- Lived:
- 1889–1976 · Messkirch, Freiburg, and a hut above Todtnauberg in Germany's Black Forest
- Tradition:
- Phenomenology transformed into "fundamental ontology"; the fountainhead of existentialism, hermeneutics, and much of Continental philosophy
- The Big Idea:
- Philosophy forgot its first and deepest question — what does it mean for anything to be at all? — and the way back in is through the one being that asks: us, in our everyday, mortal, time-soaked existence.
- In their words:
- "Language is the house of Being."
- If you remember one thing:
- The philosopher many rank as the twentieth century's most influential was also a Nazi party member who never once, in the thirty-one years he lived after the camps were opened, publicly apologized — and you have to hold both facts, because neither cancels the other.