Heidegger on Thinking

This Element focuses on one of Heidegger's own focuses: thinking. He thinks in a new way about thinking.

Every philosophy is a celebration of the fact that being can be thought, that the world around us yields to concepts that join together into arguments which can lead us to new thoughts and new ways of thinking. Heidegger's great talent was to never lose his philosophical wonder at philosophy, to never stop thinking about thinking.Every philosophy is a celebration of the fact that being can be thought, that the world around us yields to concepts that join together into arguments which can lead us to new thoughts and new ways of thinking. Heidegger's great talent was to never lose his philosophical wonder at philosophy, to never stop thinking about thinking. Heidegger's early work favors a somewhat pragmatic view of thinking as organized by and around our projects, emphasizing tacit skills over articulate conscious thinking. It also explores stepping back from all projects in dread and wonder. His later thinking is reciprocal rather than autonomous, something we do with and for being instead of something we do to or on beings, which can help overcome contemporary nihilism. After the death of God, we may no longer be able to pray to a divinity, but we can still be the thinkers of being.