Martin Heidegger's obsession with "origins" and "primordiality" undercuts his insistence upon "existential authenticity." This is an unresolved conflict that runs throughout the body of his work, becoming ever more pronounced as time goes on. It is the worm in the Heideggerian apple, the flaw in his Byzantine "Golden Bowl." While purporting to release us from the demands of the "One" or the "They" (depending upon the translation), the freedom that Heidegger promises whenever he moves beyond the bald assertion that Dasein's "authentic" nature is "revealed" as "thrown" is significantly gerrymandered by his claim to have "recovered" or "disclosed" the "authentic" nature of being-in-the-world. It is understandably unsatisfying to be left with "thrownness," but it is equally troubling to find oneself manipulated in the direction of someone else's idea of "authenticity." So much for liberation from the "They."
One can hear his own deep (and prudent) anxieties about self-creation "speak" from his texts. It is difficult to imagine that this is the song he would have us hear. There is much bluff in Heidegger's oracular prose. He is a man who whistled, compulsively, whenever he passed a graveyard. He counseled resolve in the face of death; did he achieve it?
I do not wish these reflections to be regarded as mere ad hominem attack. At 16, I first encountered Heidegger in William Barrett's Irrational Man and was seduced by many of his ideas; every few years I return to his writings and the scholarly commentary on them; I puzzle through them again and again. At this point in my life, I think it fair to say that I am "stuck" with Heidegger. That said, I will not dishonor him with sycophancy.
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