20th century · 1889–1976

Who influenced Martin Heidegger?

Influences and legacy

Asked why there is anything at all — Being, anxiety, and thrownness in one dense project.

Martin Heidegger was influenced by Aristotle, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Søren Kierkegaard, Wilhelm Dilthey, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, and went on to influence Herbert Marcuse, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and 2 others. That is 15 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.

Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Willy Pragher, CC BY 4.0 See the whole map

Who was Martin Heidegger?

Heidegger's work was central to phenomenology, hermeneutics and existentialism. In Being and Time (1927) he introduced Dasein, "being-there", for the distinctive way humans exist, and analysed it as being-in-the-world in order to revive the question of being, which he believed Western philosophy had neglected since the Greeks. His later work turned to technology, language, art and poetry and criticised the nihilism of technological civilisation.

Sartre, Gadamer, Arendt, Derrida, Foucault and Levinas all worked in agreement or argument with him. His Nazism still clouds how he is read. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933 on becoming rector of the University of Freiburg, was banned from teaching after the war until 1949, and never clearly repudiated his involvement.

Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.

Who influenced Martin Heidegger?

7 direct influences on this map, earliest first.

Aristotle 384–322 BC
Friedrich Schleiermacher 1768–1834
Søren Kierkegaard 1813–1855
Wilhelm Dilthey 1833–1911
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844–1900
Edmund Husserl 1859–1938
Max Scheler 1874–1928

Who did Martin Heidegger influence?

8 thinkers on this map draw directly on Martin Heidegger.

Herbert Marcuse 1898–1979
Hans-Georg Gadamer 1900–2002
Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980
Emmanuel Levinas 1906–1995
Hannah Arendt 1906–1975
Maurice Merleau-Ponty 1908–1961
Michel Foucault 1926–1984
Jacques Derrida 1930–2004

The line of teachers behind Martin Heidegger

The longest documented line of influence ending at Martin Heidegger runs 25 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.

Two steps away from Martin Heidegger

Indirect influences

The second generation

Through Jean-Paul Sartre: Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon
Through Michel Foucault: Edward Said

Contemporaries of Martin Heidegger

Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Martin Heidegger, with no direct line between them.

Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951
Antonio Gramsci 1891–1937
Edith Stein 1891–1942
Rudolf Carnap 1891–1970
Walter Benjamin 1892–1940
György Lukács 1885–1971
Ernst Bloch 1885–1977
Roman Ingarden 1893–1970

Martin Heidegger by the numbers

Direct influences: 7
Direct followers: 8 — #10 of 279 on this map
Thinkers upstream: 109
Thinkers downstream: 11
Wikipedia languages: 117 — #7 of 84 among 20th-century philosophers
Card rarity: Legendary

Schools and lineages

Existentialists: Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus

Questions about Martin Heidegger

Who influenced Martin Heidegger?: Aristotle, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Søren Kierkegaard, Wilhelm Dilthey, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler.
Who did Martin Heidegger influence?: Herbert Marcuse, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
When did Martin Heidegger live?: 1889–1976. The map files Martin Heidegger under the 20th century.
How rare is the Martin Heidegger card?: Wikipedia carries an article on Martin Heidegger in 117 languages, which makes it a Legendary card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.

More 20th-century philosophers

Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980
Albert Camus 1913–1960
Max Weber 1864–1920
Simone de Beauvoir 1908–1986
Bertrand Russell 1872–1970
Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951
Umberto Eco 1932–2016
Antonio Gramsci 1891–1937

All 279 thinkers