Heidegger Today? Conversations on the Contemporaneity of a Thinking Legacy

Abstract

Why Heidegger today? Here and now, can an argument still be made for the contemporaneity of Martin Heidegger’s thought? Is his work, in any sense, still timely, not to say “essential”? Has it ever been? Already in 1932, Rudolf Carnap deplored Heidegger’s pseudo-metaphysical statements, pointing out the anti-scientific character of sentences such as “das Nichts selbst nichtet (nothing itself nihilates).”1 Symptomatically, Heidegger’s response to this sort of objection consisted in a thorough critique, not only of modern science but also of contemporary knowledge and thought as a whole. Heidegger’s embrace of untimeliness, however, cannot be taken as simple anachronism. Rather, it points towards one of his deepest intellectual ambitions: the instauration of a new beginning in thinking. With great rhetorical talent, Heidegger meticulously sought to construct the grounds to transform his own work into just such a radical gesture.