Why We’re Not Truly Thinking

This is the first in a series on Martin Heidegger’s What Is Called Thinking? Please read the second post, The Death of Deep Thought: How Poetry Saves Meditative Thinking. And the third, The Call to Thought: When Life Forces Us to Truly Think.

Are We Really Thinking?

Martin Heidegger, perhaps more than any other thinker in the 20th century, demands a certain patience—not only with his philosophy and ideas but with his political affiliations.

What Is Called Thinking? was first a series of lectures in 1951 and 1952 for his students, the last before his formal retirement and the first since being drafted by the Nazi party, which was then printed as a book.

Now, Heidegger can be a very repetitive thinker, often using this technique to illuminate language so the reader will consider it anew.

But these lectures remained as he delivered them, along with the lecture notes he would pass out. Nonetheless, the book is a great introduction to his late philosophy.

One of his main preoccupations in the book is not just asking what thinking is, but if we actually think.

Most of the time, he argues, we don’t.

Now, a lot of the time, this is out of necessity.

Heidegger identifies two categorically different modes of thinking:

1. Calculative Thinking – The dominant mode in modern life, this breaks everything down into data, predictions, and results.
2. Meditative Thinking – A deeper, slower mode of thought that doesn’t seek to manage the world but allows it to reveal itself.

Because of the rapid technological progress of the last century, Heidegger sees modern life as being completely dominated by calculative thinking, to the point where we have lost access to a more profound way of engaging with reality.

One of the few ways to escape this stranglehold, he argues, is poetry, which forces us into a different rhythm of thought—one that is less about control and more about experience.

The Bookstore Metaphor: How Calculative Thinking Controls Us

If you stroll down any bookstore, you pass by different genres—fiction, nonfiction, gardening, self-help, etc.

Heidegger sees this as a reflection of our modes of thought: everything is organized around results.

Books focus on how to get something done—not why it even matters in the first place.

Heidegger says: “Calculative thinking computes. It races from one prospect to the next. It never stops, never collects itself.”

This type of thinking is efficient, strategic, and future-oriented—never pausing, always scanning for the next opportunity.

Going back to the bookstore example, self-help books perfectly encapsulate Heidegger’s argument. Self-help is about mastering the self—but it never questions what the self actually is.

When you read self-help books, you aren’t awakened to a deeper truth about yourself—you are awakened to your own laziness and inability to achieve results.

The self becomes something to control and organize, just as a forest becomes lumber.

This is Heidegger’s problem with being dominated by this mode of thought.

Of course, we need calculative thinking—it helps us navigate the world and innovate.

But when it dominates everything, it conceals the deeper aspects of existence.

The Modern World: Where Everything Becomes Data

This kind of thinking is everywhere:

• Success is measured in profits and productivity.
• Efficiency and automation are prioritized over the human experience.
• Education is valued primarily for job placement.
• Even our personal lives are reduced to data—tracking our steps, hydration, and sleep cycles.

Heidegger acknowledges that calculative thinking is necessary. But when it dominates everything, everything is reduced to mere resources.

In his essay The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger warns that calculative thinking reduces the world to a “standing-reserve.”

• A forest becomes lumber.
• A river becomes hydroelectric power.
• An individual becomes a consumer.

Everything now becomes a means to an end. Everything is something to be analyzed, optimized, or consumed.

This is why Heidegger says: “Science isn’t thinking.”

Despite all the knowledge we’ve gathered, we haven’t truly been thinking at all.

Related Posts:

• The Death of Deep Thought: How Poetry Saves Meditative Thinking
• What Was Read This Week: Jan 26-Feb 1
• The Call to Thought: When Life Forces Us to Truly Think
• How AI is Dimming Your Intellectual Growth and Stifling Creativity
• Privacy Policy

The Bryan Johnson Phenomenon: A Life Without Being?

Think about Bryan Johnson—the tech entrepreneur who has dominated media with his extreme anti-aging routine. He has reduced everything in his life to optimization:

• Every calorie, every movement, every bodily function is tracked.
• Every decision is based on biological efficiency.
• There is no room for spontaneity, pleasure, or beauty.

Now, most people don’t live like Bryan Johnson—but he represents the extreme endpoint of calculative thinking.

Even in smaller ways, this mindset is everywhere.

Try typing into YouTube something as innocent as “waking up”—you’ll immediately get bombarded with videos on:

• How to optimize your morning routine.
• Why waking up at 4 AM is the secret to success.
• Step-by-step breakdowns of how the most successful people wake up.

This is exactly what Heidegger is pointing out: calculative thinking now dominates our every approach to life.

Meditative Thinking: The Rare but Essential Alternative

Against this, Heidegger presents meditative thinking—a way of engaging with reality that doesn’t seek to influence or control but instead listens, reflects, and dwells.

Unlike calculative thinking, meditative thinking does not demand immediate answers or practical results. It is about openness, not efficiency.

And yet, even Heidegger acknowledges that philosophy cannot fully obtain this.

Why? Because meditative thinking requires exactly what modern life suppresses—slowness, stillness, and patience.

Heidegger says: “The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.”

Meditative thinking is so rare that it is actively ignored and suppressed in a world that values speed and productivity.

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The Call to Think: Why Poetry Matters

One of the few ways we can encounter meditative thinking is through poetry. Unlike other forms of literature, poetry doesn’t explain—it reveals.

Yes, you could summarize a poem into a few bullet points. But at that point, it loses the very thing that made it a poem.

Poetry resists calculative thinking—it forces you to be present in a way that modern life rarely allows.

This is why Heidegger gives language such importance. He says: “Language is the house of Being. In its home, man dwells.”

We can’t escape language—it literally shapes our reality.

This is why Heidegger’s philosophy, across his entire career, keeps returning to language. A true definition of a word can reveal an entire world.

For Heidegger, poetry is the only art form that doesn’t try to control language—it lets language speak for itself.

Instead of demanding judgment or utility, poetry invites us simply to be.

Is Calculative Thinking Bad?

Even more than in Heidegger’s time, we are inundated with language, distractions, and demands on our attention.

We are constantly pulled toward calculative thinking—where speed, optimization, and engagement rule.

But Heidegger’s warning is not that calculative thinking is bad—it is necessary. His concern is that it has become so dominant that we have lost something essential—our connection to ourselves.

To regain it, we must create space for meditative thinking:

• Create stillness.
• Learn to listen.
• Make space for simply being.

Because without this, we risk living in a world of pure calculation—where everything has a function, but nothing has meaning.

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