Dear Mario,

I am sorry if you didn't find anything meaningful to you personally in Martin Heidegger's writings. I take it that you read his works in the German original? Of course, no one author will ever be able to please all of his or her readers. Crucially, it's always very much a question of personal "taste" and scholarly or intellectual background, I suppose. As you know, Heidegger is widely considered by many contemporary philosophers - and especially by historians of philosophy - as having made substantial contributions to the fields of phenomenology and ontology, in particular. Later (following the alleged "turn"), he concentrated more on the philosophy of language. I find that in recent times, more people have highlighted his thoughts about "Technik" ("technology" in a very wide sense of the term) and (natural) science as instruments in the human endeavor of "mastering" Earth and nature - an aspect which to some seems prophetic in this day and age of environmental crises. His involvment in the Third Reich and Nazi ideology remains a subject of onogoing debate and research, but is widely acknowledged these days as not being "separable", so to speak, from his many academic writings and philosophical legacy. If you compare the German and English Wikipedia entries on him, this will give you a fairly good sense of these debates and his relevance as a philosopher.

Best,

Julius

Julius Riese - Once upon a time I wrote the text that follows. Have I been too critical toward Heidegger?

* In his famous book Being and Time, Wordy touches upon several issues, but the best-known part of his discourse can be reduced to the following wisdom. When we use a hammer to drive a nail, our attention is focused on the activity of driving the nail, not on the hammer. But if the hammer breaks (or is too heavy or too light) our attention switches to the hammer. And that was it; Wordy produced countless exotic words and expressions to present this trivial fact, but this is what he says. His discourse about "being-in-the-world", which includes the driving of a nail, can be reduced to several obvious (trivial) facts too, adorned with a huge amount of exotic words.

* But who am I to say something like that about "the greatest philosopher after Plato", as Wordy has been called by his admirers? I admit that I could be wrong; hence, let us hear Hubert Dreyfus, an expert in Wordy's peculiar language and discourse, who holds the master in high esteem. In his exegesis of Wordy's discourse, Dreyfus points out that Wordy's narrative contains big problems. He says: "Although the chapters on originary temporality are an essential part of [Wordy's] project, his account leads him so far from the phenomenon of everyday temporality that I did not feel I could give a satisfactory interpretation of the material." In fact, a satisfactory interpretation has not been possible at all, because "Division II" of Being and Time, where temporality is discussed, has "some errors so serious as to block any consistent reading", concludes Dreyfus.

* Wordy's discourse about space does not look better than the one about time; let us hear Dreyfus again. "The discussion of spatiality is one of the most difficult in Being and Time, not because it is deeper than any other discussion but because it is fundamentally confused". ... Wordy's famous discourse about "falling" is also "confusing", and "there seems to be an inconsistency in [Wordy's] account of the self". ... Wordy's play with his exotic concepts has a certain poetic charm, and it may create the impression of profundity, but his discourse does not have relevant content. ...

* Wordy has been considered "the most influential philosopher of technology" of the twentieth century, and his essay The Question Concerning Technology has been held in great esteem by many scholars. In brief, the essay argues that with the development of technology, the natural world and people have been reduced to a "standing reserve" of resources, which the techno-economic system uses as it wishes. This is mostly correct, but this is not a big news: this is how communities and humanity have functioned since the beginning of civilization. Nature and people have always been treated and used as a "standing reserve" of resources. What has changed in the technological age is not the essence of the relationships between people and the natural world, but the intensity of activities and the magnitude of effects. Furthermore, Wordy informs us that technology "enframes" our reality and shapes our lives. It does, but only as the means; power-holders have always shaped reality and controlled people by means of narratives and by the technological means they possessed. Religion "enframes" people and their reality even stronger than technology does, and reduces them to a "standing reserve" of resources that power-holders use as they want.

* "Translated out of [Wordy's] ontological language", says Andrew Feenberg, "we could restate his main point as the claim that technology is a cultural form through which everything in the modern world becomes available for control". Therefore, this was the "main point" of the master. But this main point is a trivial fact and the old news. People have created and used tools and devices with the aim to increase their operative power and their ability to govern community and control the world since the beginning of civilization. Whether we call this "a cultural form" or not is the same. In sum, Wordy's language is abstruse, and if someone is patient enough to "translate" his discourse into something readable, then it turns out that the content of his discourse is trivial, incoherent or irrelevant, or all these three at the same time.

* Feenberg seems enthusiastic about Wordy's discourse and wisdom, but he says things like the following one. "Unfortunately, [Wordy's] argument is developed at such a high level of abstraction [that] he literally cannot discriminate between electricity and atom bombs, agricultural techniques and the Holocaust". Unfortunately? A high level of abstraction? Why not call things by a proper name and say that Wordy's play with exotic words does not say anything clear and relevant about anything? Why waste time on a thinker whose discourse cannot discriminate between agricultural techniques and the Holocaust? Why is such an author considered a great philosopher?

Heidegger's philosophy is a significant contribution to understanding the meaning of lived experience.