The Call of Essence: Reflections On Dr. George Smith’s Heidegger Lecture Series

This article reflects on Professor George Smith’s three-part lecture series on Heidegger’s Being and Time, as experienced by a first-year student. Framing the lectures through art and poetic hermeneutics, Dr. Smith contrasts Ingres’s idealized form with Degas’s ephemeral moments to illustrate the shift from classical phenomenology to hermeneutic phenomenology. He links this aesthetic movement to Heidegger’s concept of “ecstatic temporality,” where Being reveals itself in time. The final lecture centers on language as the “house of Being,” drawing from Heidegger’s reading of Hölderlin. Dr. Smith ultimately calls students to embrace their role as artist-philosophers by heeding the call of their essence.