Martin Heidegger

Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976), German philosopher. Influenced by Soren Kierkegaard and Edmund Husserl, he was concerned with the problem of how one's awareness of oneself is dependent on a sense of time and one's impending death. Heidegger rejected traditional metaphysics and criticized many aspects of modern technological and mass culture as a “forgetfulness of being.” His major work, Being and Time (1927), has been fundamental in the development of existentialism, although Heidegger denied he was an existentialist.

See also: Philosophy.