Being And Time

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) is a German philosopher known principally for his codification of phenomenology as a method and school of philosophy. Teacher to Heidegger at the University of Freiburg, and his predecessor in the Chair of Philosophy there, Husserl had a major influence on Being and Time. Heidegger dedicates the work to Husserl “in friendship and admiration” and adopts Husserl’s phenomenological method as a means of pursuing his enquiry into Being. Nevertheless, Heidegger departs radically from Husserl’s conception of phenomenology in several ways. He drops the “phenomenological reduction,” a method Husserl saw as essential to phenomenology, and he uses phenomenology to address ontology, something Husserl believed to have been ruled out by the reduction.

Given Husserl’s theoretical centrality in Being and Time, there is relatively little discussion of his actual philosophy there. In fact, he is mentioned by name only once, in the introductory section on the “Method of Investigation” (section 7). Heidegger also does not state explicitly his differences from Husserl or the reasons for them. A highly significant thinker in his own right, Husserl was also a commentator and critic on Being and Time itself. His most important works include Logical Investigations (1900), Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy (1913), and The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936).

Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher and writer. Other than Husserl, he was perhaps the single biggest influence on Being and Time (although this is often thought to be Kierkegaard; see below). He is mentioned in connection with Heidegger’s discussion of history (488-49), in which Heidegger refers to the second essay of Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations (1876) and his concept of “monumental” history. This is about history as an inspiration to authentic action, rather than as an objective study of events.

Although not explicitly stated, Nietzsche’s philosophy also appears to be a significant influence on Heidegger’s discussion of the “they” and the idea of Dasein’s “fallenness.” This is particularly in connection with Nietzsche’s concept of the “last man” found in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1887) and describing a type of human being totally lost in a public and mediocre existence. This link is brought about more clearly by Heidegger in What is Called Thinking (1952). There he openly talks about Nietzsche’s “last man”, in what is an expanded discussion of the “idle talk” and “curiosity” concepts introduced in Being and Time.