Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) was a German philosopher whose existential philosophy influenced Camus, Sartre, and many modern philosophers that followed. He was influenced by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the Presocratics. He shifted the focus from the examination of consciousness to experiencing the state of simply “being there,” in his book Being and Time. Nothing less than the understanding of Being was his goal. Forget the theories and the speculations and the obtuse arguments and philosophical ruminations. The only thing we really can be sure of is our being, our existence. Hence, Heidegger is regarded as the first twentieth-century existentialist and an influence of Jean-Paul Sartre, the most famous existentialist.

Heidegger also believed that “being” is not a stagnant state. Existence is constantly changing, which harkens back to the philosophy of Heraclitus. This chaotic world, according to Heidegger, generates far more than mere angst. He took angst one step further to its depressingly logical conclusion called nihilism. He felt that this hopelessness and despair and sense of the meaningless of life was a relatively new mindset brought about by the Industrial Age that was turning humanity into a race of lemming-like automatons. He lauded the ancient Greeks for their more positive outlook on “being.” This had been dampened and subsumed by a couple of millennia of Western thought.

There is no shortage of philosophical arrogance in this theory. Heidegger infers that those truly “in the know” are the ones tortured with angst and dread about the nature of things and their own eventual demise.

The authentic experience the wonder of it all, in all its beauty and ugliness. The inauthentic are bland camp followers and cookie-cutter ciphers who live their lives without a clue. Heidegger obviously elevates the enlightened “authentic” folk above the great unwashed inauthentic masses, following Socrates's dictum that “an unexamined life is not worth living.”