Martin Heidegger is one of the crucial figures of twentieth-century thought, comparable in influence or effect to Ludwig Wittgenstein or Albert Einstein. His philosophical work forms a profound and deeply critical reflection on the very bases of Western thought, stretching back to the ancient Greeks, and a critique of the modern age, which he saw as the grim culmination of that thought.

The issue is “being”, a concept often dismissed in philosophy as just an empty abstraction, or the broadest generalization possible, for the least that one can say of anything is that it “is”. For Heidegger, however, the question of being is the neglected issue of Western thought, secretly determining its possibilities and its destructiveness.

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First published 17 July 2001

Citation: Clark, Timothy. "Martin Heidegger". The Literary Encyclopedia. 17 July 2001.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5174, accessed 9 February 2010.]