ABSTRACT
Introduction: Martin Heidegger’s untimely thought Martin Heidegger, widely regarded as one of the most enigmatic and influential philosophers of the twentieth century, was nevertheless a philosopher for whom the classical preoccupation with Being was paramount. Indeed, Heidegger’s lifelong project revolved around restating the question of ‘Being’ as the question of philosophy. Yet this restatement intended the ‘destruction’ of the ontological tradition by insisting on the difference between Being and beings, the ‘onticoontological difference’ that, Heidegger argued, had remained ‘unthought’ by philosophy (cf. Derrida 2002: 8). This chapter argues that Heidegger’s early engagement with the question of Being and his eventual radicalisation of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology amounted to a deconstruction of the core attributes of modern subjectivity, with resounding consequences for philosophy and social inquiry more generally. As I show below, his bringing together of ontology, phenomenology and deconstruction resulted in an analysis of human existence that one might understand as a ‘hermeneutics of facticity’ (cf. Heidegger 1999a). This chapter argues that it is the possibility inherent in Heidegger’s early work that has challenged twentieth century philosophy and continues to inform attempts at critical, ethical and political theorising in International Relations (IR) beyond the confines of modern subjectivity. The chapter explores, first, the ‘founding’ of the modern subject and the reliance of IR on subjectivist ontological commitments. It turns, second, to a discussion of Heidegger’s questioning of Being and in particular his attempt to restate the question of Being as the question of philosophy, which led him to seek a method for accessing human existence beyond the subjectivist presuppositions of modern philosophy. Third, it provides a brief account of the unworking of the modern subject in his major work, Being and Time (1962).
