Martin Heidegger

the "end" of ethics

Hugo Ott

pp. 197-228

in: John Drummond, Lester Embree, Phenomenological approaches to moral philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 2002

Abstract

Through his recollection (Wiederholung) of the Socratic nature of philosophy, it becomes clear that for Martin Heidegger the chief mark of "authentic" philosophy is to ask questions rather than provide answers. To this extent, Heideggerian philosophy has contributed greatly to the "question" of ethics—examining the presuppositions of the ethical theories of the tradition and raising at a fundamental level the question of the very possibility of "moral" existence. Indeed, no thinker of the 20th century has been so thoroughly interrogated as Heidegger himself regarding the existence (or lack) of "ethics" in his thought. The positions cut across the widest of spectrums: from those critics who view Heidegger's alignment with National Socialism and his own attempt to see his thought as some sort of foundation for the "movement" as reflecting a total moral bankruptcy to those who strive to show that Heidegger's thought is an attempt to free up the very "possibility" of ethics from the ontically based moral theories of the philosophical tradition and who use his encounter with "modernity" as a springboard for thinking about a "postmodern" ethics.

Cited authors

Heidegger Martin