This course is an introduction to the four most important themes of

Heidegger's philosophy:

Dasein or being human, the Event, Technology and Poetic Language.

The course is an invitation to think after the most fundamental phenomena of being and human existence. This course is ideal for anyone who wants to understand Heidegger but also if you want to articulate an exit from modernity. Heidegger's thought of concealment, withdrawal, and another beginning is specifically intended for this.

The course is ideal for everyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of existentialism, phenomenology, the philosophy of technology, and modernity and its relationship with Antiquity.

We begin the journey in the depths of Dasein's existence and its thrownness into ecstatic time; we move into the fissures of being and the event; traverse the unfathomable powers of technology and its origins in metaphysics; and see how poetic language may be a way out of technocracy.

We will also touch on transhumanism, ecstatic time, concealment, truth as aletheia, technology as "Gestell", as well as Heidegger's relationship with thinkers like Nietzsche, Hegel, Kant, and Heraclitus.

As we shall see the phenomenon of death is key to understand Heidegger’s entire philosophical project. The course invites you to think up and articulate an answer of your own to the Question of Being.

For the course we will read excerpts from key texts such as "Being and Time", "Contributions", "Question Concerning Technology", and "What are Poets for?"

There are 5 lectures followed by 7 group seminars. My Teaching Assistant Lew Sterling will teach one of the seminars with a focus on technical and poetical language. There will also be a seminar where you can present your talk (ProSeminar).

The course is based on my book "Heidegger on Death and Being" published by Springer in 2021

Course Structure

Introductory Lecture:

• The project and methodology of "Being and Time"
• The importance of death in Heidegger and the attack on death by transhumanism
  

Lecture I: Dasein, Ecstatic Temporality, and Being-Towards-Death

• Covers important passages of Being and Time and other early works of Heidegger
• Shows the beginning of Heidegger's philosophy
• Being-in-the-world

Lecture II: The Ereignis (Event or Enowning)

• Introduction to Heidegger's thinking of the event
• The turning in Heidegger's thinking
• The so-called history of being
• The significance of death to understand "concealment" and the history of being
  

Lecture III: Technology, Death, and Gestell

• The meaning of Gestell
• Why death is the enemy of Gestell
• Why Gestell has to fight death
• Finding an exit from Gestell
  

Lecture IV: Poetic Language

• On the relationship between human mortality and language
• Heidegger's notion of language as the house of being
• Poetry and poetic thinking as mortal existence
  

Required readings of all relevant passages will be made available to enrolled students for educational purposes.

Student Reviews

Student Testimonials

"Aside from your thorough internalization and embodiment of your material, material you clearly live, you seem to teach like breathing. Your erudition and honesty, warmth, sharing creates the most special learning environment I have ever been in."

- Giovanna S.

“I want to get across what the impact of studying these great thinkers via your courses has been. It's beyond instrumentalism and certainly beyond self-help. It's more a change in mental outlook which then changes the way one lives. For example, my outlook towards work has changed a lot. I am now much more about seeing work as right livelihood and trying to reserve my energy for the enjoyable creative projects I'm engaged with.” – James Simpkin

"Your teaching has brought about a profound change in my belief about the ultimate nature of things. Previously, I was a thoroughgoing materialist and empiricist. No longer. Put simply, there is something else going on which is beyond us, though we are part of it." 

- David Ashton, MD, PhD