Founding an existential ethic

Abstract

Perhaps the time has come for us to evaluate the significance of Martin Heidegger's work, in terms of what it says to the human situation. Although he was concerned with examining different levels of human existence, and experi? ence, his work remains strangely bereft of specific suggestive guidance to the problematic nature of contemporary existence. His major work, Being and Time, was concerned to elucidate the fundamental structures by which human existence manifests itself. Yet, ironically, despite using key terms that are usually taken to have a moral or religious import, his work studiously avoided the development of any moral philosophy. Just why this is so is a philosophical or historical problem to which Heidegger scholarship might well address itself. But, if one remains impressed by his analysis of the nature of hu? man existence and of the presuppositions it reveals, and is also concerned with the continuing problematic nature of contemporary existential situations, one is bound to consider the implications, suggested or mandated, for a coherent exis? tential ethic.