Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). German philosopher, a pioneer of existentialist thought. The son of a sexton, he originally intended to become a Roman Catholic priest. In the 1920s he studied under Edmund Husserl at the University of Freiburg, where he later became professor of philosophy (1928-45). Heidegger’s major work Being and Time appeared in 1927; in it he explored such concepts as being, nothingness, and human choice in highly abstract terms. Owing to his support for the Nazi regime, he was removed from his pest after World War II and spent the rest of his life working in isolation. His writings had a profound effect on such post-war philosophers as Jean-Paul Sartre.
