ABSTRACT
Heidegger’s influence on a multitude of thinkers associated with the traditions of deconstruction, post-structuralism, and postmodernism is established and well documented. This chapter proceeds by first briefly explaining Heidegger's concepts of das Man and Dasein. In the final section of the chapter, the author argues that Heidegger's treatment of das Man creates confusion between criticisms of modern norms as such and an understanding of fundamental and timeless epistemological limitations of the subject. In Heidegger’s ontology, however, Dasein is always confronted with das Man. Das Man is both an inadequate way of encountering the world that is governed by the public, by the masses, and the masses themselves, of which all individuals are unconsciously a part. Kierkegaard’s formulation of the individual’s relation to God separate from the public is instructive. One suggestion of the chapter has been to show that Heidegger makes thinking more difficult than it needs to be.
