Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of thought.
Meaning of the quote
The quote suggests that true thinking only happens when we realize that reason, which has been highly praised for a long time, can actually be a stubborn obstacle to deeper thought. In other words, relying too much on logic and reason can sometimes prevent us from exploring new ideas and reaching new understandings.
About Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a renowned German philosopher who made significant contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He was elected as rector at the University of Freiburg in 1933 and faced controversy for his support of the Nazi Party. Heidegger’s seminal work, ‘Being and Time,’ introduced the concept of ‘Dasein’ as the type of being that humans possess.
More quotes from Martin Heidegger
Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
The possible ranks higher than the actual.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
Time is not a thing, thus nothing which is, and yet it remains constant in its passing away without being something temporal like the beings in time.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?
German philosopher (1889-1976)
Language is the house of the truth of Being.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
Time-space as commonly understood, in the sense of the distance measured between two time-points, is the result of time calculation.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
As the ego cogito, subjectivity is the consciousness that represents something, relates this representation back to itself, and so gathers with itself.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
To think Being itself explicitly requires disregarding Being to the extent that it is only grounded and interpreted in terms of beings and for beings as their ground, as in all metaphysics.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
To dwell is to garden.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
We name time when we say: every thing has its time. This means: everything which actually is, every being comes and goes at the right time and remains for a time during the time allotted to it. Every thing has its time.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
True time is four-dimensional.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
We still by no means think decisively enough about the essence of action.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
The German language speaks Being, while all the others merely speak of Being.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
Only a god can save us.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
We do not say: Being is, time is, but rather: there is Being and there is time.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
When modern physics exerts itself to establish the world’s formula, what occurs thereby is this: the being of entities has resolved itself into the method of the totally calculable.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
Whatever can be noted historically can be found within history.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
Transcendence constitutes selfhood.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
The human being is not the lord of beings, but the shepherd of Being.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
The human body is essentially something other than an animal organism.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
Being and time determine each other reciprocally, but in such a manner that neither can the former – Being – be addressed as something temporal nor can the latter – time – be addressed as a being.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
But every historical statement and legitimization itself moves within a certain relation to history.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
The Fuhrer alone is the present and future German reality and its law. Learn to know ever more deeply: from now on every single thing demands decision, and every action responsibility.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself.
German philosopher (1889-1976)
Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of thought.
German philosopher (1889-1976)