100 definitions
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Martin Heidegger: top 100 quotes
100 definitions on 33 concepts
Phenomenology (n.) is grounded in the idea that we never perceive a throng of individual sensations combined, rather we 'hear the storm whistle in the chimney' or 'the three-engine aeroplane'.
Phenomenology (n.) is primarily a methodological conception, not of the 'what' an object is, but of the 'how' of the research i.e., how do we form an understanding which constitutes the 'what of an object'.
Art (n.) is a riddle, an enigma, and thus the movement of questioning about art must be circular, for only through a circular movement of questioning can the question be held open.
Art (n.) is a way of questioning. It does not give answers, but has, like philosophy, an important role in the unfolding of the question of being.
Being (n.) is not substance, nor process. It is that on the basis of which beings are already understood.
Being (n.) is that on the basis of which entities are already understood.
Being (n.) is always the being of some entity, being is not itself some kind of higher-order being waiting to be discovered.
Being (n.) is not an empty abstraction but something in which all of us are immersed up to our necks, and indeed over our heads.
Being (n.) is not dependent on man. It creates man as its abode.
Being (n.) is, along with truth, a thing without a fixed nature readily accessible to us. We give different accounts of both at different times, and what they are at any given time depends in part on our questions and answers about them.
Being (n.) is always the being of some entity or another. Therefore, in our investigation of the meaning of being, we should first bring forward entities in themselves and discover their being.
A Being (n.) is an entity that exists independently of our experience, but 'being' 'is' only in the understanding of that entity to whose being belongs such a thing as understanding of being. If there were no 'dasein' there would be no being, but there would be beings.
A Being (n.) is anything at all that has existence of some sort.
Being (n.) is different for different sorts of things. To hope the Smiths are from Manchester is different than to desire, or fear, or remember that they are from Manchester.
Being (n.) is neither a thing nor a genus so it cannot be defined according to logic, whose job is to set out the rules that govern the categorisation of phenomena and concepts.
Being (n.) is neither substance or process but the style of life manifest in the way everyday practices are coordinated. In heideggerian terms, it 'is that on the basis of which beings are already understood'.
Being (n.) is only accessible to us via our every day existence's understanding of being, which in turn, requires an understanding of our everyday existence.
Being (n.) is only in the understanding of the beings whose being involves such a thing as understanding of being. Being can therefore be uncomprehended but it is always to some extent understood.
Being (n.) is simply the-intelligibility-that-makes-entities-accessible. It not some super entity or general property of all entities. This intelligibility depends upon the style of each particular cultural epoch.
Being's (n.) every part is never truly isolate from it taken as a whole, and is in fact a reflection of that whole.
Being (n.) affects the questions we can ask about it. We can ask what a hammer is but, with man, the question should be 'who is man'. And the answer will not be a list of properties.
Being's (n.) peculiarity shows itself in the 'it gives' and the 'its giving as sending.' What is peculiar to being is not anything having the character of being.
Being (n.) is missed by direct thought — to explicitly think about is to be led away from. Instead one must in a sense 'think the destiny' that gives being as a gift.
A Being (n.) holds sway and unfolds while being, by contrast, simply 'is'.
Death (n.) is the impossibility of further possibilities.
Death (n.) is an internal self-relation. It is what we, in our everyday existence, incorporate as the very condition around which we act in our everyday existence.
Death (n.) is encountered daily in everyday life. In our indifference toward it lies the moment of our thrusting death aside. Here dasein evades death and pushes it aside as a possibility.
Death (n.) is the defining and unique characteristic of human life. Animals, by contrast, do not die, they only end.
Death (n.) is the loss of the world, the loss of concern and the loss of tasks to accomplish. As such, it is the end of 'possibility', the very hallmark of one's everyday experience.
Death (n.) is the ultimate possibility of our everyday existence. Our everyday existence is one of continual dying and attempts to avoid that dying.
Language (n.) plays with us, not us with it.
Language (n.) is not mental but a public object with a history.
Language (n.) is not shaped and mastered by man. For strictly, it is language that speaks. Man first speaks when, and only when, he responds to language by listening to its appeal.
Language (n.) is the idea that it is not us who play with words, but rather, it is the nature of language which plays with us.
A Philosopher (n.) is tasked to alert us to what is worthy of questioning.
A Thing (n.) is defined not by the question 'what is a thing'' Which ultimately is a metaphysical question much along the lines of 'where is the dog'' This formulation begs the question, 'whose dog' In what sense'.
A Thing (n.) is neither a piece of physical mass (as naturalism has it) nor appearances in consciousness (as phenomenology would have it) but an event.
Interpretation (n.) is a development of understanding involving an articulation of what the understanding understands.
Interpretation (n.) is grounded in the idea that we always already understand to some extent (or else we could not even begin). As such, it is always a move only from relatively little understanding to better understanding.
Interpretation (n.) is never presuppositionless, but is always grounded in advance in a prior conception located in the fore-structure of the understanding.
Interpretation (n.) is a process whereby we must begin with certain faulty interpretations in order to arrive at a genuine interpretation.
Interpretation (n.) is the 'laying out' of the place of things in the world as we understand it.
Interpretation (n.) is the laying out of the 'as-structure', that is, in our everyday dealings, we 'see' things as a table, a door, a carriage or a bridge.
Hermeneutics (n.) is not, primarily, interpreting, but rather the bringing of tidings and a message, an act involving the 'presence of the presencing'.
Time (n.) is directional. It flows toward the future with the future defined simply insofar as it is the recipient of time.
Time (n.) is not a container in which the life of a human being unfolds. Rather, we are constantly projecting ourselves into a world that contains possibilities arising from our past, possibilities which we can either take up authentically or inauthentically in the present, and most importantly, possibilities of the future.
Time (n.) is not a linear string of unrelated 'nows'... future, having-been and present are always inseparably together. The future is not 'later' than the past... the past is not 'earlier' than the present. This is what is most difficult to understand.
Time (n.) is not a mere string of uniform, indifferent now-points but rather it is tied up in relations. The 'now' is essentially a now-that (as in now it is time to go to lunch or now it is time to go home) , and it is significant, which is to say, meaningful.
Time (n.) is not a purely 'inner' quality or a mode of consciousness or subjective experience. Rather, one has time 'for something'.
Time (n.) is not a string of now points both the future and the past enter into the present... on the one hand the future is not at all merely a not-yet-now and on the other, the past is something that is still going on.
Time (n.) is not a temporal thing. It does not exist in empirical reality. It itself is not present, has never been present, and will never be present in the empirical world. Although it conditions all experience, it itself cannot be experienced.
Time (n.) is not an 'inner' subjective quality, but rather it is public and datable and embodied such that one has time 'for something'.
Time (n.) is not an image of eternity. On the contrary, it finds its image in our finitude. The meaning of time does not lie in eternity which is beyond our grasp. Rather it lies in an end, and that end lies within our grasp.
Time (n.) is not limited to counting and measuring, which is derivative of what can be called 'calculative thinking.'.
Time (n.) is not something that is counted, but the very structure of human experience itself. We are not in time... we are time.
Time (n.) is not to be understood in terms of change and motion or in terms of permanence and rest. Time has to be understood in terms of phenomena such as heritage, fate and death.
Time (n.) is not what is counted, but rather what does the 'counting'. Time is not a linear series of now-points already there waiting to be counted... nor is it an inert container-framework.
Time (n.) is constitutive of its own ground: temporality temporalizes.
Time (n.) is directional, flowing ineluctably, as it does, toward the future.