Past, Present and Future
Until recently I’ve avoided reading the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. I think I have some valid reasons. Heidegger joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and became rector of Freiburg University under the Nazi regime. His relationship with National Socialism was more than simply being caught up in difficult times. The publication of his Black Notebooks has made the questions surrounding his antisemitism and his philosophy harder, not easier. So I left him alone.
Recently, though, I’ve been dipping my toes into Heidegger. I’m not sure yet how far I want to go. It is not really my field, but I’ve found several ideas that are useful for thinking about something that concerns me increasingly: the relationship between past, present, and future.
Perhaps it isn’t accidental that I’ve also been watching Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein’s The U.S. and the Holocaust again (currently showing in the USA on PBS Passport). It’s a sobering account, not only of what happened in Germany, but of what happened elsewhere as Nazism developed and the persecution of Jews intensified.
It has raised an uncomfortable question when I think about Heidegger. What would I have done? And I honestly don’t know. It’s tempting to imagine our past selves as our best selves. Had I been there, surely I would have recognized what was happening. Surely I would have spoken. Surely I would have resisted. Perhaps, but I can’t be sure. Anyway, I digress. Although perhaps not entirely.
Three ideas from Heidegger have been occupying my thoughts: Geworfenheit, Eigentlichkeit, and Entwurf. We usually translate them as thrownness, authenticity, and projection. They have given me a way of thinking about past, present, and future.
Geworfenheit, or thrownness. It has the sense of, “This is where I find myself.” I didn’t begin from nowhere. I have a past. I was born into a particular family, place, culture, and historical moment. I didn’t choose my genes or my early circumstances. Since my birth, accident, luck, other people’s decisions, events beyond my control, and my own previous choices have brought me to this particular moment. It’s as if I have been thrown here. That doesn’t mean I’m simply the victim of circumstances. Some of what brought me here was my own doing. I made choices. Some were good. Some weren’t. Each choice changed what subsequently became possible. Yet I can’t go backward and choose again. This is where I am. There’s something quite freeing about simply acknowledging that. I don’t have to imagine an alternative life beginning somewhere else. Whatever the route, it has brought me here.
Heidegger uses the word Eigentlichkeit, authenticity. The German has a useful connection with eigen, one’s own. We might say it’s “being true to yourself,” but I’m a little wary of that. It sounds like just another slogan. I think authenticity is more than that. What does it mean to own this life as mine? Heidegger was interested in the way I can lose myself in what he called das Man, “the they.” I do what “everyone” does. I value what people around me value. I want what I’m expected to want. I measure myself against the expectations of my peers, my profession, my culture, and society. That is “the they.” It’s the way we fit into society. If we do not fit in with das Man, we are considered deviant. That’s a difficult place to stand. None of this is necessarily wrong. After all, I’m mammalian. I’m a social creature, and other people have legitimate claims on me. Authenticity can’t simply mean ignoring everyone else and doing whatever I want. Yet, it raises questions: This is the life I actually have, which parts of it do I genuinely own? What future possibilities am I prepared to make mine?
Which leads me to Heidegger’s third insight: Entwurf, projection. The idea is future-oriented, but it’s not about making predictions. Projection concerns possibilities. I’m not only what I have already become. I live toward possibilities of what I might yet become. Perhaps I want to become a better writer, philosopher, teacher, musician, craftsperson, or friend. The projected future doesn’t exist. And it may never exist. Yet something curious happens when I take any or all of those as my projects. As I project into the future, the future reaches backward. If I seriously project myself as a better musician, I practice today. If I project myself as a writer, I write today. If I imagine a friendship deepening, I attend to that friendship now. The imagined future changes the present.
But here I find a problem with Heidegger. Projection tells me that I live toward possibilities. Authenticity asks me to own those possibilities as mine. Neither, on its own, tells me that the possibilities I choose are good. And now I’m back with Heidegger the Nazi. Someone can authentically own a thoroughly bad way of living. Being true to myself is no guarantee that the self I am becoming is good. Authenticity may be necessary for integrity, but it isn’t sufficient for moral integrity.
This is where I put on my hat as an ethicist and where I find Iris Murdoch helpful. Murdoch writes about the idea of perfection and, ultimately, the Good. She calls it “the argument from perfection.” It’s as if when I pay attention to the Good, which for Murdoch is inseparable from learning to love and attend to what is real, that perfection draws me toward it. I may never reach perfection. Truthfully, I won’t. But my recognition of something better (a better me, a better world) can draw me toward it. The Good, which in my own thinking I connect fundamentally with love, becomes something toward which I orient myself.
So there’s a question missing from Heidegger’s account of projection. It is not simply: What might I become? It’s rather: What is worthy of becoming? Heidegger gives me possibility. Murdoch gives me moral orientation.
I would take another step. For myself, the Good needs some content. Over many years I’ve come to think about that through three interconnected ideas: love, nonviolence, and what I call Pragmatic Ethical Principlism, or PEP. Love provides the fundamental orientation toward others. Nonviolence asks what that love looks like when I encounter conflict and difference. PEP provides practical principles for testing what I actually do: seeking well-being, minimizing harm, respecting personhood, making room for growth, honoring relationships, acting fairly, and repairing damage.
None provides a formula for the Good life. I don’t think there is one. But they give me something against which to test the possibilities I project. And perhaps that brings me back to the uncomfortable question with which I began. What would I have done? Honestly, I still don’t know. I can’t retrospectively construct a heroic version of myself who would certainly have resisted when so many others did not. Yet, simply being “authentic” is not enough. A person can authentically own terrible commitments. It might be better to consider the life I’m practicing now.
My past has thrown me here. Geworfenheit. I have to own the life that is actually mine rather than surrender it to what “they” expect. Eigentlichkeit. I can project possibilities for what I might yet become. Entwurf. But I also need to ask whether those possibilities are good. The past reaches into the present because it has made me who I am. The future also reaches into the present because the person I hope to become affects what I do today. I can’t change what has thrown me here. I can’t yet inhabit the future toward which I am moving. My task is to own the life into which I have been thrown, orient it toward the Good, and practice now becoming the person I hope one day to be.
Andrew (Andy) Fitz-Gibbon
Ithaca NY, September 2026
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