In the sum­mer of 1924, Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger taught a course called Aris­to­tle — Life and Work at the Uni­ver­sity of Mar­burg. When one of his stu­dents dared to ask the young pro­fes­sor if he could deliver on the title’s promise and actu­ally tell him some­thing about the Greek philosopher’s life, Hei­deg­ger mock­ingly answered : ”Aris­to­tle was born, he worked, he died.”

The fact that this extremely short abbre­vi­a­tion of Aristotle’s biog­ra­phy does not con­tain any real infor­ma­tion clearly expresses Heidegger’s dis­re­gard of the genre. All per­sonal details are inten­tion­ally left out in his ver­sion. Hei­deg­ger does not men­tion the fact that Aris­to­tle was born in 384 BC in Sta­gira as the son of a doc­tor, nor does he pay any atten­tion to the fact that the ‘Sta­girite’ was the tutor of Alexan­der the Great before the lat­ter became the king of Mace­do­nia and a mer­ci­less impe­ri­al­ist. Even the philosopher’s years as a stu­dent at Plato’s Acad­emy are of no impor­tance to his dis­tant Ger­man suc­ces­sor. In fact, as long as we assume that think­ing is not the pre­rog­a­tive of aca­d­e­mic philoso­phers, Heidegger’s sen­tence could be the biog­ra­phy of any other per­son that ever lived.

Heidegger’s por­trayal of Aristotle’s biog­ra­phy, how­ever, is more than mere mock­ery. The implicit assump­tion that under­lies this par­ody, is that phi­los­o­phy should only be con­cerned with a person’s thoughts and not with his actions. In the – heav­ily edited – tran­scrip­tion of the above men­tioned lec­ture, Hei­deg­ger trans­forms his refusal to elab­o­rate on Aristotle’s life into a maxim:

“Regard­ing the per­son­al­ity of a philoso­pher, the fol­low­ing is of inter­est: He was born than and than, he worked and died. The ‘Gestalt’ of the philoso­pher, or some­thing sim­i­lar, will not be given here.”(Heidegger 2002:5)

In this view, the per­son has noth­ing to do with the thinker; or, a bit less rad­i­cal, there is no need to pay atten­tion to the life of the for­mer because all the philo­soph­i­cally rel­e­vant ele­ments are already present in the writ­ings of the latter.

Heidegger’s cat­e­gor­i­cal rejec­tion of biog­ra­phy entails a nor­ma­tive def­i­n­i­tion of the prac­tice of phi­los­o­phy. Aris­to­tle, as well as any other philoso­pher, should be judged solely on the basis of his work and not on the con­tin­gent facts and anec­dotes that sur­round it. In Heidegger’s view – and I dare to claim that for once the lit­tle magi­cian from Meßkirch speaks for the major­ity of his peers – biog­ra­phy has no value in philosophy.

Implic­itly, Heidegger’s nor­ma­tive def­i­n­i­tion of his aca­d­e­mic prac­tice also works the other way around. If phi­los­o­phy is only con­cerned with a person’s the­o­ret­i­cal thoughts, there is no need for the indi­vid­ual thinker to be overly con­cerned with every­day life either. A philosopher’s life takes place in an abstract, con­cep­tual realm. His only respon­si­bil­ity are his ideas. All moral, aes­thetic, and prac­ti­cal issues are ulti­mately mean­ing­less dis­trac­tions that need to be over­come. A philoso­pher should ded­i­cate – prefer­ably even sac­ri­fice – his entire life to his thoughts.

Mar­tin Heidegger’s denial to acknowl­edge the rel­e­vance of bio­graph­i­cal con­tin­gen­cies for phi­los­o­phy is ironic to say the least. His name is insep­a­ra­ble from a con­tro­ver­sial bio­graph­i­cal event: his Nazi engage­ment and pre­sumed anti-​semitism. There is large cor­pus of aca­d­e­mic stud­ies that dis­cusses to what degree Hei­deg­ger works are influ­enced by these bio­graph­i­cal events, and a sub­stan­tial sub­set that argues that it is entirely con­t­a­m­i­nated by the fas­cist ideology.

With­out enter­ing these moral, polit­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal debates, I dare to claim that it indis­putable that there is a strong rela­tion between the cru­cial events in Heidegger’s biog­ra­phy and the deci­sive turns in his phi­los­o­phy. In my opin­ion, the philosopher’s life had a direct, almost mea­sur­able impact on his think­ing. To give a detailed analy­sis of the rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion between Heidegger’s phi­los­o­phy and biog­ra­phy, how­ever, exceeds the goals and lim­i­ta­tions of this essay. For present pur­poses. it suf­fices to briefly men­tion two of the most obvi­ous cases:

1. In 1933, Mar­tin Heidegger’s enthu­si­asm about the per­son Adolf Hitler, and his wife Elfride’s ent­hou­si­asm about the National Social­is­tic Party (Safran­ski ..), led the philoso­pher to accept the rec­torate of the uni­ver­sity of Freiburg. This new stage in his career almost imme­di­ately found a reflec­tion in the con­cept of ‘leader’ (Führer) that he devel­ops in his accep­tance speech The Self-​Assertion of the Ger­man Uni­ver­sity (1983). This con­cept, how­ever, was com­pletely absent and even incon­sis­tent with the exis­ten­tial­ist phi­los­o­phy of Being and Time (1927).

2. Twelve months later, Heidegger’s res­ig­na­tion and sub­se­quent dis­ap­point­ment with the Hitler and the National Social­is­tic move­ment resulted in an ever-​growing scep­ti­cism about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of human action alto­gether. A devel­op­ment in Heidegger’s think­ing that cul­mi­nated in his so-​called “Let­ter on Human­ism” (1946) and his so-​called ‘sec­ond’ mag­num opus Con­tri­bu­tions to Phi­los­o­phy (1989).

In order to fully com­pre­hend – or reject – Heidegger’s phi­los­o­phy, it seems cru­cial to take such events into con­sid­er­a­tion. In my opin­ion, the impor­tant and often sud­den turns in the philosopher’s thoughts – which have been heav­ily debated amongst Hei­deg­ger schol­ars – can­not be explained solely on the basis of his writ­ings. It is nei­ther pos­si­ble nor prefer­able to ignore the influ­ence of such bio­graph­i­cal con­tin­gen­cies on his phi­los­o­phy alto­gether. Heidegger’s own life story shows that the harsh line that he drew in order to sep­a­rate thought from life needs to be softened.