Martin Heidegger in the Perspective of the Twentieth Century: Reflections on the Heidegger Gesamtausgabe

Abstract

The year 1989 marked the centenary of the birth of Freiburg thinker Martin Heidegger and the thirteenth year since his death in 1976. However one might judge Heidegger's contribution to twentieth-century thought, there can be little doubt concerning the profundity of its influence in the decades following the publication of his work Being and Time in 1927. During the years before and just after World War II, Being and Time constituted the primary source of Heidegger's With the publication of a large number of Heidegger's writings composed during the following decades it became evident, however, that this work was only the first-albeit among the most important-expressions of Heidegger's thinking, spanning six decades of continuous productivity. If these decades witnessed numerous twists in Heidegger's thought and a significant turn in his orientation during the 1930s and 1940s, upon which I will have occasion to comment below, the Freiburg philosopher nonetheless often emphasized the continuity of his endeavors in relation to the central query which, from Being and Time onward, he addressed ever and again: the Seinsfrage, or question concerning the meaning of Being. According to Heidegger's own interpretation, the Seinsfrage served as the leitmotiv that revealed the different topics of his work as so many perspectives oriented toward a single backdrop, whether they dealt with the foundations of Western logic, the origin of the work of art, the essence of language and poetic expression, or any other of the manifold themes of his investigations. In view of the seemingly recondite character of this leitmotiv unifying Heidegger's endeavors, it may seem paradoxical to refer to his thought as having a profound influence. Few questions, indeed, would seem farther removed from the standard discourse of philosophy in the post-World War II period than the question of Being. In what terms, therefore, might one speak of the meaning of Heidegger's endeavors in the perspective of the twentieth century? In the following pages I shall propose a brief response to this question. I will develop my ideas in the framework of a critical appraisal of the collected edition or Gesamtausgabe of Heidegger's works, the first volumes of which Heidegger himself helped to edit in the years before his death. This Gesamtausgabe, which