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Martin Heidegger

67 quotes

• “The grandeur of man is measured according to what he seeks and according to the urgency by which he remains a seeker.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected "Problems" of "Logic" (Grundfragen der Philosophie: Ausgewählte "Probleme" der "Logik" (1984), translated by Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer, Indiana University Press, 1994, I…

• “To what fruitless discussions and fateful errors have the daring artifices of etymology led!”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Essence of Truth, 1931-32

• “The desire to philosophize from the standpoint of standpointlessness, as a purportedly genuine and superior objectivity, is either childish, or, as is usually the case, disingenuous.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Essence of Truth, 1931-32

• “Transcendence constitutes selfhood.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Essence of Ground (1929)

• “Warum ist überhaupt Seiendes und nicht vielmehr Nichts? Das ist die Frage.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: What is Metaphysics? (1929), p. 110

• “What is peddled about nowadays as philosophy, especially that of N.S. [National Socialism], but has nothing to do with the inner truth and greatness of that movement [namely the encounter between global technology and modern humanity] is nothing but fishing in that troubled sea of values and totalities.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Introduction to Metaphysics (1953) — a publication of lectures of 1935.

• “This Europe, which in its ruinous blindness is forever on the point of cutting its own throat, lies today in a great pincers, squeezed between Russia on one side and America on the other. From a metaphysical point of view, Russia and America are the same: the same dreary technological frenzy, the same unrestricted organization of the average man...”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Those in the crossing must in the end know what is mistaken by all urging for intelligibility: that every thinking of being, all philosophy, can never be confirmed by "facts," ie, by beings. Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. Those who idolize "facts" never notice that their idols only shine in a borrowed light. They are also meant not to notice this; for thereupon they would have to be at a loss and therefore useless. But idolizers and idols are used wherever gods are in flight and so announce their nearness.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) [Beitrage Zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)], notes of 1936–1938, as translated by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (1989)

• “Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Four Lectures on Technology (1949)

• “Das Bedenklichste in unserer bedenklichen Zeit ist, dass wir noch nicht denken.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: What is Called Thinking? [Was heisst Denken?] (1951–1952), as translated by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray (1968)

• “Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Question Concerning Technology (1954)

• “The Geschick of being: a child that plays... Why does it play, the great child of the world-play Heraclitus brought into view in the aiôn? It plays, because it plays. The "because" withers away in the play. The play is without "why." It plays since it plays. It simply remains a play: the most elevated and the most profound. But this "simply" is everything, the one, the only... The question remains whether and how we, hearing the movements of this play, play along and accommodate ourselves to the play.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Principle of Reason (1955–1956) as translated by Reginald Lilly (1991)

• “It is said that "being" is the most universal and the emptiest concept. As such it resists every attempt at definition. Nor does this most universal and thus indefinable concept need any definition. Everybody uses it constantly and also already understands what is meant by it.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Every questioning is a seeking. Every seeking takes its direction beforehand from what is sought. Questioning is a knowing search for beings in their thatness and whatness.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “But in fact there is no circle at all in the formulation of our question. Beings can be determined in their being without the explicit concept of the meaning of being having to be already available. If this were not so there could not have been as yet any ontological knowledge. And prob­ably no one would deny the factual existence of such knowledge. It is true that "being" is "presupposed" in all previous ontology, but not as an available concept-not as the sort of thing we are seeking.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Our elucidations of the preliminary concept of phenomenology show that its essential character does not consist in its actuality as a philosophical "movement." Higher than actuality stands possibility. We can understand phenomenology solely by seizing upon it as a possibility.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We ourselves are the entities to be analyzed”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Everyone is the other, and no one is himself. The they, which supplies the answer to the who of everyday Da-sein, is the nobody to whom every Da-sein has always already surrendered itself, in its being-among-one-another.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The domination of the public way in which things have been interpreted has already decided upon even the possibilities of being attuned, that is, about the basic way in which Da-sein lets itself be affected by the world. The they prescribes that attunement, it determines what and how one "sees.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In order to remain silent Da-sein must have something to say.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Nevertheless, the ultimate business of philosophy is to preserve the force of the most elemental words in which Dasein expresses itself, and to keep the common understanding from levelling them off to that unintelligibility which functions in turn as a source of pseudo-problems.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Being is only Being for Dasein”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Der Tod ist die Möglichkeit der schlechthinnigen Daseinsunmöglichkeit.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Existential analytics [the object of the book] decides nothing about the existence of God, about human freedom and the immortality of the soul.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The human body is essentially something other than an animal organism.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter on Humanism (1947)

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

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter on Humanism (1947)

• “What Is A Thing? Heidegger, Martin. Translated by W.B. Barton and V. Deutsch. What Is A Thing? Gateway Editions, 1968.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Plato has preserved in the Theaetetus - the story is that Thales, while occupied in studying the heavens above and looking up, fell into a well. A good-looking and whimsical maid from Thrace laughed at him and told him that while he might passionately want to know all things in the universe, the things in front of his very nose and feet were unseen by him." Plato added: "This jest also fits all those who become involved in Philosophy." Therefore, the question, What is a thing?" must always be rated as one that causes housemaids to laugh. p. 3”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Kant speaks of the "thing-in-itself" (Ding an sich) in order to distinguish it from the "thing-for-us" (Ding fur uns), that is, as a "phenomenon." A thing-in-itself is that which is not approachable through experience as are the rocks, plants, and animals. Every thing-for-us is as a thing and also a thing-in-itself, which means that it is recognized absolutely withing the absolute knowledge of God. But not every thing-in-itself is also a thing-for-us: God, for instance, is a thing-in-itself, as Kant uses the word, according to the meaning of Christian theology. p. 5”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The particularity (Jeweiligkeit) of the places and their manifoldness are grounded in space, and the particularity of the time points is grounded in time. That basic characteristic of the thing, that essential determination of the thingness of the thing to be this one (je dieses), is grounded in the essence of space and time. Our question "What is a thing?" includes, therefore, the questions "What is space?" and "What is time?" It is customary The particularity (Jeweiligkeit) os the places. p. 16”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There is no information about the thingness of the thing without knowledge of the kind of truth in which the thing stands. But there is no information about this truth of the thing without knowledge of the thingness of the thing whose truth is in question. Where are we to get a foothold? The ground slips away under us. Perhaps we are already close to falling into the well. At any rate the housemaids are already laughing. p. 27”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What is a thing?" is historical, because every report of the past, that is of the preliminaries to the question about the thing, is concerned with something static. This kind of historical reporting is an explicit shutting down of history, whereas it is, after all, a happening. We question historically if we ask what is still happening even if it seems to be past. We ask what is still happening and whether we remain equal to this happening so that it can really develop. p. 43”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Kant's philosophy shifts for the first time the whole of modern thought and being (Desein) into the clarity and transparency of the foundation (Begrundung). This determines every attitude toward knowledge since then, as well as the bounds (Abgrenzungen) and appraisals of the sciences in the nineteenth century up to the present time. Therein Kant towers so far above all who precede and follow that even those who reject him or go beyond him still remain entirely dependent upon him. p. 55-56”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Mathematics is as little a natural science as philosophy is one of the humanities. Philosophy in its essence belongs as little in the philosophical faculty as mathematics belongs to natural science. To house philosophy and mathematics in this way today seems to be a blemish or a mistake in the catalog of the universities. Plato put over the entrance to his Academy the words: "Let no one who has not grasped the mathematical enter here!" p. 69,75”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Kant stands in the tradition of the Leibniz-Wolffian school. He made the thinking through of English philosophy, especially Hume, fruitful for the formation of his own questioning. On the whole, however, the school-philosophy of Leibniz-Wolffian stamp remained predominant in Kant. He used Metaphysica 1739, by Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762) in his lectures in metaphysics and appreciated this textbook "especially for the richness and precision of its teaching method." p. 114”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In everything well known something worthy of thought still lurks.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If in Nietzsche’s thinking the prior tradition of Western thought is gathered and completed in a decisive respect, then the confrontation with Nietzsche becomes one with all Western thought hitherto.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “For anyone who at the end of Western philosophy can and must still question philosophically, the decisive question is no longer merely “What basic character do beings manifest?” or “How may the being of beings be characterized?” but “What is this ‘being’ itself?” The decisive question is that of “the meaning of being,” not merely that of the being of beings.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To stamp becoming with the character of being—that is the supreme will to power.” (WM 617) This suggests that becoming only is if it is grounded in being as being: “That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world of becoming to one of being.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Eternity, not as a static “now,” nor as a sequence of “nows” rolling off into the infinite, but as the “now” that bends back into itself. … Thinking the most difficult thought of philosophy means thinking being as time.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The critique of the highest values hitherto does not simply refute them or declare them invalid. It is rather a matter of displaying their origins as impositions which must affirm precisely what ought to be negated by the values established.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In Nietzsche’s view nihilism is not a Weltanschauung that occurs at some time and place or another; it is rather the basic character of what happens in Occidental history.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In contrast to “Blessed are they who do not see and still believe,” he speaks of “seeing and still not believing.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If beings are grasped as will to power, the “should” which is supposed to hang suspended over them, against which they might be measured, becomes superfluous. If life itself is will to power, it is itself the ground, principium, of valuation. Then a “should” does not determine being. Being determines a “should.” “When we talk of values we are speaking under the inspiration or optics of life: life itself compels us to set up values; life itself values through us whenever we posit values.” (VIII, 89)”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The small are always dependent on the great; they are “small” precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other “greats” and who can transform it in an original manner.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Nietzsche … does not shy from conscious exaggeration and one-sided formulations of his thought, believing that in this way he can most clearly set in relief what in his vision and in his inquiry is different from the run-of-the-mill.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “...der Wille zur »wahren Welt« im Sinne Platons und des Christentums … ist in Wahrheit ein Neinsagen zu unserer hiesigen Welt, in der gerade die Kunst heimisch ist.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The relation of feeling toward art and its bringing-forth can be one of production or one of reception and enjoyment.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We do not “have” a body; rather, we “are” bodily.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Nietzsche understands the aesthetic state of the observer and recipient on the basis of the state of the creator. Thus the effect of the artwork is nothing else than a reawakening of the creator’s state in the one who enjoys the artwork. Observation of art follows in the wake of creation. Nietzsche says (SM, 821), “—the effect of artworks is arousal of the art-creating state, rapture.”

  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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