Being and Time
Encyclopedia
Being and Time is a book by the German philosopher
Martin Heidegger
. Although written quickly, and despite the fact that Heidegger never completed the project outlined in the introduction, it remains his most important work and has profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy
, particularly existentialism
, hermeneutics and deconstruction
.
and being
, Kant
, and Aristotle
) were never published, although in many respects they are addressed in one form or another in Heidegger's other works. In terms of structure, Being and Time remains as it was when it first appeared in print; it consists of the lengthy two-part introduction, followed by Division One, the "Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein," and Division Two, "Dasein and Temporality."
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, Heidegger claims, is "what determines beings as beings, that in terms of which beings are already understood." Heidegger is seeking to identify the criteria or conditions by which any specific entity can show up at all (see world disclosure
).
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 Heidegger, as this sense of being precedes any notions of how or in what manner any particular being or beings exist, it is pre-conceptual, non-propositional, and hence pre-scientific. Thus, in Heidegger's view, fundamental ontology would be an explanation of the understanding preceding any other way of knowing, such as the use of logic, theory, specific ontology or act of reflective thought. At the same time, there is 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. Heidegger argues that a true understanding of being (Seinsverständnis) can only proceed by referring to particular beings, and that the best method of pursuing being must inevitably, he says, involve a kind of hermeneutic circle
, that is (as he explains in his critique of prior work in the field of hermeneutics), it must rely upon repetitive yet progressive acts of interpretation. "The methodological sense of phenomenological description is interpretation."
(an ordinary German word literally meaning "being-there"), and the method pursued in Being and Time consists in the attempt to delimit the characteristics of Dasein, in order thereby to approach the meaning of Being itself through an interpretation of the temporality of Dasein. Dasein is not "man," but is nothing other than "man"—it is this distinction that enables Heidegger to claim that Being and Time is something other than philosophical anthropology
.
Heidegger's account of Dasein passes through a dissection of the experiences of Angst
and mortality, and then through an analysis of the structure of "care" as such. From there he raises the problem of "authenticity," that is, the potentiality or otherwise for mortal Dasein to exist fully enough that it might actually understand being. Heidegger is clear throughout the book that nothing makes certain that Dasein is capable of this understanding.
Thus, more generally, the outcome of the progression of Heidegger's argument is the thought that the being of Dasein is time. Nevertheless, Heidegger 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:
is complex. The fact that Heidegger believes that ontology includes an irreducible hermeneutic (interpretative) 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 and method of Being and 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 and 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 behaviour, and he asserts that it is grounded in more fundamental modes of behaviour and 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 first 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.
This interpretative aspect of Heidegger's project had a profound influence on the hermeneutic approach of his student Hans-Georg Gadamer
.
project, Heidegger undertakes a reinterpretation of previous Western philosophy. He wants to explain why and 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 and 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.
In Being and Time Heidegger briefly undertakes a destructuring of the philosophy of Descartes
, but the second volume, which was intended to be a Destruktion of Western philosophy in all its stages, was never written. In later works Heidegger uses this approach to interpret the philosophies of Aristotle
, Kant
, Hegel
, and Plato
, among others.
This aspect of Heidegger's work exerted a profound influence on Jacques Derrida
, although there are also important differences between Heidegger's Destruktion and Derrida's deconstruction
.
The Eurocentric dominance is however equilibrated by the fact that the most numerous translations are in an Asiatic language: Sein und Zeit has been translated 6 times in Japanese. The next place is occupied also by an Asian language, the Korean, who has 3 complete translations accomplished of Heidegger’s magum opus. Then, two translations can be found in English, French, Italian and Spanish (French has a third but partial translation). Only one complete translation is to be found in Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Georgian, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian (where another partial translation can be found), in Russian, Croatian, Slovenian, and Swedish. Finally, only a partial translation is to be found in Persian. Statistically, there are three women translators of Sein und Zeit: Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback in Portuguese, Joan Stambaugh in English and Andrina Tonkli-Komel in Slovenian.
To the “quantitative” record of the Japanese culture, with its 6 complete translations (some of them reworked and re-edited), one can add another one: the Japanese has also the merit of having made, chronologically, the first translation of Sein und Zeit in 1939-40. This first Japanese translation was followed only in 1951 by the Spanish translation, in 1953 by the Italian one, in 1962 by the English one. In 1964, when the first partial French version was being made, the Japanese translators have already finished the fourth complete translation of Sein und Zeit.
Although Heidegger never completed the project outlined in Being and Time, later works explicitly addressed the themes and concepts of Being and Time. Most important among the works which do so are the following:
, Leo Strauss
, Alexandre Kojeve
, Hans-Georg Gadamer
, Giorgio Agamben
, Jean-Paul Sartre
, Emmanuel Lévinas
, Maurice Merleau-Ponty
, Alain Badiou
, Herbert Marcuse
, Jacques Derrida
, Michel Foucault
and Bernard Stiegler
. More specifically, several important philosophical works were directly influenced by Being and Time, although in very different ways in each case. Most notable among the works influenced by Being and Time are the following:
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
. Although written quickly, and despite the fact that Heidegger never completed the project outlined in the introduction, it remains his most important work and has profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy
20th-century philosophy
20th-century philosophy saw the development of a number of new philosophical schools including logical positivism, analytic philosophy, phenomenology, existentialism and poststructuralism...
, particularly existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
, hermeneutics and deconstruction
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
.
Heidegger's original project
Being and 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 first two divisions of part one. The remaining divisions planned for Being and Time (particularly the divisions on timeTime
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
and being
Being
Being , is an English word used for conceptualizing subjective and objective aspects of reality, including those fundamental to the self —related to and somewhat interchangeable with terms like "existence" and "living".In its objective usage —as in "a being," or "[a] human being" —it...
, Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
, and Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
) were never published, although in many respects they are addressed in one form or another in Heidegger's other works. In terms of structure, Being and Time remains as it was when it first appeared in print; it consists of the lengthy two-part introduction, followed by Division One, the "Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein," and Division Two, "Dasein and Temporality."
Being
On the first page of Being and Time, Heidegger describes the project in the following way: "our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the sense of being and to do so concretely." Heidegger claims that traditional ontologyOntology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
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, Heidegger claims, is "what determines beings as beings, that in terms of which beings are already understood." Heidegger is seeking to identify the criteria or conditions by which any specific entity can show up at all (see world disclosure
World disclosure
World disclosure is a phenomenon described by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in his landmark book Being and Time. It has also been discussed by philosophers such as John Dewey, Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor...
).
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 Heidegger, as this sense of being precedes any notions of how or in what manner any particular being or beings exist, it is pre-conceptual, non-propositional, and hence pre-scientific. Thus, in Heidegger's view, fundamental ontology would be an explanation of the understanding preceding any other way of knowing, such as the use of logic, theory, specific ontology or act of reflective thought. At the same time, there is 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. Heidegger argues that a true understanding of being (Seinsverständnis) can only proceed by referring to particular beings, and that the best method of pursuing being must inevitably, he says, involve a kind of hermeneutic circle
Hermeneutic circle
-Definition and usage:The hermeneutic circle describes the process of understanding a text hermeneutically. It refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the...
, 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."
Dasein
Thus the question Heidegger asks in the introduction to Being and Time is: what is the being that will give access to the question of the meaning of Being? Heidegger's answer is that it can only be that being for whom the question of Being is important, the being for whom Being matters. As this answer already indicates, the being for whom Being is a question is not a what, but a who. Heidegger calls this being DaseinDasein
Dasein is a German word famously used by Martin Heidegger in his magnum opus Being and Time, which generally translates to being in its ontological and philosophical sense Dasein is a German word famously used by Martin Heidegger in his magnum opus Being and Time, which generally translates to...
(an ordinary German word literally meaning "being-there"), and the method pursued in Being and Time consists in the attempt to delimit the characteristics of Dasein, in order thereby to approach the meaning of Being itself through an interpretation of the temporality of Dasein. Dasein is not "man," but is nothing other than "man"—it is this distinction that enables Heidegger to claim that Being and Time is something other than philosophical anthropology
Philosophical anthropology
Philosophical anthropology is a discipline dealing with questions of metaphysics and phenomenology of the human person, and interpersonal relationships. It is the attempt to unify disparate ways of understanding behaviour of humans as both creatures of their social environments and creators of...
.
Heidegger's account of Dasein passes through a dissection of the experiences of Angst
Angst
Angst is an English, German, Danish, Norwegian and Dutch word for fear or anxiety . It is used in English to describe an intense feeling of apprehension, anxiety or inner turmoil...
and mortality, and then through an analysis of the structure of "care" as such. From there he raises the problem of "authenticity," that is, the potentiality or otherwise for mortal Dasein to exist fully enough that it might actually understand being. Heidegger is clear throughout the book that nothing makes certain that Dasein is capable of this understanding.
Time
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 and death, and 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 and these possibilities is always via a history and a tradition—this is the question of "world historicality," and among its consequences is Heidegger's 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, Heidegger 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 and 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?
Phenomenology in Heidegger and Husserl
Although Heidegger describes his method in Being and Time as phenomenological, the question of its relation to the phenomenology of Edmund HusserlEdmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...
is complex. The fact that Heidegger believes that ontology includes an irreducible hermeneutic (interpretative) 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 and method of Being and Time seem to relate more directly to Husserl's work.
The central Husserlian concept of the directedness of all thought—intentionality
Intentionality
The term intentionality was introduced by Jeremy Bentham as a principle of utility in his doctrine of consciousness for the purpose of distinguishing acts that are intentional and acts that are not...
—for example, while scarcely mentioned in Being and Time, has been identified by some with Heidegger's central notion of "Sorge" (Cura
Cura
Cura is the name of a divine figure whose name means "Care" or "Concern" in Latin. Hyginus seems to have created both the personification and story for his Fabulae, poem 220....
, care or concern). But for Heidegger, theoretical knowledge represents only one kind of intentional behaviour, and he asserts that it is grounded in more fundamental modes of behaviour and 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 first 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.
Hermeneutics
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," and the necessity for the interpretation of the meaning of being to proceed in stages: this is why Heidegger's technique in Being and Time is sometimes referred to as hermeneutical phenomenology.This interpretative aspect of Heidegger's project had a profound influence on the hermeneutic approach of his student Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method .-Life:...
.
Destruction of metaphysics
As part of his ontologicalOntology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
project, Heidegger undertakes a reinterpretation of previous Western philosophy. He wants to explain why and 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 and hidden within the theoretical attitude of the metaphysics of presence
Metaphysics of presence
The concept of the metaphysics of presence is an important consideration within the area of deconstruction. The deconstructive interpretation holds that the entire history of Western philosophy and its language and traditions has emphasized the desire for immediate access to meaning, and thus built...
. This Destruktion is not simply a negative operation but rather a positive transformation, or recovery.
In Being and Time Heidegger briefly undertakes a destructuring of the philosophy of Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
, but the second volume, which was intended to be a Destruktion of Western philosophy in all its stages, was never written. In later works Heidegger uses this approach to interpret the philosophies of Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
, Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
, and Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, among others.
This aspect of Heidegger's work exerted a profound influence on Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
, although there are also important differences between Heidegger's Destruktion and Derrida's deconstruction
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
.
Translations
So far, there are complete translations of Sein und Zeit in 21 languages: in Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Greek, Georgian, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Croatian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, and Persian. There are in preparation translations in Arabic, Norwegian and Turkish. Geographically, within these 25 languages, the European languages seem to dominate in comparison to the Extra-European languages (18 versus 7). Regarding the family languages in which translations of Sein und Zeit were made, the best represented are the Slavic languages, 6 languages having the privilege of possessing a translation of this work: Bulgarian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Croatian and Slovenian. Then, there are 5 Romanic languages in which this translation have been made: in French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish. Only four Germanic languages have a translation of Being and Time: Dutch, English, Danish, and Swedish (however, as the fifth one, the Norwegian translation is under preparation). Also, there are translations in two Finno-Ugric languages (in Finnish and Hungarian) and in one basic Indo-European language (Greek). The extra-European spread of Sein und Zeit through extra-European languages is illustrated in several translations: a translation in one Caucasian language (Georgian), in one Semitic language (Arabic), in one Turkic language (Turkish), in one Indo-Iranian language (Persian), in one Sino-Tibetan language (Chinese) and in other two Altaic languages (Japanese and Korean).The Eurocentric dominance is however equilibrated by the fact that the most numerous translations are in an Asiatic language: Sein und Zeit has been translated 6 times in Japanese. The next place is occupied also by an Asian language, the Korean, who has 3 complete translations accomplished of Heidegger’s magum opus. Then, two translations can be found in English, French, Italian and Spanish (French has a third but partial translation). Only one complete translation is to be found in Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Georgian, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian (where another partial translation can be found), in Russian, Croatian, Slovenian, and Swedish. Finally, only a partial translation is to be found in Persian. Statistically, there are three women translators of Sein und Zeit: Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback in Portuguese, Joan Stambaugh in English and Andrina Tonkli-Komel in Slovenian.
To the “quantitative” record of the Japanese culture, with its 6 complete translations (some of them reworked and re-edited), one can add another one: the Japanese has also the merit of having made, chronologically, the first translation of Sein und Zeit in 1939-40. This first Japanese translation was followed only in 1951 by the Spanish translation, in 1953 by the Italian one, in 1962 by the English one. In 1964, when the first partial French version was being made, the Japanese translators have already finished the fourth complete translation of Sein und Zeit.
Related work
Being and Time is the towering achievement of Heidegger's early career, but there are other important works from this period:- The publication in 1992 of the early lecture course, Platon: Sophistes (Plato's Sophist, 1924), made clear the way in which Heidegger's reading of Aristotle'sAristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
Nicomachean EthicsNicomachean EthicsThe Nicomachean Ethics is the name normally given to Aristotle's best known work on ethics. The English version of the title derives from Greek Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια, transliterated Ethika Nikomacheia, which is sometimes also given in the genitive form as Ἠθικῶν Νικομαχείων, Ethikōn Nikomacheiōn...
was crucial to the formulation of the thought expressed in Being and Time. - The lecture course, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, 1925), was something like an early version of Being and Time.
- The lecture courses immediately following the publication of Being and Time, such as Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 1927), and Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 1929), elaborated some elements of the destruction of metaphysics which Heidegger intended to pursue in the unwritten second part of Being and Time.
Although Heidegger never completed the project outlined in Being and Time, later works explicitly addressed the themes and concepts of Being and Time. Most important among the works which do so are the following:
- Heidegger's inaugural lecture upon his return to Freiburg, "Was ist Metaphysik?" ("What Is Metaphysics?", 1929), was an important and influential clarification of what Heidegger meant by being, non-being, and nothingness.
- Einführung in die MetaphysikIntroduction to Metaphysics (Heidegger)Introduction to Metaphysics is a book by Martin Heidegger and is the published version of a lecture course he gave in the Summer of 1935 at the University of Freiburg. The book is famous both for its powerful reinterpretation of Greek thought and infamous for its acknowledgement of the Nazi Party...
(An Introduction to Metaphysics), a lecture course delivered in 1935, is identified by Heidegger, in his preface to the seventh German edition of Being and Time, as relevant to the concerns which the second half of the book would have addressed. - Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning)Contributions to Philosophy is the title of the English translation of German philosopher Martin Heidegger's Beitrage Zur Philosophie ...
(Contributions to Philosophy [From Enowning], composed 1936–38, published 1989), perhaps Heidegger's most sustained attempt at reckoning with the legacy of Being and Time. - "Zeit und Sein" ("Time and Being"), a lecture delivered at the University of FreiburgUniversity of FreiburgThe University of Freiburg , sometimes referred to in English as the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.The university was founded in 1457 by the Habsburg dynasty as the...
on January 31, 1962. This was Heidegger's most direct confrontation with Being and Time. It was followed by a seminar on the lecture, which took place at TodtnaubergTodtnaubergTodtnauberg is a German village in Black Forest belonging to the municipality of Todtnau, in Baden-Württemberg. It is named after the homonym mount and is famous because it was the place where the German philosopher Martin Heidegger had a chalet.-Geography:The village is located at amsl, in...
on September 11–13, 1962, a summary of which was written by Alfred Guzzoni. Both the lecture and the summary of the seminar are included in Zur Sache des Denkens (1969; translated as On Time and Being [New York: Harper & Row, 1972]).
Influence
Being and Time influenced many philosophers and writers, among them Hannah ArendtHannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
, Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss was a political philosopher and classicist who specialized in classical political philosophy. He was born in Germany to Jewish parents and later emigrated to the United States...
, Alexandre Kojeve
Alexandre Kojève
Alexandre Kojève was a Russian-born French philosopher and statesman whose philosophical seminars had an immense influence on twentieth-century French philosophy, particularly via his integration of Hegelian concepts into continental philosophy...
, Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method .-Life:...
, Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben is an Italian political philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception and homo sacer....
, Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, Emmanuel Lévinas
Emmanuel Lévinas
Emmanuel Levinas was a Lithuanian-born French Jewish philosopher and Talmudic commentator.-Life:Emanuelis Levinas received a traditional Jewish education in Lithuania...
, Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir...
, Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou is a French philosopher, professor at European Graduate School, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure . Along with Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek, Badiou is a prominent figure in an anti-postmodern strand of continental philosophy...
, Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
, Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
, Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
and Bernard Stiegler
Bernard Stiegler
Bernard Stiegler is a French philosopher at Goldsmiths, University of London and at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne. In addition, he is Director of the , founder in 2005 of the political and cultural group, , and founder in 2010 of the philosophy school,...
. More specifically, several important philosophical works were directly influenced by Being and Time, although in very different ways in each case. Most notable among the works influenced by Being and Time are the following:
- Being and NothingnessBeing and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological OntologyBeing and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology , sometimes subtitled A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, is a 1943 philosophical treatise by Jean-Paul Sartre...
(1943), by Jean-Paul Sartre - Truth and MethodTruth and MethodTruth and Method is the major philosophical work by Hans-Georg Gadamer, first published in 1960.The book draws heavily on the work of Wilhelm Dilthey, and Romantic hermeneutics...
(1960), by Hans-Georg Gadamer - Totality and InfinityTotality and InfinityTotality and Infinity is a work of philosophy authored by Emmanuel Levinas. It advances the thesis that all ethics derive from a confrontation with an other...
(1961), by Emmanuel Levinas - Being and Event (1988), by Alain Badiou
- Technics and Time, 1Technics and Time, 1Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus is a book by the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, first published by Galilée in 1994. The English translation, by George Collins and Richard Beardsworth, was published by Stanford University Press in 1998...
(1994), by Bernard Stiegler.
Primary literature
- Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, in Heidegger's GesamtausgabeGesamtausgabe (Heidegger)Heidegger Gesamtausgabe is the term for the collected works of German philosopher Martin Heidegger, published by The Gesamtausgabe was begun during Heidegger's lifetime...
, volume 2, ed. F.-W. von Herrmann, 1977, XIV, 586p. - Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by John MacquarrieJohn MacquarrieJohn Macquarrie FBA TD was a Scottish theologian and philosopher, the author of Principles of Christian Theology and Jesus Christ in Modern Thought...
& Edward Robinson (London: SCM Press, 1962). - Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).
- Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by Joan Stambaugh, revised by Dennis J. Schmidt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010).
Secondary literature
- Robert BernasconiRobert BernasconiRobert L. Bernasconi is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis. He is well known as a reader of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas, and for his work on the concept of race...
, "'The Double Concept of Philosophy' and the Place of Ethics in Being and Time," Heidegger in Question: The Art of Existing (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1993). - William D. Blattner, Heidegger's Temporal Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
- Lee Braver. A Thing of This World: a History of Continental Anti-Realism. Northwestern University Press: 2007.
- Richard Capobianco, Engaging Heidegger with a Foreword by William J. Richardson. University of Toronto Press, 2010.
- Taylor Carman, Heidegger's Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse, and Authenticity in "Being and Time" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
- Jacques DerridaJacques DerridaJacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
, "Ousia and Gramme: Note on a Note from Being and Time," Margins of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). - Hubert DreyfusHubert DreyfusHubert Lederer Dreyfus is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley....
, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: MIT Press, 1990). - Hubert DreyfusHubert DreyfusHubert Lederer Dreyfus is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley....
, podcast of Philosophy 185 Fall 2007 Heidegger, UC Berkeley - Hubert DreyfusHubert DreyfusHubert Lederer Dreyfus is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley....
, podcast of Philosophy 189 Spring 2008 Heidegger, UC Berkeley - Christopher FynskChristopher FynskChristopher Fynsk is Head of the School of Language and Literature at the University of Aberdeen, Director of the Centre for Modern Thought and Professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. He is well known for his work relating the political and literary aspects of continental...
, Heidegger: Thought and Historicity (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1993, expanded edn.), ch. 1. - Michael GelvenMichael GelvenMichael Gelven, distinguished research professor of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University, is an author and well-known writer of commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time...
, A Commentary on Heidegger's "Being and Time" (Northern Illinois University Press; Revised edition, 1989). - Magda King, A Guide to Heidegger’s Being and Time, edited by John Llewelyn (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001).
- Theodore KisielTheodore KisielTheodore Kisiel, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of philosophy at Northern Illinois University, is a well-known translator of and commentator on the works of Martin Heidegger. Kisiel is known for his research on the development of Heidegger's early thought...
, The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). - William McNeillWilliam McNeill (philosopher)- Career and work :McNeill was educated at the University of Essex, and he is now teaching Heidegger at DePaul University. He is a translator of the work of Martin Heidegger, about whom he has written two books. The Glance of the Eye closely examines the relation between Heidegger's thought and...
, The Glance of the Eye: Heidegger, Aristotle, and the Ends of Theory (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), ch. 3–4. - Jean-Luc NancyJean-Luc NancyJean-Luc Nancy is a French philosopher.Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was Le titre de la lettre , a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, written in collaboration with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe...
, "The Decision of Existence," The Birth to Presence (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993). - Cristian Ciocan (ed.), Translating Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, Studia Phaenomenologica V (2005)
- William J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought. Martinus Nijhoff, 1963.
External links
- Being and time preview at Google books