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Martin Heidegger was born and died in the small German town of Messkirch in
the Black Forest region of Baden-Württemberg. His father was the caretaker of
the local Catholic church. Heidegger was reared as a Catholic and attended local
secondary schools, where he was particularly interested in the ancient Greeks and
the classics; this classical heritage remained the bedrock of his intellectual life. As
a teenager in a Jesuit seminary, he was captivated by Franz Brentano’s work on
Aristotle’s understanding of “Being.” He made the study of Being his life’s work
and never wavered from that goal.
After a brief period as a Jesuit novice, Heidegger studied philosophy at the
University of Freiburg. Excused from World War I for health reasons, he finished
his studies in 1916 with a thesis on the medieval thinker John Duns Scotus. For
the next seven years, he taught at the university, the last three years as the assis-
tant to Edmund Husserl. During this period of time, Heidegger apprenticed him-
self to Husserl’s phenomenological method, using it on his own special study of
Being. In 1923, Heidegger moved to the University of Marburg where, in 1927,
he published Being and Time,which proved to be his magnum opus.This work
was dedicated to his teacher and friend Husserl. When Husserl retired in 1928,
Heidegger assumed Husserl’s chair of philosophy at the University of Freiburg.
What followed is one of the most controversial episodes in recent philosophy.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the rector of the University of Freiburg
was ousted and Heidegger was elected to replace him. In the course of his inau-
gural lecture as rector, Heidegger made the following remarks:“Academic Freedom,” celebrated so often, is banished from the German
university;...this freedom was not genuine because it was only negative....TheMARTIN HEIDEGGER
1889–1976