enowning
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
 
Stephan Käufer reviews a book on Martin and maths.
"Later investigations will reveal what I owe to my esteemed teachers of mathematics and physics; and I also will not let the influence of Professor Finke go to waste, who awakened the love and understanding for history in me, an unhistorical mathematician." So wrote Martin Heidegger in the preface to his 1914 doctoral dissertation, The Theory of Judgment in Psychologism. For all their breadth and depth the later investigations never do show much of an influence by the professors who taught Heidegger calculus and differential equations while he was enrolled in Freiburg University's Faculty for Mathematics and Natural Science. Rather it was the few courses Heidegger took during those years on neo-Kantian logic and epistemology that shaped his initial philosophical attempts. Nevertheless, Heidegger discusses topics of mathematics and the mathematical character of modern science in various guises in writings and lectures throughout his career. And since so much of his thought is devoted to ontology, it is an interesting question to what extent Heidegger's ontology is a mathematical ontology.
 
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