” , as he called it , that led to these final reflections is , many readers have found , at once an intellectual adventure and a journey of personal transformation . David E . Cooper is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the University Of Durham