Being and Time

Being and Time (German: Sein und Zeit) is the 1927 magnum opus of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and a key document of existentialism. Being and Time had a notable impact on subsequent philosophy, literary theory and many other fields. Though controversial, its stature in intellectual history has been favorably compared with several works by Kant and Hegel. Heidegger maintains that philosophers have misunderstood the concept of Being since Plato, misapplying it solely in the analysis of particular beings. The book attempts to revive ontology through an analysis of Dasein, or "being-in-the-world." It's also noted for an array of neologisms and complex language, as well as an extended treatment of "authenticity" as a means to grasp and confront the unique and finite possibilities of the individual.

"Sein und Zeit" redirects here. For the episode of The X-Files, see Sein und Zeit (The X-Files).
Being and Time
Cover of the first edition
AuthorMartin Heidegger
Original titleSein und Zeit
Translator1962: John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson
1996: Joan Stambaugh
CountryGermany
LanguageGerman
SubjectBeing
Published1927 (in German)
1962: SCM Press
1996: State University of New York Press
2008: Harper Perennial Modern Thought
Pages589 (Macquarrie and Robinson translation)
482 (Stambaugh translation)
ISBN0-631-19770-2 (Blackwell edition)
978-1-4384-3276-2 (State University of New York Press edition)
Followed byKant and the Problem of Metaphysics 

Background

Richard Wolin notes that the work "implicitly adopted the critique of mass society” epitomized earlier by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. This perspective "was well-established within Germany’s largely illiberal professoriate in the early 20th century,“ Wolin writes.[1] Further, Being and Time is "suffused by a sensibility derived from secularized Protestantism” and its stress on original sin. Wolin cites the work's extended emphasis on “emotionally laden concepts” like guilt, conscience, angst and death, suggesting that the book portrays the human condition as "essentially a curse.”[1]

The book is likened to a secularized version of Martin Luther's project, which aimed to turn Christian theology back to an earlier and more “original” phase. Taking this view, John D. Caputo notes that Heidegger made a systematic study of Luther in the 1920s after training for 10 years as a Catholic theologian.[2] Similarly, Hubert Dreyfus likens Division II of the volume to a secularized version of Kierkegaard's Christianity.[3] Almost all central concepts of Being and Time are derived from Augustine, Luther, and Kierkegaard, according to Christian Lotz.[4]

In terms of structure, Being and Time consists of the lengthy two-part introduction, followed by Division One, the "Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein," and Division Two, "Dasein and Temporality.” Heidegger originally planned to write a separate, second volume but quickly abandoned the project. The unwritten “second half” was to be an analysis of Western philosophy.[5]

Some of the methods employed in Being and Time explicitly rely on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, Heidegger’s academic mentor to whom the book is dedicated.[6] Heidegger also described part of the work's methodology as an "appropriation" of Wilhelm Dilthey.[7]

Summary

Dasein

Being and Time rejects the Cartesian notion of the human being as a subjective spectator of objects, according to Marcella Horrigan-Kelly (et al.).[8] The book instead holds that both subject and object are inseparable. In presenting the subject, "being" as inseparable from the objective "world," "Heidegger introduced the term “Dasein” (literally being there), intended to embody a ‘‘living being’’ through their activity of ‘’being there’ and “being in the world” (Horrigan-Kelly).[8] "Famously, Heidegger writes of Dasein as Being-in-the-world," writes Michael Wheeler (2011). Understood as a unitary phenomenon rather than a contingent, additive combination, being-in-the-world is an essential characteristic of Dasein, according to Wheeler. [9]

Heidegger's account of Dasein passes through a dissection of the experiences of Angst, "the Nothing" 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 for mortal Dasein to exist fully enough that it might actually understand being and its possibilities. 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. Moreover, Dasein is "the being that will give access to the question of the meaning of Being," according to Heidegger. .[10]

Being

The work claims that Dasein's ordinary and even mundane experience of "being-in-the-world" provides "access to the meaning or "sense of being" (Sinn des Seins) This access via Dasein is also that "in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something."[11] Heidegger proposes that this meaning would elucidate ordinary "prescientific" understanding, which precedes abstract ways of knowing, such as logic or theory,[12]

Yet the work also holds that no particular understanding of Being (nor state of Dasein and its endeavors) is to be preferred over another, according an account of Richard Rorty's analysis by Edward Grippe.[13] This supposed "non-linguistic, pre-cognitive access" to the meaning of Being didn't underscore any particular, preferred narrative, in this account.[13] Moreover, "Rorty agrees with Heidegger that there is no hidden power called Being," Grippe writes, adding that Heidegger’s concept of Being is viewed by Rorty as metaphorical.

Being and Time actually offers "no sense of how we might answer the question of being as such," writes Simon Critchley in a nine-part blog commentary on the work for The Guardian (2009). The book instead provides "an answer to the question of what it means to be human" (Critchley).[14] Nonetheless, Heidegger does present the concept: "'Being' is not something like a being but is rather "what determines beings as beings." "[15] The interpreters Thomas Sheehan and Mark Wrathall each separately assert that commentators' emphasis on the term "Being" is misplaced, and that Heidegger's central focus was never on "Being" as such. Wrathall wrote (2011) that Heidegger's elaborate concept of "unconcealment" was his central, life-long focus, while Sheehan (2015) proposed that the philosopher's prime focus was on that which "brings about being as a givenness of entities.")[16][17]

Heidegger claims that traditional ontology has prejudicially overlooked the question of being. His analysis employs a hermeneutic circle, relying upon repetitive yet progressive acts of interpretation.[18]

Time

Heidegger believes that time finds its meaning in death, according to Michael Kelley. That is, time is understood only from a finite or mortal vantage. Dasein's essential mode of being in the world is temporal: Having been "thrown" into a world implies a "pastness" in its being. "The present is the nodal moment which makes past and future intelligible," writes Lilian Alweiss.[19] Dasein occupies itself with the present tasks required by goals it has projected on the future. Thus Heidegger concludes that Dasein's fundamental characteristic is temporality, Kelley writes.[20]

Dasein as an intertwined subject/object cannot be separated from its objective "historicality". On the one hand, Dasein is "stretched along" between birth and death, and thrown into its world; into its possibilities which Dasein is charged with 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".

Phenomenology in Heidegger and Husserl

According to Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Heidegger unfairly misrepresented Husserl's work in presenting the methods of Being and Time as a departure from Husserl.[21] In this vein, Robert J. Dostal asserts that "if we do not see how much it is the case that Husserlian phenomenology provides the framework for Heidegger's approach," then it's impossible to exactly understand Being and Time.[22]

On the relation between the two figures, Gadamer wrote: "When asked about phenomenology, Husserl was quite right to answer as he used to in the period directly after World War I: 'Phenomenology, that is me and Heidegger'." "[23] The Husserlian concept of intentionality, while scarcely mentioned in Being and Time, has been identified by some with Heidegger's central notion of "care" or concern.[24] But there is disagreement over how much of Husserlian phenomenology informs Being and Time.

Being and Time bore a dedication to Husserl, who beginning in 1917, championed Heidegger's work, and helped him secure the retiring Husserl's chair in Philosophy at the University of Freiburg.[25][26] Because Husserl was Jewish, in 1941 Heidegger, then a member of the Nazi Party, agreed to remove the dedication from Being and Time (restored in 1953 edition).[27]

Destructuring of metaphysics

As part of his ontological 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 use of the word Destruktion is meant to signify not a negative operation but rather a positive transformation or recovery.[28]

In Being and Time Heidegger briefly undertakes a destructuring of the philosophy of René Descartes, but the second volume, intended as a Destruktion of Western philosophy in all its stages, was never written. In later works, while becoming less systematic and more obscure than in Being and Time, Heidegger turns to the exegesis of historical texts, especially those of Presocratic philosophers, but also of Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Plato, Nietzsche, and Hölderlin, among others.[29]

Influence and reception

The critic George Steiner argues that Being and Time is a product of the crisis of German culture following Germany's defeat in World War I, similar in this respect to works such as Ernst Bloch's The Spirit of Utopia (1918), Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918), Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption (1921), Karl Barth's The Epistle to the Romans (1922), and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (1925).[30] Upon its publication, it was recognized as a groundbreaking philosophical work, with reviewers crediting Heidegger with "brilliance" and "genius".[31] The book, which has been described as the "most influential version of existential philosophy",[32] quickly became "the focus of debates and controversy".[31] Heidegger claimed in the 1930s that commentators had attempted to show similarities between his views and those of Hegel in order to undermine the idea that Being and Time was an original work. In response, Heidegger maintained that his thesis that the essence of being is time is the opposite of Hegel's view that being is the essence of time.[33] Karl Jaspers, writing in the first volume of his work Philosophy (1932), credited Heidegger with making essential points about "being in the world" and also about "existence and historicity".[34]

Heidegger's work has been suggested as a possible influence on Herbert Marcuse's Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity (1932), though Marcuse later questioned the political implications of Heidegger's work.[35] Jean-Paul Sartre, who wrote Being and Nothingness (1943) under the influence of Heidegger's work,[36] has been said to have responded to Being and Time with "a sense of shock".[37] Sartre's existentialism has been described as "a version and variant of the idiom and propositions" in Being and Time.[38] Because of Heidegger's revival of the question of being, Being and Time also influenced other philosophers of Sartre's generation,[36] and it altered the course of French philosophy.[37] Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued in Phenomenology of Perception (1945) that Being and Time, "springs from an indication given by Husserl and amounts to no more than an explicit account of the 'natürlicher Weltbegriff' or the 'Lebenswelt' which Husserl, towards the end of his life, identified as the central theme of phenomenology".[39] Heidegger influenced psychoanalysis through Jacques Lacan, who quotes from Being and Time in a 1953 text.[40]

The publication of the English translation of the work by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson in 1962,[41] helped to shape the way in which Heidegger's work was discussed in English.[42] Gilles Deleuze's Difference and Repetition (1968) was influenced by Heidegger's Being and Time,[36]:181 though Deleuze replaces Heidegger's key terms of being and time with difference and repetition respectively.[37] Frank Herbert's science fiction novel The Santaroga Barrier (1968) was loosely based on the ideas of Being and Time.[43] The philosopher Lucien Goldmann argued in his posthumously published Lukacs and Heidegger: Towards a New Philosophy (1973) that the concept of reification as employed in Being and Time showed the strong influence of György Lukács' History and Class Consciousness (1923), though Goldmann's suggestion has been disputed.[44] Being and Time influenced Alain Badiou's work Being and Event (1988).[36] Roger Scruton writes that Being and Time is "the most complex of the many works inspired, directly or indirectly, by Kant's theory of time as 'the form of inner sense'." He considers Heidegger's language "metaphorical" and almost incomprehensible. Scruton suggests that this necessarily follows from the nature of Heidegger's phenomenological method. He finds Heidegger's "description of the world of phenomena" to be "fascinating, but maddeningly abstract". He suggests that much of Being and Time is a "description of a private spiritual journey" rather than genuine philosophy, and notes that Heidegger's assertions are unsupported by argument.[45]

Stephen Houlgate compares Heidegger's achievements in Being and Time to those of Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and Hegel in The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and Science of Logic (1812-1816).[46] Simon Critchley calls the work Heidegger's magnum opus, and writes that it is impossible to understand developments in continental philosophy after Heidegger without understanding it.[47] Dennis J. Schmidt praises the "range and subtlety" of Being and Time, and describes its importance by quoting a comment the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe made in a different context, "from here and today a new epoch of world history sets forth."[31] Heidegger has become common background for the political movement concerned with protection of the environment, and his narrative of the history of Being frequently appears when capitalism, consumerism and technology are thoughtfully opposed. Michael E. Zimmerman writes that, "Because he criticized technological modernity’s domineering attitude toward nature, and because he envisioned a postmodern era in which people would “let things be,” Heidegger has sometimes been read as an intellectual forerunner of today’s “deep ecology” movement.[48]

Being and Time also influenced the enactivist approach to cognition.[49][50]

Being and Time is the major achievement of Heidegger's early career, but he produced other important works during 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's Nicomachean Ethics 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.[51]
  • 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 did not complete 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 Metaphysik (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], composed 1936–38, published 1989), a sustained attempt at reckoning with the legacy of Being and Time.
  • Zeit und Sein (Time and Being),[52][53] a lecture delivered at the University of Freiburg 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 Todtnauberg on September 11–13, 1962, a summary of which was written by Alfred Guzzoni.[n 1] 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]).

References

Notes
  1. "There is put to the thinking of Being the task of thinking Being in such a way that oblivion essentially belongs to it."—Alfred Guzzoni, 1972, p. 29

Citations
  1. Wolin, R., "Martin Heidegger—German philosopher", Encyclopædia Britannica, November 18, 2009.
  2. Caputo, John D. (1978). The Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought, Ohio University Press
  3. Dreyfus, H. L. (1991). Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, División I, MIT Press
  4. Luther’s influence on Heidegger. Encyclopedia of Martin Luther and the Reformation, ed. Mark A. Lamport and George Thomas Kurian, London: Rowman & Littlefield 2017
  5. Sein und Zeit, pp. 39–40.
  6. Heidegger, Martin (2008). Being and Time. New York: Harper Perennial. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-06-157559-4.
  7. Scharff, Robert C. (January 1997). "Heidegger's "Appropriation" of Dilthey before Being and Time". Journal of the History of Philosophy. Johns Hopkins University Press. 35 (1): 105–128. doi:10.1353/hph.1997.0021. S2CID 96473379. Retrieved September 19, 2020. In a word, I think the record shows that the Dilthey appropriation taught the young Heidegger how to philosophize.[127]
  8. Understanding the Key Tenets of Heidegger’s Philosophy for Interpretive Phenomenological Research Marcella Horrigan-Kelly , Michelle Millar , and Maura Dowling, International Journal of Qualitative Methods January–December 2016: 1–8 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1609406916680634
  9. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/heidegger/
  10. Glendinning, S., ed., The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), p. 154.
  11. "aus dem her etwas als etwas verständlich wird," Sein und Zeit, p. 151.
  12. Sein und Zeit, p. 12.
  13. Grippe, Edward, Richard Rorty (1931—2007) Internet Encyclopedia
  14. Critchley, S., "Heidegger's Being and Time, part 8: Temporality", The Guardian, July 27, 2009.
  15. "...das Sein, das, was Seiendes als Seiendes bestimmt, das, woraufhin Seiendes, mag es wie immer erörtert werden, je schon verstanden ist,"Sein und Zeit, p. 6.
  16. Wrathall, Mark: Heidegger and Unconcealment: Truth, Language, and History, Cambridge University Press, 2011
  17. see also, Sheehan, "Making sense of Heidegger. A paradigm shift." New Heidegger Research. London (England) 2015.
  18. "der methodische Sinn der Phänomenologischen Deskription ist Auslegung," Sein und Zeit, p. 37.
  19. Alweiss, L., "Heidegger and 'the concept of time'", History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 15, Nr. 3, 2002.
  20. Kelley, M., "Phenomenology and Time-Consciousness", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  21. Daniel O. Dahlstrom, "Heidegger's Critique of Husserl", in Theodore Kisiel & John van Buren (eds.), Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), p. 244.
  22. Robert J. Dostal, "Time and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger", in Charles Guignon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 142.
  23. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Martin Heidegger—75 Years", Heidegger's Ways (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), p. 18.
  24. Jacobs, D. C., ed., The Presocratics after Heidegger (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), p. 129.
  25. Seyla Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism Of Hannah Arendt (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003, p. 120.)
  26. "Martin Heidegger Essay ⋆ Criminal Justice Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire". EssayEmpire. 2017-05-29. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  27. Rüdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil (Cambridge, Mass., & London: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 253–8.
  28. Diefenbach, K., Farris, S. R., Kirn, G., & Thomas, P., eds., Encountering Althusser: Politics and Materialism in Contemporary Radical Thought (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 11–13.
  29. Korab-Karpowicz, W. J., The Presocratics in the Thought of Martin Heidegger (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Edition, 2017), p. 24.
  30. Steiner, George (1991). Martin Heidegger. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. pp. vii–viii. ISBN 0-226-77232-2.
  31. Schmidt, Dennis J.; Heidegger, Martin (2010). Being and Time. Albany: State University of New York Press. pp. xv, xviii. ISBN 978-1-4384-3276-2.
  32. Wagner, Helmut R. (1983). Phenomenology of Consciousness and Sociology of the Life-world: An Introductory Study. Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press. p. 214. ISBN 0-88864-032-3.
  33. Heidegger, Martin (1994). Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 144–145. ISBN 0-253-20910-2.
  34. Jaspers, Karl (1969). Philosophy. Volume 1. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 103.
  35. Benhabib, Seyla; Marcuse, Herbert (1987). Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. xxxii, x, xl. ISBN 0-262-13221-4.
  36. Scruton, Roger (2016). Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left. London: Bloomsbury. p. 181. ISBN 978-1-4729-3595-3.
  37. Scruton, Roger (2016). Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left. London: Bloomsbury. p. 240. ISBN 978-1-4729-3595-3.
  38. Steiner, George (1991). Martin Heidegger. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 5. ISBN 0-226-77232-2.
  39. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1965). Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. p. vii.
  40. Lacan, Jacques (2006) [1953]. Fink, Bruce (ed.). "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis". Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English. New York: W. W. Norton & Company: 262, 792.
  41. Macquarrie, John; Robinson, Edward; Heidegger, Martin (2008). Being and Time. New York: HarperPerennial. p. iv. ISBN 978-0-06-157559-4.
  42. Stambaugh, Joan; Heidegger, Martin (2010). Being and Time. Albany: State University of New York Press. pp. xxiv. ISBN 978-1-4384-3276-2.
  43. Herbert, Brian (2003) Dreamer of Dune: The Biography of Frank Herbert Tor, New York, pages 216–217, ISBN 0-7653-0646-8
  44. Hemming, Laurence Paul (2013). Heidegger and Marx: A Productive Dialogue Over the Language of Humanism. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. pp. 33–4. ISBN 978-0-8101-2875-0.
  45. Scruton, Roger (2002). A Short History of Modern Philosophy. London: Routledge. pp. 269–271, 274. ISBN 0-415-26763-3.
  46. Houlgate, Stephen (1999). The Hegel Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. p. ix. ISBN 0-631-20347-8.
  47. Critchley, Simon. "Being and Time, part 1: Why Heidegger Matters". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 February 2015.
  48. Michael E. Zimmerman (November 2011). "intellectual forerunner of today's "deep ecology" movement" (PDF). Heidegger and Deep Ecology. University of Colorado Boulder. p. 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 23, 2015. Retrieved May 24, 2015.
  49. Ward, Dave & Stapleton, Mog (2012). Es are good. Cognition as enacted, embodied, embedded, affective and extended. In Fabio Paglieri (ed.), Consciousness in Interaction: The role of the natural and social context in shaping consciousness.
  50. Stendera, Marilyn (2015). Being-in-the-world, Temporality and Autopoiesis. _Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy_ 24:261–284.
  51. Kisiel, T., The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1995), p. 568.
  52. Heidegger, Martin (2002). "Time and Being". On Time and Being. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-32375-7.
  53. Næss, Arne D. E. "Martin Heidegger's Later philosophy". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved June 28, 2013.

Bibliography
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