Martin Heidegger

Heidegger published Being and Time in 1927, introducing Dasein - "being-there" - to describe how humans already understand existence before they theorize it, living always as "being-in-the-world." He believed Western philosophy had forgotten the question that mattered: not what things are, but what lets them show up as intelligible at all. In April 1933 he became rector of Freiburg and joined the Nazi Party, remaining a member until 1945. After the war he was banned from teaching during denazification, the ban lifted in 1949, but he never offered clear remorse. His later writing turned to technology, language, and poetry, warning of modernity's nihilistic drift. Sartre, Arendt, Derrida, and Levinas all worked in his shadow - some extending his thought, others recoiling from it - but none could ignore the questions he forced open or the stain he left on them.