Expressionist Signs and Metaphors in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time

Abstract

Philosophers of the past forty years have promulgated their reading of Heidegger as an Existentialist. Some have ventured into those nebulous areas to cultivate etymological analyses; others have drifted into a Wagnerian mist of imprecision. Comparatist techniques show that Heidegger’s literary roots are firmly embedded in Expressionism — not Existentialism — and that Dasein is a literary persona, that Heidegger’s discussion of signs abandons the imagery of perennial philosophy for the “ready-to-hand,” a clearly Expressionist technique. Heidegger’s Being and Time clearly states Expressionist philosophy with the characteristically Expressionist concern for contemporaneity and interiority intact.