Engaged agency and background in Heidegger

Abstract

Heidegger's importance lies partly in the fact that he is perhaps the leading figure among that small list of twentieth-century philosophers who have helped us emerge, painfully and with difficulty, from the grip of modern rationalism. Others on the short list would include Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty. But one might claim some preeminence for Heidegger, in that he got there first. In the case of Merleau-Ponty, the breakthrough plainly built on Heidegger's work.