A traditional university career
In 1907, Doctor Conrad Gröber, future archbishop of Freiburg, offers to him the essay of Franz Brentano Of the multiple significance of being at Aristote (1862), first work of philosophy read by Heidegger and whose topic announces its future concerns. Giving up the priesthood for which it was intended confusedly, it finishes its secondary studies with the gymnasium of Freiburg and obtains its diploma of end of studies in 1909. Until 1914, it receives at the university of Freiburg a solid and traditional formation, primarily theological, but so philosophical, accompanied by course of mathematics, biology and of history. It starts to read Husserl, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Dilthey, Dostoïevski, Höderlin and Hegel. In 1915, it completes its thesis (Treated categories and significance at Duns Scot) and becomes at once, at twenty-six years, part-time lecturer nontitular. After the bracket of the war (1917-1919), he is practically the assistant of Husserl until 1923, date on which he becomes nontitular professor at the university of Marbourg.  

By leaving Freiburg for Marbourg, Heidegger penetrates in another cultural universe, to which it will not stick. An interpretation different from the Kantian tradition opposes at the time the two universities: the School of Marbourg (Cohen, Natorp, Cassirer) privileges epistemological dimension, the theory of knowledge, the examination of sciences; in Freiburg, on the contrary, the orientation is metaphysical; criticisms that Husserl develops with regard to philosophies Cartesian and Kantian go in the direction of a toughening of their project: to purify philosophies of the subject of any psychology to give them the statute even science, science of lived, discovered things even starting from the activity of the subject. But, in 1923, Heidegger does not spare already any more his sour criticisms against the old Master, at least without his knowledge. In addition, if it gave up since 1919 adhesion with the catholic system, there remains deeply marked by the judgment of the modern spirit and individualism, with the profit of the romantic recognition of the authority and the community which characterizes the Freibourgese catholic mediums.  

When in 1927, at the request of the senior of the faculty of Marbourg, it publishes its first work (To be and time), this one made with everyone the effect of a rupture. The innovation of the vocabulary, the manner of posing the problems, which deviates appreciably from the tone of the time, immediately draw to him the attention. In 1928, Husserl taking his retirement, Heidegger returns to Freiburg and occupies with his continuation, as full professor, a pulpit which it will not leave any more. He is thirty-nine years old. Confirming its orientations, two works appear back-to-back then, during the year 1929: Kant and the problem of metaphysics and What metaphysics? - text of its marked inaugural lesson at the University.  

Thus the first period of a traditional university career in Germany of the time is completed. But, since 1929, very critical with regard to the Weimar Republic, Heidegger in it this bankruptcy of the modern democracies sees, whose rationalist universalism is indissociable in its eyes of unauthenticity in which the middle-class world of work makes live the men, fault of putting the true questions of the value and the legitimacy of its categories. The crisis of 1929 is the symptom more the indicator of this supposed decline, and Heidegger expresses an lively interest for the radicalism of the movement National Socialist, which one knows which ambiguous effects it could produce at his beginnings on the currents of revolutionary socialist thought. Only this “movement” seems to him to contain a revolutionary dash authentic, able to save Germany of a liberal middle-class policy to which it will be always hostile, as of what is for him only one particular form: Marxist Communism.  
 

It is thus extremely logically that it accepts, after the seizure of power by Hitler (January 30th, 1933), to be elected on on April 21st of the same year vice-chancellor of the university of Freiburg. At the same time, it adheres to the Nazi party, takes part in many official demonstrations and makes the Speech of the vice-chancellorship, published at once, which tries philosophically to justify this abrupt entry in policy and this total rallying with a party which however causes more and more against him the consensus of the German intellectuals. The period which follows, disturbs and complex, is the object, today still, of passionate debates which could undoubtedly never be distinct definitively, most private papers of the philosopher having been withdrawn from the publication by family decision - fact which constitutes in oneself an aggravating circumstance.

But do they need to be it? Because, without entering in detail, essence can be established. First of all, Heidegger reconsiders his positions rather quickly, by noting the dissension between the idea that it was made National Socialism and its reality: policy like the others, more “stupid” even as another (because he judges it according to metaphysics criteria and nonethical), in any case stripped of this philosophical dimension which he wanted to see there. He resigns of his functions of vice-chancellor in February 1934 and takes again the wire of his teaching on Nietzsche, the technique, the work of art, during which he does not deprive himself to make criticisms on the policy of the power in place.  

However there remains adherent Nazi party until its disappearance at the end of the war, and one can see in this fact, rather than a timorous inertia, the indication of a community of thought which will be seen confirmed after war: Heidegger will always maintain that it could and had to leave the different Nazism thing that what was. Lastly, in spite of many requests, never Heidegger will not formulate a final judgment of the Hitlerian policy, and in particular of the extermination, in connection with which it will keep until the end a silence very variously interpreted (approval or indifference for the ones, conscience of the hugeness of the task necessary for this criticism according to the others). At all events, during the war, not being able to be confused neither with an opponent nor with pure and simple ideologist of the mode, Heidegger marginalizes itself, and prohibition to teach associated with a suspension on the part of the allied authorities in 1945 does nothing but accentuate this withdrawal. This prohibition is raised in 1951, and Heidegger takes again his teaching until 1958, then, after its retirement, it directs seminars into private episodically.  
 

In 1955, Heidegger is invited in France: he meets, inter alia, Jacques Lacan with the Conference of Cerisy and René Char in Paris. He returns to France on 1958, a journey to Greece in 1962 and takes part in 1966.1968 and 1969 to three seminars in Thor, in Provence, at the René Char poet, with Beaufret. The friendship of these two resistant undoubtedly little did not contribute to scramble in the spirit of the French the comprehension of the reports of Heidegger with the policy. The last years see its importance growing in France, while in Germany its thought remains often appreciated as an irrationalist mysticism which is not appropriate to him however. Gadamer or Marcuse, which one cannot understand without him, already took their distances for a long time, but did not judge it in these terms. Heidegger dies on on May 26th, 1976, in his native village, Messkirch.

The question of being it
“Metaphysics, it is the interrogation which exceeds being it on which she questions, in order to recover it like such and as a whole, for its conceptual seizure.” Of Plato with Descartes, via Thomas d' Aquin, the same gesture is repeated: one wonders about the things and one locates their gasoline beyond appearances. On these gasolines, only realities, one questions oneself again, in order to apprehend their contents, their substance which only residence beyond the misleading movement of significant appearances. For Heidegger, this going beyond is not faithful to its originating impulse: it stops in the contemplation of realities more real than the others (gasolines), without wondering what constitutes the being of all these realities, which makes it possible to say of all which they are. Whatever their row, these realities are in fact only étants, they take part to be it but are not the being itself. For a thought accustomed to seize only étants, which are given only on the mode of the presence, mediate or immediate, the being well rather proves to be one nothing, nothing of being, of which it is quite difficult to say another thing. God is the privileged example of this absolute base, causes self, which is given for radically other, and which is however only one being among the different ones; the most real being, most perfect, but of the same kind of perfection and reality that of our too human everyday life: presence, substance, objectivity.  

The question of being it thus has this again, on the one hand, which it carries on the same categories as metaphysics is given for ultimate, and than it proposes in their turn to exceed them; in addition, that she thinks this going beyond like radical, i.e. as excluding any answer which is not worthy of the question (with the question “what the being?” one cannot answer: such being). The answer will not be able to consist in the designation of a particular authority. it was supreme, but in the analysis of the structure which makes possible any designation of authority, whatever it is; not: “Why there is such thing?” but: “Why is there something and not rather nothing? ”; finally, this question must make it possible to seize in return the fact even of the totality of being in the enigma of its presence, and not simply to state a concept of being, “as a whole”.  

Thus, the question of being it is more precisely the question of the “direction of being it”, heard like sensitivity particular to a certain kind of glance, of interrogation: it is a question of having the “direction to be it more” still than to wonder which is the significance of the word being.  

The being-there
However it is, among the whole of the étants, a place where this direction to be it is apparent, or less dissimulated, which elsewhere. It is there, rather than known, lived, seized in the form of a provision which is neither a subjective feeling nor a rational intuition. Metaphysics sees in the man, “animal rational”, this being except for which is precisely characterized by faculty to question itself. But what is originating, for Heidegger, it is not the glance related by a reason spectator to one given, it is a specific measure which makes possible this given and constitutes it well before knowing it.  

It is from the point of view ultimately very Kantian that Heidegger refuses this substantialisation of a subject vis-a-vis the being like object, in a pure report for not involved knowledge. But, pushing back even any subjectivity, it names “being-there” (Dasein) what was indicated before like thinking conscience, and “concern” the general tonality of its activity. This term of Dasein, which one wanted to translate improperly, in the years 1930, by that of “human reality”, evokes the opening, freedom or the “play” who characterizes the human being, place of this astonishing contraction to be it which suddenly comes to be said in the language like a multiplicity of étants. The analytical one of Dasein, i.e. the study of the structure of its relational behaviors, at the same time practical and emotional, will reveal the “existentiaux ones”, or categories, with through which can be deciphered the nature of the relationship between the being and the étants.  

Thus Dasein is primarily “being-with-world”: it is to say that it is not a given being, locked up in the simple presence of its “nature”, but that, marked by a fundamental indetermination, it is open on the play of the possibilities, “ek-sistant”, i.e. being held entire out of oneself, as a place delivered to the deployment of relations which are not the expression of a substance (or of a subject). As such, it is “being-jeté”, because it has always already a certain total manner to refer to the world by understanding it, “emotional situation” in which all the other men are implied, supposed: it is thus also “being-with”.  

Thus Dasein is marked of a fundamental “historiality”, i.e. of a historicity constitutive, irremediable, which does not occur to him of the outside in the form of the temporal succession. This originating temporality is a contemporaneity of the three authorities of time (past-present-future) gathered in a single dimension: thus, in the language can appear in the moment the totality of the étants present, passed and to come.  

Thus the world itself, seized naively by the conscience like a world of things given, appears contrary to the point of view of the analysis of Dasein like a “mondaneity” dependant on the being-there: it is the significance and the projective intentionality of its relation to it which constitutes it. The “world” is of nothing one “in oneself” independent. It “is not ontologiquement a determination that being it (human) primarily is not, but a character of the being-there (Dasein) itself”. To indicate this integration of the étants starting from an originating seizure, Heidegger will speak about a world of “tools”.  

Thus still, in the emotional provision of the anguish, is carried out confrontation between Dasein and this nothing of being, nothing representable to be it on the bottom of which the fragile one emerges, ridiculous and obsessing “reality” of the world of the étants.  
 Lastly, more still than other existentiaux which remains inside the itself project like its particular determinations, anticipation of death, which is not simply the knowledge of what must arrive, but, as it reveals all the other possibilities in their nature of pure possibilities, led to characterize the being-there, more generally and more authentically, like “be-for-the-death”: “Death is this possibility of pure and simple impossibility of the being-there. Thus death is revealed it like the absolutely clean, inconditionnée possibility and indépassable… Temporality appears as the direction of the authentic concern.”  

Ontology, policy, language
These analyzes evoke the contemporary theories of the “medium” (Uexküll, Buytendijk), they so resulting from an interpretation of works of Kant, but with a difference: the vitalistic “world” of the ethologists, which results from the successful activity of an ordinary organization, is not completely the “world” of the man into whom Heidegger introduces this dimension of the death which gives him its true direction. This is why Être and time do not constitute, in theory, an anthropology, since what is aimed through Dasein, it is the report with the being, and not a definition of the human gasoline. But, at the same time, this report is apprehended via a particular structure of Dasein which is at the same time the revealing one and the condition: it is by Dasein, and in him, which in the world the questioning comes on the truth, which is at the bottom anything else only one questioning to be it on itself. If Dasein were not very other than a psychological subject, one could believe to recognize here a well-known configuration in France since Victor Cousin, who consists in basing metaphysics on a psychology. But the deepening radicalizing of the problems of the “conditions of possibility of the experiment”, since Descartes to Husserl via Kant, drew aside such a way, and it is in a mode to be précompréhensif, i.e. in a certain interpretation of the practice that from now on the point of anchoring is.  

At the bottom, which Heidegger emphasized in Être and time - this analysis from where it arises that what is called “To be” is in fact only of being, but that, by the clean temporality of one “being” particular, the question Être is raised - it was, known as with other words, artificiality of the existence analyzed in its fundamental historicity. In this direction, one can bring closer these reflections to those, traditional, of Pascal or Spinoza on the “second nature” of the “habit”, and especially of those, immediately former, of Lukacs which, in 1923, in Histoire and class consciousness, analyzed the “reification” of the human reports starting from a certain reading of the fetishism of the goods in the work of Marx. It is same unauthenticity, or distorts conscience, which characterizes the modern man seized by a saving in saleable output which makes him perceive any thing which surrounds it as laid out there for him, for the satisfaction of its theoretical and practical needs. Thus, at one if not the other, metaphysics To be it as “presence” could be explained by a certain utility report in the world, ordered by an economy.  

However the work of Heidegger does not go at all in the direction of an analysis concretes social conditions of such a mode of representation. Being diverted effective history, it is interested only in the abstract historiality of the human being, considered rather as element of people, participant of a culture and a language, that as individual determined by contradictions of a company for which it represents a stake. In this direction, Heidegger nevertheless joined the project of an anthropology, in December of a political reflection. It is besides what he recognizes itself during the talks with Davos, in 1929, while specifying that it is not an anthropocentric anthropology, because it reveals the man like a place, or a passage, and not like a center. In 1947, in the Letter on humanism, it will specify: “The man is not the Master of being…, he is the neighbor Être.”  

It is thus about a “ontology”, (which is not any more one) antihumanist, being prolonged in a policy who refuses legal and democratic universalism. It finds its satisfaction in historical forms which go to counter-current of the modern organization of work and do without the forms of legitimation which accompany it. This ambiguity (characteristic of the traditionalists postrévolutionnaires, as Bonald) is common to Heidegger and other contemporary representatives of the “preserving revolution”. But it is also at the origin of the fruitfulness and the diversity of the posterities of work, energy of the critical Marxism (Marcuse, Habermas) to theology (Bultmann), each one retaining of this work only one of the many ways which it opens.  

Indeed, as of Being and time, a tension was perceptible between the immutable historiality revealed by the analytical one of Dasein and the effective historicity of this historiality, as it belongs only to one certain time. In other words, the fact that the being-there is separated Être by its situation from being-jeté, without nature clean, opened with possible and consisted a very whole history gathering in the contemporaneity of the language, could be seized like irremediable structure (and Lacan, for example, will retain the lesson of Heidegger only up to that point). But that can be also described like a current unauthenticity, to which a project of authenticity is opposed, i.e. the idea much more traditional of a going beyond, of a safety. This historiality of Dasein is then presented itself like history, resulting from a process having a beginning (in Antiquity) and possibly being able to have an end (“today”): to arrive to an authenticity.  

Until in the years 1940, among the various ways of this going beyond, will appear the political action, not that which subverts, but that which “founds the State”. Here takes direction, if not the concrete engagement of Heidegger, at least the outline of policy which is clarified in the texts of the years 1933-1934. In the “decision” to clash with the “hardness of the existence”, with the war, with death, which puts in prospect and cancels distorts it obviousness of the traditional values of “reality”, is, in its eyes, the occasion for the German people to meet the question Être again, while deviating from “middle-class survivals and the carefree indifference with regard to the State”: the “middle-class man” indeed maintains a purely individualistic relationship with a “world” “at his disposal” of which it is unable to seize the conditions of originating possibility. It is the State (it will be later poetry) which represents in this period the dimension of going beyond the étants like such towards the Being, from the point of view which is not without pointing out Hegel; but it is not the same State, because Hegel would not have confused, like made Heidegger, the exacerbation of what he criticized with the desired realization of his criticism, and in fact undoubtedly the bases of this one are, at Heidegger, in question. But the latter will not analyze them, because as of before the war, and starting from its intellectual opposition to the ideology of the mode, it operates what it called a “turning”: not a reversal, but the deepening of the one of its assumptions.  

Indeed, consequently, according to its own terms, of a “bankruptcy of the language”, Being and time remains unfinished, and this impossibility of developing research while having only the philosophical language inherited the metaphysical tradition traces itself the program of what will be the two moments of later work, variously accentuated, but always joint. On the one hand, a history of metaphysics like “lapse of memory Être”, which rests the problem of the truth while insisting on its originating dissimulation and which locates the Marxism as an interlocutor privileged in this analysis (Letter on humanism). In addition, the search for a comprehension To be it by means of a language adapted, whose poetry is a possible figure, “another thought” definitively rejecting philosophy in the field of the representation, which “exempts the Being like objectivity for the subjectivity of the Reason”. Here seat the analyzes of the Technique like practical expression of the “claims of the Reason to the domination take, starting the universal and total Computation which reduces any thing to a calculable quantity” (the Principle of reason).  

To fight against this “boarding” of the existence and the language, to turn itself resolutely on the side of art and poetry, it is not undoubtedly to engage, as it was too easily said, in “irrationalism”. But is surely to take party against science. “Science does not think”, known as Heidegger, specifying that there is not for him no value judgment, but the simple report that it is not its task.