Introduction

Summary

When we reflect on the modern age, we are questioning concerning the modern world picture. We characterize the latter by throwing it into relief over against the medieval and the ancient world pictures. But why do we ask concerning a world picture in our interpreting of an historical age? Does every period of history have its world picture, and indeed in such a way as to concern itself from time to time about that world picture? Or is this, after all, only a modern kind of representing, this asking concerning a world picture?

Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture”

The object of the present study is an interpretation of the category of subjectivity as central to the understanding of what Heidegger calls the “world picture” of modernity. In Heidegger's view, the emergence of the modern world picture cannot adequately be explained as long as we attempt to understand it simply in terms of a contrast with the Ancient or medieval worlds. This is because what is at stake in the emergence of the subject is the activity of “world-picturing” itself, a form of representation that helps secure modernity as something wholly new. As Heidegger goes on to say, “the fact that whatever is comes into being in and through representedness transforms the age in which this occurs into a new age in contrast with the preceding one.”