Being and Time (Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

My rating:

add to my books

Being and Time (Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

by Martin Heidegger, Joan Stambaugh (Translator)

3.97 · rating details · 2,606 ratings · 192 reviews

A new, definitive translation of Heidegger’s most important work.

The publication of Martin Heidegger’s magnum opus, Being and Time, in 1927 signaled an intellectual event of the first order and had an impact in fields far beyond that of philosophy proper. Among the most complex and original analyses of the character of philosophic inquiry and the relation of th...more

paper, 487 pages

Published October 30th 1996 by State University of New York Press (first published 1927)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

This book is currently not featured on any Listopia lists. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 6,395)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Aug 20, 2007

Jodi Lu rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: suckers.

GET OVER YOURSELF and distill some of these ideas into real words and real arguments and maybe, just maybe we'd have something really interesting and important here. but who the hell knows in all that gunk? it's like trying to follow a recipe for baked alaska written by gertrude stein!! you sit with your highlighter drying out like....uhhhh...okay i didn't mark anything in 20 pages so maybe this sentence is a keeper? 200 pages into this beast is the precise point at which, as a philo major, ...more

like 6 likes

· see review

Feb 16, 2011

Vaughn rated it

· review of another edition

If you want to get into Heidegger, don't read this first. Seriously, despite what others may have told you, the chronological priority of this book over, say, the lecture "The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic," does not translate into conceptual priority. You don't have to read B&T to begin putting into perspective what Heidegger was trying to do, but you do have to do that putting-in-perspective before reading B&T, or it will seem like the alien self-indulgence of a strange man wit...moreIf you want to get into Heidegger, don't read this first. Seriously, despite what others may have told you, the chronological priority of this book over, say, the lecture "The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic," does not translate into conceptual priority. You don't have to read B&T to begin putting into perspective what Heidegger was trying to do, but you do have to do that putting-in-perspective before reading B&T, or it will seem like the alien self-indulgence of a strange man without any apparent motivation that satisfies you as well as him. Why ask, "the question of being?" (Seinsfrage)? Because we've "forgotten" what 'being' means? If that strikes you as a pressing question right out of the gate, without any background in Husserlian phenomenology or any of Heidegger's other influences, then I admit it-- it took me a lot more 'motivating' to decide why this book is interesting than it will take you.
The problem is that being motivated to read it doesn't get you all the way through reading it. If you have no or limited philosophical background in Descartes, Husserl, Augustine, Aristotle, Kant, Dilthey, possibly Hegel, possibly Kierkegaard, a lot of B&T will seem alien and needlessly complicated. I don't know Aristotle, Augustine, or Dilthey all that well, having read only some of the first, and none of the latter two. Just to lay my cards on the table. My professor's side-notes about their influence on the text got me to see just how historically embroiled this book's motivations are. You almost have to be an eccentric, former Catholic theologian and historian turned phenomenologist in 1920s Germany to appreciate why Heidegger would 1) be concerned with the question of being 2) inquire into that question in the way he does here.
I stress the motivations for B&T because it is not a glass bead game, it's a book written by a thinker who had certain goals in mind, namely to provide the Geisteswissenschaften with a founding ontology as Dilthey aspired to do. It goes beyond that though, to M.H.'s extreme need to follow the history of philosophy back to its origins. He is strongly convinced that the origins of philosophy were decisive for the shape that later philosophy would take. Heidegger totally takes to heart Husserl's insistence that phenomenology penetrates from the surface into the depths of phenomena (Thing and Space). In those depths, he finds history. In a way even more extreme than Hegel's, 'immediate' phenomena are mined for their historical significance, while history is the medium of all conceptual significance.(less)

like 11 likes

· see review

Jul 27, 2007

Neurosys rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: philosophy majors

Shelves: philosophical-investigations

A necessary read to see to turn from Cartesian philosophy. Heidegger "explodes all of the history of ontology" in this work, where he finally uncovers the question of being, which has been neglected since Plato and Aristotle first considered way back. Since philosophers, namely Descartes and Husserl, have assumed being to be an impenetrable subjectivity, a soul or an ego.

Heidegger main goal is undercut the ontology that generates either/ors, the kind of ontology found in Pl...moreA necessary read to see to turn from Cartesian philosophy. Heidegger "explodes all of the history of ontology" in this work, where he finally uncovers the question of being, which has been neglected since Plato and Aristotle first considered way back. Since philosophers, namely Descartes and Husserl, have assumed being to be an impenetrable subjectivity, a soul or an ego.

Heidegger main goal is undercut the ontology that generates either/ors, the kind of ontology found in Plato’s forms, Aristotles’ primary substances, the Creator of Christian belief, Descartes’ rex extensa and res cognitans, Kant’s noumena, the physical stuff presupposed by scientific naturalism. Frede calls this “substance ontology”: the view that what is ultimately real is that which underlies properties—what stands under and remains continuously present throughout all change. Heidegger challenges the idea that the real world must be thought of in terms of substance at all. In Being and Time, Heidegger quickly notes that ontology as such, the question of being, “remains itself naïve and opaque” if it fails to inquire first into the meaning of being (31). In other words, since what things are are only intelligible to us insofar as they prove themselves to be determinate or relevant to us, we need a fundamental ontology that clarifies the meaning of things in general. And since our “being-there” (Dasein) is “the horizon in which something like being in general becomes intelligible,” fundamental ontology must clarify “an understanding which itself belongs to the constitution of the entity called Dasein” (274). The question of being, thus, is reformulated as a question about the condition for the accessibility of things. As Guigon, the author of Cambridge’s companion to reading Heidegger, argues: “In Heidegger’s view, there is no pure, external vantage point to which we can retreat in order to get a disinterested, presupposition-less angle on things” (6). As Taylor shows in “Engaged Agency,” it is only because we are always in a familiar life-world, that we have some pre-understanding of what things are all about. It is our being as participants in a shared practical world that first gives us a window onto ourselves and reality.(less)

like 6 likes

· see review

May 03, 2011

Erik Graff rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Heidegger fans

Recommended to Erik by: Paul Schreck

Shelves: philosophy

Being and Time was recommended to me strongly enough that I purchased it by Paul Schreck, a new member of Grinnell College's Philosophy Department who had switched from teaching Physics upon reading it. I did not, however, actually read the thing until enrolling in a course on Heidegger taught by Thomas Sheehan at Loyola University Chicago. Unbeknownst to me, however, I had had some exposure to Heidegger already in the study of modern theology, most particularly in The Systematic Theology of P...moreBeing and Time was recommended to me strongly enough that I purchased it by Paul Schreck, a new member of Grinnell College's Philosophy Department who had switched from teaching Physics upon reading it. I did not, however, actually read the thing until enrolling in a course on Heidegger taught by Thomas Sheehan at Loyola University Chicago. Unbeknownst to me, however, I had had some exposure to Heidegger already in the study of modern theology, most particularly in The Systematic Theology of Paul Tillich, as well as in the study of phenomenological psychologists like Jaspers.

Being and Time reads like an unfinished, hastily written rough draft of a work. The edition we used was poorly translated and annotated to boot. There is much needless obscurity. It is often difficult to tell whether the confusion arose from the author or his translator. Our teacher, Tom Sheehan, was, however, clear and precise.

It seemed to me, while reading the tome, that most of it was familiar. The question, basically, is one of describing consciousness in all of its forms from simple awareness to conceptually nested ratiocination. Like Kant, Heidegger is at some pains to not confine himself to a particular mode of consciousness, neither to a particular human culture nor even to a particular species. Dogs, for instance, are aware and chimps identify and use tools. All of this was quite familiar from psychology.

Underlying Heidegger's project, however, is what might be called a religious or mystical one and there, in psychology, the closest approximation was Maslow and, of course, some of the phenomenologists. What is it that makes being possible? Heidegger wants to get behind any mind/body dualism of course and here he beats most psychologists and neurobiologists who work with such assumptions already given to them by their very language if nothing else. What, then, precedes the simplest awareness? What makes it possible? The answers he finds to these questions are most clearly associated to the writings of the mystical traditions. Awareness amounts to revelation, to the first words of Genesis.

It is not surprising that Heidegger in later years turned towards poetry, the form of language which allows its functioning, simultaneously, in both denotative and conotative operations. His writing, as a whole, is a circling of a central mystery which can never be uttered, only pointed to.(less)

like 1 like

· see review

Aug 07, 2007

Christy rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy

To be fair, I didn't finish the book. I was sitting in on a graduate course on Heidegger. I made it about halfway through Being and Time before I had to stop attending in order to focus on completing work on my M.A. I was enjoying the reading of it--of course, here by "enjoying" I mean something different than "having fun." It was challenging, extremely challenging, and I felt I was slowly getting somewhere with it.

It would probably earn a higher rating if I...more

like 8 likes

· see review

Dec 15, 2011

Chris added it · review of another edition

I am dipping my toes into this at random intervals—i.e., when I'm feeling particularly masochistic—and seeing what, from a very amateur layman-explorer point-of-view, I can make of this infamous beast.* Being familiar with Macquarrie from his exploration of Existentialism, I have decided to stick with the original translation—and copious footnotes—he concocted in partnership with Edward Robinson. I have a PDF copy of the recent Stambaugh revisionist translation (which does seem to flow fairly sm...more

like 1 like

· see review

Feb 14, 2008

Mike Calabrese rated it

· review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. A few things to say: I was 18, in a class called Existentialism and Phenomenology and amazingly naive as to what the objective and procedures of doing philosophy were all about that I pored through this book like a child growing up in a repressed society who would come to be a mad scientist later in life. Little did I know that for all of Heidegger's undecipherable amphetamine-driven philosophic poetry there was actually very little content of use in the book. I have to particularly note th...more A few things to say: I was 18, in a class called Existentialism and Phenomenology and amazingly naive as to what the objective and procedures of doing philosophy were all about that I pored through this book like a child growing up in a repressed society who would come to be a mad scientist later in life. Little did I know that for all of Heidegger's undecipherable amphetamine-driven philosophic poetry there was actually very little content of use in the book. I have to particularly note the introduction, an incredible expose' on the delineation of the question of Being (which Edmund Husserl claimed was the only real philosophizing done in the book), the rejection of the Cartesian ego and the subject/object dichotomy, the rejection of metaphysics, as well as his discussion of truth as Aletheia, and his famous treatment of death.

The rest of the book is Heidegger creating an abstract portrait of man, positing that we are primarily constituted as being-in-the-world, that we are always already in a mood, that we are temporal beings projecting into the future, and that we struggle for authenticity, among many, many other things that I don't care to list now.

The language is impossible to get through in the Macquarrie/Robinson translation, but the Joan Stambaugh edition does a much better job. The language in general though leads to the oft levelled criticism of obscurantism, which was picked up by many French intellectuals who followed in his path (the schools of Deconstruction, Post-Modernism, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism in particular). Heidegger will introduce terms with no explanation and use them until subsequently defining them twenty pages later. Also, devoid of all but two or three real-world examples (of which Sartre's Being and Nothingness is rife) one would do best to have an instructor to help along with the terms, especially if one is coming from a background in Analytic philosophy.

I have nothing to say about Heidegger's history with National Socialism: the book was written many years before the rise of Hitler.

All in all, read this if you want to understand the consequences of Nietzsche, Husserl, and Kierkegaard, as well as the theoretical impetus for the later "Existentialist" and "Post-modern" philosophy. Otherwise, you have no business reading this book.
(less)

like 2 likes

· see review

Jun 15, 2007

Ann rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: favoritephilosophy

Ah, Heidegger. My friends from sophomore year in college probably remember me dragging this monstrosity with me everywhere. I signed up for the class only because I had heard the professor who taught it was great. And he was. What was unexpected was that I actually really liked Heidegger's writing. I did not even know who he was when I signed up for the class, but he turned out to be one of my favorites. Heavily indebted to Nietzsche and in turn an influence on Sartre and the existentialis...more

like 1 like

· see review

Jan 26, 2012

Ariadna73 rated it

· review of another edition

La pel�cula "Matrix" es como un curso de El Ser y el tiempo. Un libro muy mal escrito porque si de algo no sab�a el pobre Heidegger era de escribir, pero que dice cosas tan profundas e importantes que uno se vuelve loco de gusto cuando por fin descifra algo de tan enrevesada escritura. Es un trabajo duro leerlo y toma much�simo tiempo. Yo llevo m�s de diez a�os y no termino, pero tampoco me canso. A continuaci�n el comentario que escrib� en mi blog (lunairereadings.com) No he terminado la in...more

· see review

Dec 02, 2011

Don Robertson rated it

· review of another edition

Opaque? Well, certainly. Dated? Obviously.

There is a concise discussion of conscience to cheer us up as we wade through this work.

Overall though, this is not a good philosophical discussion. Heidegger seems to have forgotten that the simplest solutions are usually the best. He also seems to have never considered, he does not have the right answer at hand, because it is beyond his grasp.

I think when Socrates asked each of us to know ourselves, he did not h...more

· see review

Oct 06, 2011

Stephen rated it

· review of another edition

Okay so I actually only read about a third of this work, so I'm sure my grasp on its eventual conclusions is lacking. Still, I love this book more for its methodology than for any conclusions it might claim to reach. I like to think of Heidegger as the opposite of a poet. A poet uses language in creative and indirect ways to express feelings and truths that ordinary syntax can't get at. Poetry shifts the primary linguistic emphasis from denotation to connotation. Heidegger does the opposite. He ...more

· see review

Jul 27, 2011

David added it · review of another edition

What we are shapes what we know; what we know is what we are. Read from the perspective of the late 20th or early 21st centuries, this central assertion of Heidegger's 'Being and Time' seems fresh and modern, almost commonsensical. It can also, depending on one's adherence to a certain conception of scientific objectivity, seem controversial, if not heretical.

Like an earlier generation of German thinkers, including Nietzsche and Weber, Heidegger is critical philosophy's reduction to an accessor...moreWhat we are shapes what we know; what we know is what we are. Read from the perspective of the late 20th or early 21st centuries, this central assertion of Heidegger's 'Being and Time' seems fresh and modern, almost commonsensical. It can also, depending on one's adherence to a certain conception of scientific objectivity, seem controversial, if not heretical.

Like an earlier generation of German thinkers, including Nietzsche and Weber, Heidegger is critical philosophy's reduction to an accessory tool of the natural sciences, a simple user's manual for "how we know what we know," as the predominant field of "epistemology" was known in the 19th century. For Heidegger, the circularity of his starting point -- existence is essence, and the many variations on this theme throughout the book -- signals the impossibility of any attempt to radically separate the observer from the observed, or to achieve a neutral, disembodied position from which to contemplate the entities of the world.

Science attempts to organize the entities of the world into thematic compartments, but it cannot access an understanding of 'Being' in general, because it refuses to take itself and its own being into account. This more fundamental (and hence 'ontological') project is Heidegger's own; through it, he seeks to restore philosophy to a position of autonomy vis-a-vis the natural sciences. To do so, he takes what he sees as a different tack, a departure from the methods of grand metaphysicians such as Descartes.

Heidegger is not interested in reducing the many to the One, in reducing all the diversity of beings to a single, overarching principle of Being (as Descartes sought to reduce the world of entities to the principle of matter, or extension). In 'Being and Time,' rather, there is a wild proliferation of beings, and Heidegger seems to encourage it at every page. It is an almost animist philosophy. Perhaps this is because, as the title of the books suggest, the core of the question at hand does not, as is often superficially remarked, primarily concern beings, or entities themselves, but how Being is related to time.

The Being of what we think of as "Man," or the human subject -- neither of which Heidegger condones as valid principles -- is temporal, or constituted in its essence by the fact that it will not last forever. Explaining how this is so is the task that requires nearly 500 pages of meticulous argument from Heidegger. And likewise, as he hints only on the last page of the book, might "time manifest itself as the horizon of Being." Objects and entities, then, may be less a function of the permanence of matter, than an effect of temporality which we have yet to understand. Heidegger leaves off, in 1927, on a note suggestive of the relativity of physical constants similar to that of his contemporary Albert Einstein.(less)

· see review

Jul 23, 2011

Hayden rated it

· review of another edition

Heidegger successfully redirected my attention onto the importance and primacy of Ontology (phenomenology, het., etc.), and the Cognitive Sciences as worth life pursuits. He suffered from the same loss of resolve with the classic realm of philosophers when it came to the difficulty of defining the focus' of our attention: what is Being? What does it mean to be a being in a world surrounded by, supposedly, individual beings?
He does not come to an explicit conclusion in his "magnu...more

· see review

Sep 21, 2010

John Ferry Sihotang rated it

· review of another edition

untuk menyelesaikan buku ini mungkin akan dibutuhkan waktu satu bulan, non-stop dengan 10 krat bir. maka aku tak membaca tiap kalimat dalam buku ini. cukup kujadikan semacam text book, kubaca saat ada butuh untuk menggali pemikiran heidegger. buku ini salah satu kanon besar dalam sejarah filsafat mengikuti Politeai - ompung Plato dan Phenomenology of Spirit ompung Hegel.

dari buku ini aku hasilkan satu "racauan", sebagai abstraksi pemikiran Heidegger. selamat membaca dan men...more

like 1 like

· see review

May 26, 2010

Anthony rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy-etc

i've been "stretching along" through this formidable ontology intermittently for the past few months... it's been pretty maddening and i probably would have given up had i not already come to some of heidegger's later essays collected in "poetry language thought" and loved them so much. in "being and time", heidegger's attempt to make definite and rigorous those thoughts of ours that are necessarily most formless leads him to sharpen his terminology to a degree tha...more

like 1 like

· see review

Oct 30, 2009

Jack Stephens rated it

· review of another edition

This book is quite good when put into the context of phenomenology and existentialism. In order to get a good grasp of the arguments one must first have a basic understanding of Rene Descartes and then should have a good grasp of Edumund Husserl's philosophy (whom the book is dedicated too) and phenomenology in general.

I recommend first reading Introducing Heidegger and then getting two books by Michael Inwood, Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction and A Heidegger Dictionary. These ...more

like 2 likes

· see review

Dec 10, 2008

Rickeclectic rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Hardcore philosophy lovers, Derrida fans

Recommended to Rickeclectic by: College

Shelves: philosophy

One of the most important books in philosophy. Unfortunately, this cannot be read by a novice. It would help to know phenomenology, existentialism, and a fair amount of the history of philosophy. The best summary for this book is actually the Yeats line asking how can you tell the dancer from the dance. Heidegger shows how meaning cannot be separated from its context and puts what may be the last nails in the platonic idealist notion of a humans having a knowledge of some reality of forms. Heid...more

like 2 likes

· see review

Sep 14, 2011

David Williamson rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: essential-philosophy, philosophy

Being and Time is perhaps the most important philosophical book of the 20th century that is unless you’re an Analytic philosopher, in which case it is just nonsense. I personally, am all for a book that created Continental philosophy and goes further than Wittgenstein in its deconstruction of Metaphyics, Epistemology, the problem of mind and body, of the world, other minds, etc. Basically dissolving all traditional philosophical problems and foundations.

As a philosophical text, Heidegger alt...more

· see review

Aug 09, 2009

Jimmy added it · review of another edition

How to sum up a book like this? It's nearly impossible. Essentially, Heidegger's premise is that there is only being IN time. And that Time IS being. The articulation of these thoughts essentially takes us from the beginning of Western Metaphysics to what he believes to be the end of Western Metaphysics, namely, the thought of Nietzsche. While he does not talk about Nietzsche at all in this book, he did dedicate thousands of pages to discussing Nietzsche and how Heidegger feels he was the "...more

· see review

Oct 13, 2007

Kenny added it

This book is endlessly hard to understand. Good luck to any who try to read it. If you know what Heidegger is talking about I'd sure like it if someone shared that information with me. Plus, I only made it through the first half of the book. Maybe Heidegger explains everything in clear, concise language in the second part.

like 1 like

· see review

Feb 02, 2009

Shawn rated it

· review of another edition

Reading this for the second time! It makes a lot more sense on the second read.

The Stambaugh translation definitely seems clearer than the older Maquarrie and Robinson version, although it lacks the extensive and helpful footnotes you get in MR.

like 1 like

· see review

Mar 13, 2009

Robert rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy

It's hard to believe that someone could write something as complex and brilliant as Part I of "Being and Time" and then spend the rest of his life pretty much sucking. But Heidegger manages it! Part II isn't bad, either, but doesn't quite gel as he wants it to, so he ends up forcing the structure of many of his articulations so they will match those he has previously discussed.

A tremendously difficult book that I would not recommend anyone read without being part of at leas...more

like 1 like

· see review

Oct 02, 2011

The Awdude rated it

· review of another edition

Reading Being and Time is sort of like reading an outline of the roots of every major work of the contemporary "post-" thinkers. Heidegger seems to be the common denominator for pretty much everybody: Foucault (Heidegger + Nietzsche), Lacan (Heidegger + Freud), Derrida (Heidegger + Barthes), Levinas (Heidegger + Husserl). Of course this list is silly and reductive; nevertheless, Heidegger wrote the last great work of 'philosophy,' and every major thinker thenceforth was faced with the ...more

· see review

Apr 05, 2007

Chris added it

Shelves: abandoned, books-mulzer-loves-i-havent-finishe

I really, REALLY tried to read this, and I know Mulzer will say that it all makes perfect sense, but i still can't wrap my head around Heidegger. Sorry!

like 1 like

· see review

Feb 26, 2010

Naxa rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy, existentialism-phenomenology, post-structuralism-and-modernism

Not as terrible or as hard to read as everyone made it out to be. I read other books and articles for half a year before reading this and all that preparation helped a lot with comprehension and getting through it quickly.

That being said a lot was left out of those introductory works most notably Heidegger's conception of time which almost hundred and fifty pages is devoted to. I find that both hilarious and unfortunate given that time and its intertwining with Dasein's intentionali...moreNot as terrible or as hard to read as everyone made it out to be. I read other books and articles for half a year before reading this and all that preparation helped a lot with comprehension and getting through it quickly.

That being said a lot was left out of those introductory works most notably Heidegger's conception of time which almost hundred and fifty pages is devoted to. I find that both hilarious and unfortunate given that time and its intertwining with Dasein's intentionality is probably the most central concept to get from the book.

Despite all my preparation some of the words got repetitive and hard to discern the meaning of given the nature of what was being shown throughout this book. So despite all my prep and such, this was still one of the hardest books I ever read.

This book has some notable solutions to philosophical problems. It is seen as the continental answer to Cartesian solipsism and has been since its initial release. The reason being, the dasein as being-in-the-world argument. Which is convincing, but not as convincing as other peoples answers. Most notably Wittgenstein's private language argument.

His ideas on how we experience time were probably the most interesting thing in the book. However, while they seem intuitively right he doesn't seem to argue anything or give you any real reason to believe what he says.

I also think his conception of nothingness as being dasein experiencing it's own mortality is ultimately a flawed conception of nothingness that cripples his whole philosophy. He also seems to have an archaic view of the importance of essences in relation to being or as we call it now the self. This over emphasis on the relationship between essence and existence would not only weaken his own philosophy, but would also cripple subsequent existentialists and phenomenologists ideas of existence.

Overall, I recommend this for its historical significance and the ideas it displays. I don't recommend it for enjoyment or to a lay person of philosophy. (less)

· see review

Jan 16, 2009

Chaz rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: half_eaten

After seriously dedicating many hours trying to wrap my mind around just a few of Heidegger's postulations -- I'm finding that I'm clearly not at an intellectual level or have the innate intellectual machinery to understand him. I think I probably need to take a dummy course in existentialism in order to make sense of "nothing". He seriously dedicates many pages to analyzing "nothing" to the point that he makes something out of nothing or nothing out of something. I have ...more

· see review

Sep 11, 2009

Lorena Francisca rated it

· review of another edition

Intrincado, pero interesante. La obra de Heidegger se nos descubre ante los ojos al igual que su teoría acerca de la verdad, aquello que está oculto pero en estado de descubierto. Claro que la edición que leí no era de las mejores, era del Fondo de Cultura Económica y la traducción era muy vieja, tanto así que tuve que pedir asesoría con algunos términos como "curarse de" que no es más que la preocupación o el sörge (creo que se escribe así, si me equivoco, corríjanme).
No leí tod...more

· see review

May 13, 2009

Thirteenth Peer rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, philosophy

I have a pretty negative impression of this book. I haven't read the whole thing but I have studied one section in depth, one-on-one with a professor. I have also read secondary sources on it. This was so I could write a thesis on another philosopher to whom Heidegger was an important influence (Levinas). So I was required to have some overall understanding of the work as well. Despite all this, and despite thinking that there are some interesting questions raised, the style of the writing ...more

· see review

Jan 26, 2012

William Marsolek rated it

· review of another edition

Unless you are a genius of geniuses--or a world-class bullshitter-- Being & Time's language will seem strange, even incomprehensible, for the first few hours or days or weeks of intensely reading him. But once you subjectively see a hint of what he was on about when he talks about 'the question of being' his text becomes astoundingly clearer. Its like if everyday sentence structures were a rubber band held straight and taut, then B&T's language is like Heidegger pulling the middle of the band to...moreUnless you are a genius of geniuses--or a world-class bullshitter-- Being & Time's language will seem strange, even incomprehensible, for the first few hours or days or weeks of intensely reading him. But once you subjectively see a hint of what he was on about when he talks about 'the question of being' his text becomes astoundingly clearer. Its like if everyday sentence structures were a rubber band held straight and taut, then B&T's language is like Heidegger pulling the middle of the band toward 'being', stretching it as far as it'll go. His use of language can be as respectable as any poet (who also sounds like jibber-jabber to anyone not willing to see where he/she's coming from.)

It helps to read a small portion at a time--and not fear if you 'get it all'--then resume your day as you normally would do, but keeping his point in the background. This is not a philosophy based on strict adherence to logic: this is why many of his points aren't clearly logically traceable, and why many people see B&T as harder than it actually is. The way to test his arguments, then, isn't solely found in following his logic, though this is a large part of it, but by living your life and seeing if his thoughts shed new, and sound, light in your everyday experience of being-in-the-world. If you always keep this in mind, that his philosophy is based on our being, then soon his language has a way of clearing up.

Once you become fluent in heideggarian, there a many things worth your time taken from the reading experience. A. A new respect for the subtle forms language can take, the geometry of the rubber band of language, and reading people who wrote within that form/shape. Older authors who wrote in 'outdated' language becomes easier to enjoy, like Proust, Shakespeare, or Melville. B. Because of the sheer difficulty of the book, pretty much everything you read becomes that much easier. You're able to take even more from your favorite authors. C. There's some real down-to-earth philosophical questions B&T provokes which may bring forth new dimensions to our everyday life. (Among most continental philosophers, he inspired that whole generation of french existentialists.) Take his views on our own being, that in our everyday activity--like taking to bus or going shopping--we lose our self-image and simply become 'one' who takes the bus or 'one' who shops, and we make our decisions of bus-taking or shopping on that basis. D. Heidegger spends some fifty to a hundred pages talking about death. How fun is that!

So yeah. It's probably be the most challenging book you can read, but what great book isn't in some respects challenging?(less)

· see review

May 10, 2011

Thomas rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy

Being and Time is probably the most difficult book I've ever read, even with the help of Dreyfus, Polt, and Blattner. (Who are great helps, all of them.) What's really interesting about the book is that Heidegger is simply describing basic everyday "common sense," but in order to get back to the common sense of Aristotle he has to deconstruct 500 years of western thinking. In order to do this he has to invent a new vocabulary that describes being in a extraordinarily rigorous and entir...more

like 1 like

· see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 213 214 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
help for students	3	31	May 30, 2011 12:27am

combine
Other Editions (17)

More editions...

Genres

Philosophy

371 users

Non Fiction

44 users

Philosophy > Theory

11 users

Classics

8 users

Psychology

6 users

Academic > College

6 users

Philosophy > Metaphysics

5 users

European Literature > German Literature

5 users

Academic

4 users

Cultural > Germany

3 users

See top shelves...

Readers Also Enjoyed

About Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy. They have also had an impact far beyo...more

More about Martin Heidegger...

Books by Martin Heidegger

Poetry, Language, Thought (HarperPerennial Modern Classics)

The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Pin It

Trivia About Being and Time

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from Being and Time

“Why are there beings at all instead of nothing? That is the question. Presumably it is not arbitrary question, "Why are there beings at all instead of nothing"- this is obviously the first of all questions. Of course it is not the first question in the chronological sense [...] And yet, we are each touched once, maybe even every now and then, by the concealed power of this question, without properly grasping what is happening to us. In great despair, for example, when all weight tends to dwindle away from things and the sense of things grows dark, the question looms.” — 4 people liked it

“Understanding of being is itself a determination of being of Da-sein.” — 1 person liked it

More quotes…

Groups That Shelved Being and Time

Philosophy

970 members

last activity Feb 09, 2012 07:29am

shelf: currently-reading

title link	preview: Being and Time
avg rating	preview: Being and Time Goodreads rating: 3.97 (2606 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101690.Being_and_Time?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223645985m/101690.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101690.Being_and_Time?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Being and Time by Martin Heidegger[/url]

Being and Time (Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Readers Also Enjoyed

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website