Martin Heidegger
Heidegger, a German philosopher, is undoubtedly one of the greatest philosophers of all times who dealt with issues on truth and thinking. In his excerpt the Memorial Address, Heidegger covers two types of thinking: the prevalent calculative thinking and the hard to find meditative thinking. He effectively compares and contrasts the two types of thinking with reference to preferences of man. Moreover, he mentions the various repercussion of the situation at hand and delves into ways of adopting the right channel of thinking. This thesis strives to determine which of the two types of thinking is superior to the other by combining Heidegger’s Memorial Address and other interpretations of his philosophical work.
Heidegger begins the excerpt by stating clearly that everyone is thoughtless and he attributes this factor to the fact that man is nowadays trying to escape from thinking. Heidegger asserts that people like thinking with certain situations in mind. As a result, they come up with results that are not crystal-clear, keep thinking and always think of hopeful possibilities; he calls this concept calculative thinking. In his opinion, meditative thinking is a nearer but longer path to men. It is closer in that it seeks to establish the exact meaning of everything without using biased rationale. Heidegger says that, “Meditative thinking demands of us not to cling one-sidedly to a single idea, nor to run down a one-track course of ideas.” In this statement, it is clear that Heidegger’s views meditative thinking as a type of thinking that strives to delve into concealed and unknown things.
In their bid to accept and appreciate technology, man is being blindfolded by the influence of technology and as a result, he can’t perceive what the future holds. Heidegger says that people are interested in knowing technological advancements but no one wants to dig deep into the meaning and concealed aspects of the technology. The bottom-line is that man is willing to accept something that he is not prepared for and is unable to face up to the challenge which he should do by thinking meditatively. People want to participate in thinking that is guided by will so as to maneuver the results; no one is ready to be patient to achieve good results.
According to the current trends, Heidegger shows that man is skewed towards calculative thinking. However, Heidegger remains optimistic that things could change if man knew that meditative thinking is part of him. Man thinks that meditative thinking is hard but Heidegger is quick to assert that meditative thinking is very close to man. Although Heidegger refers to meditative thinking as the way to go, he is quick to point out that each type of thinking is relevant and man should not be absorbed in one type of thinking.
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