false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1256144077m/3791745.jpg 92307 14 Being & Time (Sein und Zeit) is a book by German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Altho written quickly, & despite the fact that he never completed the project outlined in the introduction, it remains his most important work & has profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy, particularly existentialism, hermeneutics & deconstruction. Being & Time was originally intended to consist of two major parts, each part consisting of three divisions. Heidegger was forced to prepare the book for publication when he had completed only the 1st two divisions of part one. The remaining divisions planned (particularly the divisions on time & being, Kant & Aristotle) were never published, altho in many respects they are addressed in one form or another in other works. In terms of structure, Being & Time remains as it was when it 1st appeared in print; it consists of the lengthy important two-part introduction, followed by Division One, the "Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein," & Division Two, "Dasein & Temporality." On the first page, 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 & to do so concretely." He claims that traditional ontology has prejudicially overlooked this question, dismissing it as overly general, undefinable or obvious. Instead Heidegger proposes to understand being itself, as distinguished from any specific entities (beings). "'Being' is not something like a being." Being, he claims, is "what determines beings as beings, that in terms of which beings are already understood." He is seeking to identify the criteria or conditions by which any specific entity can be at all. 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." According to him, as this sense of being precedes any notions of how or in what manner any particular being or beings exist, it is preconceptual, non-propositional & hence prescientific. Thus, in his 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 or act of reflective thought. At the same time, there's no access to being other than via beings themselves—hence pursuing the question of being inevitably means asking about a being with regard to its being. He argues that a true understanding of being can only proceed by referring to particular beings, & that the best method of pursuing being must inevitably 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." Thus the question Heidegger asks in the introduction is: what is the being that will give access to the question of the meaning of being? His answer is that it can only be that being for whom the question of being is important, the being for whom being matters. As this answer already indicates, the being for whom being is a question is not a what, but a who. He calls this being Dasein (an ordinary German word meaning, roughly, "(human) existence" or, more literally, "being-there"), & the method pursued consists in the attempt to delimit the characteristics of Dasein, in order thereby hopefully to approach being itself. Dasein is not "man," but is nothing other than "man"—-it is this distinction that enables him to claim that Being & Time is something other than philosophical anthropology. Heidegger's account of Dasein passes thru a dissection of the experiences of Angst & mortality, & then thru 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. He is clear throughout the book that nothing makes certain that Dasein is capable of this understanding. Finally, this question of the authenticity of individual Dasein cannot be separated from the "historicality" of Dasein. On the one hand, Dasein, as mortal, is "stretched along" between birth & death, & thrown into its world, that is, thrown into its possibilities, possibilities which Dasein is charged with the task of assuming. On the other hand, Dasein's access to this world & these possibilities is always via a history & a tradition—-this is the question of "world historicality," & among its consequences is his argument that Dasein's potential for authenticity lies in the possibility of choosing a "hero." Thus, more generally, the outcome of the progression of Heidegger's argument is the thought that the being of Dasein is time. Nevertheless, he concludes his work with a set of enigmatic questions foreshadowing the necessity of a destruction (that is, a transformation) of the history of philosophy in relation to temporality—these were the questions to be taken up in the never completed continuation of his project: "The existential & ontological constitution of the totality of Dasein is grounded in temporality. Accordingly, a primordial mode of temporalizing of ecstatic temporality itself must make the ecstatic project of being in general possible. How is this mode of temporalizing of temporality to be interpreted? Is there a way leading from primordial time to the meaning of being? Does time itself reveal itself as the horizon of being?" Altho Heidegger describes his method as phenomenological, the question of its relation to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl is complex. The fact that he believes that ontology includes an irreducible hermeneutic aspect, for example, might be thought to run counter to Husserl's claim that phenomenological description is capable of a form of scientific positivity. On the other hand, however, several aspects of the approach & method of Being & Time seem to relate more directly to Husserl's work. The central Husserlian concept of the directedness of all thought—intentionality for example, while scarcely mentioned in Being & Time, has been identified by some with Heidegger's central notion of "Sorge" (Cura, care or concern). But for Heidegger, theoretical knowledge represents only one kind of intentional behavior, & he asserts that it is grounded in more fundamental modes of behavior & forms of practical engagement with the surrounding world. Whereas a theoretical understanding of things grasps them according to "presence," for example, this may conceal that our 1st experience of a being may be in terms of its being "ready-to-hand." Thus, for instance, when someone reaches for a tool such as a hammer, their understanding of what a hammer is is not determined by a theoretical understanding of its presence, but by the fact that it is something we need at the moment we wish to do hammering. Only a later understanding might come to contemplate a hammer as an object. There is thus a sense in which this kind of argument, altho very different from Husserlian phenomenology, nevertheless resembles it, to the extent that what is involved is a kind of suspension of the everyday understanding of what it means to experience beings in the world. The total understanding of being results from an explication of the implicit knowledge of being that inheres in Dasein. Philosophy thus becomes a form of interpretation. But, since there is no external reference point outside being from which to begin this interpretation, the question becomes to know in which way to proceed with this interpretation. This is the problem of the "hermeneutic circle," & the necessity for the interpretation of the meaning of being to proceed in stages: this is why Heidegger's technique in Being & Time is sometimes referred to as hermeneutical phenomenology. As part of his ontological project, Heidegger undertakes a reinterpretation of previous Western philosophy. He wants to explain why & how theoretical knowledge came to seem like the most fundamental relation to being. This explanation takes the form of a destructuring (Destruktion) of the philosophical tradition, an interpretative strategy that reveals the fundamental experience of being at the base of previous philosophies that had become entrenched & hidden within the theoretical attitude of the metaphysics of presence. This Destruktion is not simply a negative operation but rather a positive transformation, or recovery. Heidegger briefly undertakes a destructuring of the philosophy of Descartes, but the 2nd volume, which was intended to be a Destruktion of Western philosophy in all its stages, was never written. In later works he uses this approach to interpret the philosophies of Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Plato etc. 1309352 1927 Being and Time total:957|5:399|4:296|3:174|2:66|1:22| 957 3855 1687 149 2 3 false false Sat Aug 18 16:52:42 -0700 2007 Mon Aug 20 14:28:04 -0700 2007 more...]]> 0 2 false false Sat Dec 20 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Oct 14 21:03:03 -0700 2008 Sat Dec 20 08:45:07 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 2 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Jul 07 06:38:18 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 27 12:33:14 -0700 2007 more...]]> 2 2 false false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Tue Aug 07 13:14:17 -0700 2007 Tue Aug 07 13:17:05 -0700 2007 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 ...more...]]> 4 1 false true Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Thu Feb 14 11:54:19 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 14 12:20:09 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Oct 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 30 04:28:21 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 30 05:09:48 -0700 2009 Rene Descartes and then should have a good grasp of Edumund Husserl's philosophy (whom the book is dedicated too) and phe...more...]]> 3 2 true false Tue Apr 20 00:00:00 -0800 1982 Wed Apr 22 11:28:27 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 22 11:52:17 -0700 2009 1 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1972 Wed Dec 10 18:18:04 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 10 18:33:26 -0800 2008 Three more...]]> 0 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1991 Sun Aug 09 14:20:29 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 09 14:25:13 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 1 false false Sat Oct 13 15:07:04 -0700 2007 Sat Oct 13 19:08:23 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Jul 21 08:36:16 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 21 13:48:43 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Feb 02 06:26:40 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 02 06:31:09 -0800 2009
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.]]> 5 1 false false Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1993 Fri Mar 13 10:47:20 -0700 2009 Fri Mar 13 10:50:57 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 1 false false Thu Apr 05 06:49:04 -0700 2007 Thu Apr 05 06:49:41 -0700 2007 3 0 false false Fri Jan 16 09:51:20 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 04 14:34:06 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 16 09:51:20 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Aug 27 18:25:00 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 11 19:04:01 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Wed May 13 16:39:21 -0700 2009 Wed May 13 16:46:09 -0700 2009 more...]]> 1 0 false true Tue Jan 29 04:07:36 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 29 04:43:08 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Wed Sep 19 16:07:32 -0700 2007 Wed Sep 19 16:10:22 -0700 2007 4 0 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 22 17:19:52 -0700 2007 Fri Jan 02 06:45:09 -0800 2009 magnum opus.

Much like the a subtext of the book itself, there is no holy grail at the end of the journey (subtextually, Dasein's existence), but you have to confront the end (of the book, of existence) in order ...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=3791745