Heidegger’s Fundamental Question

Heidegger’s book What is called thinking? is based on a lecture course that he gave in 1951 and 1952. He was looking at the problem of thinking since the 1920s. In the book on which his reputation stands, Being and Time (1927), the fundamental question that he tries to answer is: What is it to think? He fails to answer this question. His question is unanswerable, because it is not possible to comprehend the process of thinking when the self itself is identified through the process of thinking, and the process of thinking is the sole method of gaining knowledge. To know what it is to think, man must first transcend the process of thinking and find another way of identifying his own self and gaining knowledge—but this is not possible.