To Be or Not To Be Martin Heidegger had a profound impact on philosophy. His main issue was that of “being.” He wanted to make some sense of our capabilities to make sense of things as humans, or Dasein as he refers to us which literally means “being there.” Heidegger explains the two different modes in which Dasein live as authentic and inauthentic. One way we can live authentically is by being open to the “nothing,” as Heidegger says. Being open to the nothing, sets us on a path that lets us truly be free, as this paper will try to demonstrate. Truth is the way that discloses various modes of being for Dasein. The Ancient Greeks saw truth as Aletheia, which Heidegger interprets to mean as unconcealment. Aletheia uncovers, and allows things to reveal themselves. For Heidegger, truth is the uncovering of things as an untruth would be the covering over of beings. Only by an object’s being uncovered can anyone then say that this object is true. …show more content…
Through the emotional experience of angst we can learn what we are as human beings. Heidegger says that when we experience angst the world seems to slip away from us, but they don’t simply disappear. The dreaded feeling of angst draws us into the “nothingness.” The nothingness emerges in the presence of a world that has become very alien and indifferent to us when experiencing angst."Only in the bright night of the nothingness of angst does the original openness of that which exist come into view as such," according to “What is