Being and Time

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"Sein und Zeit" redirects here. For the episode of The X-Files, see Sein und Zeit (The X-Files).

Being and Time

Author(s)

Martin Heidegger

Original title

Sein und Zeit

Translator

1962: John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson 1996: Joan Stambaugh

Country

Germany

Language

German

Subject(s)

deconstructionism, existentialism,hermeneutics, phenomenology

Publisher

1962: SCM Press 1996: State University of New York Press 2008: Harper Perennial Modern Thought

Publication 1927 date

Published in English

1962, 2008 (Macquarrie & Robinson) 1996 (Stambaugh)

Being and Time (German: Sein und Zeit, 1927) is a book by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Although written quickly, and despite the fact that Heidegger never completed the project outlined in the introduction, it remains his most important work and has profoundly influenced 20thcentury philosophy, particularly existentialism, hermeneutics and deconstruction.
Contents
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1 Heidegger's original project 2 Introductory summary

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2.1 Being 2.2 Dasein 2.3 Time

3 Phenomenology in Heidegger and Husserl 4 Hermeneutics 5 Destruction of metaphysics 6 Translations 7 Related work 8 Influence 9 References 10 Bibliography

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10.1 Primary literature 10.2 Secondary literature

11 External links

Heidegger's original project [edit]

Being and Time was originally intended to consist of two major parts, each part consisting of three divisions.[1] Heidegger was forced to prepare the book for publication when he had completed only the first two divisions of part one. The remaining divisions planned forBeing and Time (particularly the divisions on time and being, Kant, and Aristotle) were never published, although in many respects they are addressed in one form or another in Heidegger's other works. In terms of structure, Being and Time remains as it was when it first appeared in print; it consists of the lengthy two-part introduction, followed by Division One, the "Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein," and Division Two, "Dasein and Temporality."

Introductory summary [edit]

Being [edit]
On the first page of Being and Time, Heidegger describes the project in the following way: "our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the sense of being and to do so concretely."[2] Heidegger claims that traditional ontology has prejudicially overlooked this question, dismissing it as overly general, undefinable, or obvious.[3] Instead Heidegger proposes to understand being itself, as distinguished from any specific entities (beings).[4] "'Being' is not something like a being."[5] Being, Heidegger claims, is "what determines beings as beings, that in terms of which beings are already understood."[6] Heidegger is seeking to identify the criteria or conditions by which any specific entity can show up at all (see world disclosure).[7] If we grasp Being, we will clarify the meaning of being, or "sense" of being ("Sinn des Seins"), where by "sense" Heidegger means that "in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something."[8] According to Heidegger, as this sense of being precedes any notions of how or in what manner any particular being or beings exist, it is pre-conceptual, non-propositional, and hence prescientific.[9] Thus, in Heidegger's view, fundamental ontology would be an explanation of the understanding preceding any other way of knowing, such as the use of logic, theory, specific ontology[10] or act of reflective thought. At the same time, there is no access to being other than via beings themselveshence pursuing the question of being inevitably means asking about a being with regard to its being.[11] Heidegger argues that a true understanding of being (Seinsverstndnis) can only proceed by referring to particular beings, and that the best method of pursuing being must inevitably, he says, involve a kind of hermeneutic circle, that is (as he explains in his critique of prior work in the field of hermeneutics), it must rely upon repetitive yet progressive acts of interpretation. "The methodological sense of phenomenological description is interpretation."[12]

Dasein [edit]
Thus the question Heidegger asks in the introduction to Being and Time is: what is the being that will give access to the question of the meaning of Being? Heidegger's answer is that it can only be that being for whom the question of Being is important, the being for whom Being matters.[10] As this answer already indicates, the being for whom Being is a question is not a what, but a who. Heidegger calls this being Dasein (an ordinary German word literally meaning "being-there"), and the method pursued in Being and Time consists in the attempt to delimit the characteristics of Dasein, in order thereby to approach the meaning of Being itself through an interpretation of the temporality of Dasein. Dasein is not "man," but is nothing other than "man"it is this distinction that enables Heidegger to claim that Being and Time is something other than philosophical anthropology. Heidegger's account of Dasein passes through a dissection of the experiences of Angst and mortality, and then through an analysis of the structure of "care" as such. From there he raises the problem of "authenticity," that is, the potentiality or otherwise for mortal Dasein to exist fully enough that it might actually understand being. Heidegger is clear throughout the book that nothing makes certain that Dasein is capable of this understanding.