Heidegger and the Philosophy of Freedom

This chapter will introduce the reader to the philosophical problem of the freedom of the will, Heidegger’s texts that deal with this problem, and the secondary literature’s take on the problem so far. The argument here will be that the literature has argued that Heidegger has several conceptions of freedom between 1927 and 1930, but in truth there is only one. I argue that the reason this has been overlooked is that Heidegger’s conception of freedom fundamentally rejects the traditional problem. Attempting to understand Heidegger without recognising this leads to misinterpretations.