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Being and Time

by Martin Heidegger, John MacQuarrie (Translator), Edward Robinson (Translator)

3.95 of 5 stars 3.95 · rating details · 7,297 ratings · 280 reviews

One of the most important philosophical works of our time--a work that has had tremendous influence on philosophy, literature and psychology, and has literally changed the intellectual map of the modern world.

Hardcover, 592 pages

Published August 1st 1962 by Harper & Row (NY) (first published 1927)

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Mar 28, 2013 Nathan "N.R." Gaddis rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Thinkers

Shelves: heidegger

In lieu of a review a brief history of philosophy.

I. The beginnings, e.g., the Pre-socratics.

II. Plato footnoted by Aristotle

III. Immanuel Kant aufgehoben by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

IV. 20th century showdown: Martin Heidegger v. Ludwig Wittgenstein

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Aug 20, 2007 Jodi Lu rated it 2 of 5 stars 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, you...more

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Feb 16, 2011 Vaughn rated it 2 of 5 stars

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 without...more 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 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)

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May 03, 2011 Erik Graff rated it 3 of 5 stars 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...more 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 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)

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Jul 27, 2007 Neurosys rated it 5 of 5 stars 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 Plato’s forms, Aristotle...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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Nov 16, 2012 Chris marked it as intermittently-reading · 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

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Aug 07, 2007 Christy rated it 2 of 5 stars

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 had made it through more of the book...more

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Jul 14, 2012 Giorgi rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

before 1927 there was darkness and god said let's be light and published being and time

our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the sense of being and to do so concretely

what determines beings as beings, that in terms of which beings are already understood

but than god sad let's be cloud and there was only one part of being and time

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Feb 14, 2008 Mike Calabrese rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 the in...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.
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Jun 15, 2007 Ann rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 existentialists, He...more

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May 31, 2013 Pixie rated it 5 of 5 stars

In short, if you even open this book expecting an easy read, you're a sad being. Heidegger is extremely difficult, he lays out language and explains how he uses it. You have to think in Heidegger's language and get used to his terms. If you can't do that this will not make sense to you. Period. It is beautiful poetic prose written in the only way one could write something so complex.
Heidegger gets a bad rep, for not being as clear as people would like, as philosophy student, I want to tell them...more

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Jan 02, 2013 Dianne rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In some odd way I am proud that I am a member of the minute group of people mad enough to wade their way through Being and Time from cover to cover. I like to think it marks me out as a true Philosopher.
...although I'm sure there are many Philosophy PhD's that skipped to the cliff notes (I know the rest of my class did). (and made the comment that NO ONE actually reads it from cover to cover!)

So apart from marking myself as agonisingly nerdy/insane; it also engenders a maternal protectiveness...more

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Oct 31, 2012 Pierre E. Loignon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophie

À l’aube du XXe siècle, le principe de référence scientifique monopolise déjà toute la recherche sur le monde et commence à s’imposer aussi aux recherches sur l’homme. Les « geisteswissenschaften » apparaissent et leur influence s’étend bien rapidement à l’esthétique de même qu’à la philosophie. Désormais, tout doit devenir vérifiable empiriquement, tout doit être mesurable à l’échelle d’une rationalité froide et objective, tout doit passer au crible scientifique. Très vite, le beau disparaît de...more À l’aube du XXe siècle, le principe de référence scientifique monopolise déjà toute la recherche sur le monde et commence à s’imposer aussi aux recherches sur l’homme. Les « geisteswissenschaften » apparaissent et leur influence s’étend bien rapidement à l’esthétique de même qu’à la philosophie. Désormais, tout doit devenir vérifiable empiriquement, tout doit être mesurable à l’échelle d’une rationalité froide et objective, tout doit passer au crible scientifique. Très vite, le beau disparaît de l’Art, le bien de la Moralité, le divin de la Religion et la sagesse de la philosophie. Hypnotisés par les exploits techniques qui découlent de la science, tout ce qui reste des autres sphères de l’expérience humaine ne seraient plus que des expressions primales issues de mesquines pulsions que l’on doit désormais se consacrer, corps et âme à mettre à jour.
Parallèlement, la philosophie est devenue une discipline exclusivement universitaire. Il faut désormais faire des études pour ne pas être effrayé par les difficultés que comporte la lecture de ses textes les plus marquants. La lumière de l’humanité se trouve ainsi sous le boisseau pendant que cette dernière joue à l’apprenti-sorcier avec les technologies issues des recherches scientifiques de pointe.
Dans ce contexte, il est vraiment rafraîchissant de trouver encore un grand penseur qui a la naïveté donquichottesque de poser des questions impossibles et d’y travailler de tout son être. C’est en cela que réside tout le charme de Heidegger pour moi.
Partant en toute conscience directement contre toutes les tendances environnantes, Heidegger se pose en effet la question de l’être : « La question de l’être est aujourd’hui tombée dans l’oubli... la peine que cela demanderait d’engager une nouvelle γιγαντομαχία περί τής ούσίαζ (bataille de géants autour de l’être (Platon, Sophiste, 246a)), on s’en tient pour dispensé. »(25) Or, pour lui, on ne saura jamais pourquoi, « La question du sens de être doit être posée. »(28)
Ramenant la science à ce quelle est : une activité humaine se voulant ahumaine. Heidegger dit que les sciences « sont des comportements de l’homme, [elles] ont le genre d’être de cet étant (l’homme). Cet étant, nous lui donnons place dans notre terminologie sous le nom de D a s e i n. »(36) Et c’est par l’analyse du Dasein que la quête de l’être pourra être entreprise.
La question de l’être dépasse évidemment d’emblée l’horizon du Dasein, mais le support a pour lui d’être à la hauteur de l’homme et la conviction heideggérienne de ne pas travailler en vain est si entraînante et nous engage dans des détours si étonnants qu’elle constitue un des plus beaux exercices de pensée qu’on puisse faire. Alors, si le cœur vous en dit, n’hésitez surtout pas!
Il existe même une traduction disponible gratuitement en ligne : http://www.philosophie-en-ligne.fr/in...
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May 24, 2012 Eren rated it 3 of 5 stars

öncelikle, kitabın Türkçeye yapılmış her iki çevirisini de ben çok başarısız buldum. evet, farkındayım, başka bir dile çevirmek açısından çok zor bir kitap, ama çevirmenler bu zorluğu, sözde terminolojik tercihleriyle daha da arttırmışlar. ikinci olarak sözüm kitaba ve yazarına. ben açıkcası heideggerden ve felsefi yaklaşımından pek hazetmedim. sözde batı felsefe tarihi boyunca unutulmuş kalan Varlık'ın peşinde, felsefeyi yeniden ele alan heidegger, oldukça metaforik bir dille bu varlık'ın ne ol...more

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May 09, 2012 Scott added it

My professor Theodore Kiesel assigned this book to me 15 years ago. I read it over the summer before class. I understood nothing; but I felt the power of this text. Did the Emperor really wear no clothes, or was I just too new to philosophy to understand what I was reading? I asked Dr. Kiesel how he read philosophy (referring to texts like this one). He profoundly stated, "I read very slowly." Ah. Slow. Good advice. Later, he showed us how to go beyond reading. We learned how to do a "textual ex...more

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Dec 02, 2011 Don Robertson rated it 2 of 5 stars

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 have this sort of -groping in the dark- in...more

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Oct 06, 2011 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars · 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

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Jul 23, 2011 Hayden rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 "magnum opus," which...more

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Sep 21, 2010 John Ferry Sihotang rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 menikmati racauan ini.

Tra...more

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May 26, 2010 Anthony rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 that is often beyond my ability to...more

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Oct 30, 2009 Jack Stephens rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 three should h...more

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Dec 10, 2008 Rickeclectic rated it 5 of 5 stars 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. Heide...more

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Sep 14, 2011 David Williamson rated it 5 of 5 stars · 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 althou...more

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Jun 11, 2012 Jonah Swan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Athletes experience a fundamental way of being in the world that they often call "being in the zone." Larry Bird has been quoted as saying that he often didn't realize he had passed the basketball until a moment after he had actually passed it.

Martin Heidegger, father of the study of being, explains that we humans are enmeshed or absorbed in the world in ways that are more fundamental and deeper than our cognitive, intentional, or analytical ways of being; that we move about in the world withou...more Athletes experience a fundamental way of being in the world that they often call "being in the zone." Larry Bird has been quoted as saying that he often didn't realize he had passed the basketball until a moment after he had actually passed it.

Martin Heidegger, father of the study of being, explains that we humans are enmeshed or absorbed in the world in ways that are more fundamental and deeper than our cognitive, intentional, or analytical ways of being; that we move about in the world without consciously guiding each and every step so to speak. We find ourselves opening the refrigerator door unthinkingly or arriving at work after a long drive without thoughtfully guiding our activity at each point along the way. We grab doorknobs, open doors, sit down on chairs, and so forth without cognitively thinking about our movements. We move about in the world seamlessly and effortlessly, not consciously or analytically.

To a trained athlete who has learned the art of a sport, the movements are habitual and instinctual, as when a baseball pitcher throws a fastball or when a batter steps up to the plate, swings, and hits the ball. It's only when an object isn't suitable for us that we actually become consciously aware of it, as for example, if someone were to surreptitiously swap out the ordinary baseball bat with a baseball bat that is too heavy to swing. At that point, the batter may pick up the bat, discover instantly that it isn’t suitable—that it’s too heavy—and would stare at the bat and begin to analyze the situation. Questions might arise in the batter's mind: “Is this someone else’s bat? Did someone play a joke on me? Did someone steal my bat? Where is MY bat?”

Most of the time, we do not analyze our everyday movements; we seamlessly move about in the world as well-accustomed inhabitants of this earthly space. This enmeshed activity is a fundamental way of being that is primary and deeper than our cognitive, intentional, and analytical states of being.

This way of being in the world is not entirely separate from the world as when one engages in detached analysis, studying or analyzing objects as through a microscope. Our enmeshed, non-cognitive activity shows us--discloses us--as inseparably part of the world.

This enmeshed existence in the world is a natural state of being for us. The world is like a wooden latticework and our lives grow as vines that weave themselves through the lattice. One cannot rip out the lattice without disrupting the vines; they have become a single interdependent whole and must be considered together and cannot be considered or analyzed separately and discretely. We have become part of the world and it has become part of us. More importantly, the interwoven nature of the vines and the lattice constitutes the most fundamental and primary way of being. All other states and ways of being are but stems and buds on the vine.

Why does this insight matter? In addition to opposing the Cartesian duality of inner and outer intentional content, Heidegger offers something that sticks. Heidegger matters because thousands of years of philosophical thought, beginning with Plato and culminating in Descartes, have posited humans as rational beings, separate and distinct from the world around us--thinking subjects studying the world of objects around us as though we lived our everyday lives as detached philosophers and scientists. Heidegger shows us that that we are in the world in ways that cannot be detached or extricated from the essence of our being. This enmeshed existence shows up when we do seek to analyze the world. Sometimes imperceptibly, this enmeshedness shows up in our inclinations and our leanings and prejudices to see the world in a certain way. Thus, even our analytical state of being grows out of this enmeshedness as buds on the vine, but we are often unaware of this when making our analysis.

Heidegger hits a home run because he places brackets on Cartesian thinking and appropriately limits the school of thought that seeks to comprehensively explain the human condition by objective reason and scientific inquiry. And yet, Heidegger misses so much on point and consequently, his analysis is incomplete, and in some cases, this incompleteness evidences an analysis that half reveals and half conceals our actual being in the world.
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Oct 05, 2012 Alnoory. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Heidegger's Being and Time is quite painful, in a way, where you have to consider and reconsider every word given. I took some notes, but I think I should reread it some time later.

Being and Time is showing how the Western philosophical tradition depends on a particular view of being established by Plato and Aristotle, for example.

Heidegger takes Being not to be about particular things but about
the general characterization of a particular view of the world. For
Heidegger, Plato and Aristotle unde...more Heidegger's Being and Time is quite painful, in a way, where you have to consider and reconsider every word given. I took some notes, but I think I should reread it some time later.

Being and Time is showing how the Western philosophical tradition depends on a particular view of being established by Plato and Aristotle, for example.

Heidegger takes Being not to be about particular things but about
the general characterization of a particular view of the world. For
Heidegger, Plato and Aristotle understood the Greek concept of Being as what has come to be called substance/attribute metaphysics. Along with what can be called subject/object metaphysics, these metaphysical theories dominated Western philosophy from Aristotle to Kant. Hegel was the first major philosopher to think of Being in developmental, organic imagery that undermined both types of metaphysics.

That's Being and Time, in short, I believe. However, I'm going to talk more about Heidegger's concept of Dasein. Dasein is a German term for existence.

Heidegger puts Dasein in a world with temporality in the form of throwness, futural orientation, concern: thus temporality temporalizes world-time as part of Dasein's nature and spirit does not fall into time: falling is an aspect of being-in-the-world.

Heidegger does not use 'person' or 'mankind' because these involve specific histories and interpretations. Dasein means being-there in the sense of an activity. Dasein is a living being, one that acts. Dasein does not exist as a thing, or even a thing of a certain kind. Its identity is a function of its activity.

For Heidegger, what Dasein is depends on what it does, and that entails temporality. He seems to say that Being or Time can be understood only through disclosive understanding. Disclosure is itself temporal. So something like Being has been disclosed in the understanding of Being which belongs to existent Dasein as a way in which it understands. Hence, it seems that one cannot get to a point of complete disclosure because Dasein cannot get outside of time, even conceptually.

In Subjectivity/objectivity and temporality, Heidegger argues that time is neither the one nor the other. Public time is not derived from inner, subjective time. That Dasein is in the world through its actions, care, authenticity/inauthenticity, etc. and it is through these, Dasein is temporal. That the goal is to show that the many senses of time depend on Dasein's fundamental temporality.

Dasein isn't in time, rather Dasein is time. Thus for Heidegger, the being of Dasein is becoming. It is the same as what Hegel said, so Heidegger looks at what he said but finds it inadequate in various ways, although it certainly shares an affinity with Hegel's organic, process approach. Although Hegel doesn't think these concepts are abstract (he places great emphasis on action, as does Heidegger), the ultimate medium of explanation is the Concept, the culture, the entire historical movement that comprises the development of civilization. For Heidegger, on the other hand, all of these things develop out of Dasein; but it should be noted that Dasein is not an isolated individual for Heidegger either.

Heidegger believes that Dasein uncovers but also covers up, and that there will always be something hidden of itself. But this is itself a key disclosure of Dasein's nature. There can never be a complete history of anything because Dasein can never be completely uncovered for itself even in its past involvements. But knowing this is to know something essential about Dasein.

However, Dasein differs from everything else in the universe because it
interprets not only what it encounters but itself as well. I believe I have so much to say about the philosophy of Heidegger, but I'll just let it be for now.(less)

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Sep 10, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

An incredibly difficult read, but well worth the effort. You have to work to learn Heidegger's language, but once you get the hang of it you can follow this masterpiece of Western Philosophy. This book is the foundation of all of Heidegger's thought and the culmination of 2 milllenia of Philosophic thought from Plato to Nietzsche and Husserl. At root this is really a book about Me and my relationship to the world I live in and my being in it. It helped me see things in a more profound way than I...more

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Jun 16, 2012 Nathan rated it 2 of 5 stars

One of the worst attempts at carrying the flame of phenomenalism into the 20th century, Heidegger makes his grand attempt at philosophic stardom through this contorted work. Pulling in neoplatonic transcendentalist strands from Kant and the ontological preciseness of Husserl, Heidegger attempts to provide a justification for the fundamentalisation of truth in being. Being too rigid/unobservant/or mathematically challenged to realise that one doesn't need a justification of for transcendental cer...more

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Aug 09, 2009 Jimmy added it

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 "last...more

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Jun 08, 2012 Michael Williams rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: spring-2012

I see a lot of reviews on this site that blast this book for obscurantism. I have a two-part answer to these reviews. The first is that, like it or not, you have to be pretty familiar with the history of Western philosophy since Descartes to understand and appreciate this book. If you're not, this book just isn't for you. But don't blame Heidegger for that (one can blame him for enough as is). The second is that Heidegger's new lexicon serves a central purpose in his work. His complex terminolog...more

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Oct 13, 2007 Kenny added it · review of another edition

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.

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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

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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.” — 12 people liked it

“Thus "phenomenology" means αποφαινεσθαι τα φαινομενα -- to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself.” — 6 people liked it

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