Being and Time: A Translation of Sein and Zeit (SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

published	1996 by State University of New York Press
binding	Paperback
isbn	0791426785 (isbn13: 9780791426784)
pages	487
description	Martin Heidegger paved the road trod on by the existentialists with the 1927 publication of Being and Time. His encyclopedic knowledge of philo...more [close] Martin Heidegger paved the road trod on by the existentialists with the 1927 publication of Being and Time. His encyclopedic knowledge of philosophy from ancient to modern times led him to rethink the most basic concepts underlying our thinking about ourselves. Emphasizing the "sense of being" (dasein) over other interpretations of conscious existence, he argued that specific and concrete ideas form the bases of our perceptions, and that thinking about abstractions leads to confusion at best. Thus, for example, "time" is only meaningful as it is experienced: the time it takes to drive to work, eat lunch, or read a book is real to us; the concept of "time" is not. Unfortunately, his writing is difficult to follow, even for the dedicated student. Heidegger is best read in German: his neologisms and other wordplay strain the talents of even the best translators. Still, his thoughts about authentic being and his turning the philosophical ground inspired many of the greatest thinkers of the mid 20th century, from Sartre to Derrida. Unfortunately, political and other considerations forced Heidegger to leave Being and Time unfinished; we can only wonder what might have been otherwise. --Rob Lightner [close]
date added	02-14-07 edit book

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Neurosys rated it:

(review of isbn 0060638508)

07/27/07

bookshelves: philosophical-investigations

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: philosophy majors

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 Plato’s ...more 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 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

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Being and Time: A Translation of Sein and Zeit (SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

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