Editing Martin Heidegger (section)

=== Influences ===
{{multiple image
| width             = 140
| image1            = Nietzsche187a.jpg
| alt1              = Friedrich Nietzsche
| image2            = FK Hiemer - Friedrich Hölderlin (Pastell 1792).jpg
| alt2              = Friedrich Hölderlin,
| footer            = Heidegger dedicated many of his lectures to both Nietzsche and Hölderlin.
}}

[[Friedrich Nietzsche]] and [[Friedrich Hölderlin]] were both important influences on Heidegger, and many of his lecture courses were devoted to one or the other, especially in the 1930s and 1940s.{{sfn|Raffoul|Nelson|2013|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=eSZMAQAAQBAJ&pg=PT224&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false 224]}} The lectures on Nietzsche focused on fragments posthumously published under the title ''[[The Will to Power (manuscript)|The Will to Power]]'', rather than on Nietzsche's published works. Heidegger reads ''The Will to Power'' as the culminating expression of Western metaphysics, and the lectures are a kind of dialogue between the two thinkers.

[[Michael Allen Gillespie]] says that Heidegger's theoretical acceptance of "destiny" has much in common with the [[millenarianism]] of Marxism. But Marxists believe Heidegger's "theoretical acceptance is antagonistic to practical political activity and implies fascism". Gillespie, however, says "the real danger" from Heidegger isn't [[Quietism (philosophy)|quietism]] but [[fanaticism]]. Modernity has cast mankind toward a new goal "on the brink of profound [[nihilism]]" that is "so alien it requires the construction of a new tradition to make it comprehensible."{{sfn|Gillespie|1984|page=133}}

Gillespie extrapolates from Heidegger's writings that humankind may degenerate into "scientists, workers, and brutes".{{sfn|Gillespie|1984|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=fApCCQAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA148&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false 148]}} According to Gillespie, Heidegger envisaged this abyss to be the greatest event in the history of the West because it might enable humanity to comprehend being more profoundly and primordially than the [[Presocratics]].{{sfn|Gillespie|1984|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=fApCCQAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA151&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false 151]}}

The poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin became an increasingly central focus of Heidegger's later work and thought. Heidegger grants Hölderlin a singular place within the history of being and the history of Germany, as a herald whose thought is yet to be "heard" in Germany or the West more generally. Many of Heidegger's works from the 1930s onwards include meditations on lines from Hölderlin's poetry, and several of the lecture courses are devoted to the reading of a single poem; for example, ''[[Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister"]]''.