Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.The German philosopher Martin Heidegger, b. Sept. 26, 1889, d. May 26, 1976, was one of the most significant thinkers of the 20th century. He attended a Jesuit seminary, then earned (1914) his doctorate from the University of Freiburg, where he became the assistant to Edmund Husserl. Heidegger was affiliated with the University of Freiburg throughout his career except for a brief period as a professor at the University of Marburg. As rector of the university from 1933 to 1934, he was a vocal supporter of the Hitler regime, and he remained a member of the Nazi party until 1945. Because of this, an attempt was made to remove him from the faculty after World War II, but he managed to retain his teaching post.
Heidegger's chief concern was ontology, or the study of being. His most important work, Being and Time (1927; Eng. trans., 1962), united two philosophical approaches--the Existentialism of Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche and the Phenomenology of Husserl--in an inquiry into being (Sein), specifically, human being (Dasein). -- by Thomas E. Wren
