Being And Time

Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) is a philosophical text written by 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger. In it, Heidegger attempts to address the fundamental question of the meaning of being. He does so through a systematic exploration of human existence and its structures. First published in 1927, Being and Time had a major impact on subsequent philosophy. A canonical text of both existentialism and phenomenology (although Heidegger would deny the association with the former), it had a major formative influence on the philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, and Herbert Marcuse. The following guide uses the translation from the German by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, published by Blackwell in 1962.

Heidegger seeks to re-evaluate a question he believes has been overlooked by the philosophical tradition: that of “Being,” or the fundamental structure of all existence. He does so not through abstract reason but by appeal to the immediate and everyday experiences of the reader. The familiar world of the individual—their work, moods, and social life—something typically ignored by philosophy, is the kernel of Heidegger’s concern. With this approach, he hopes to achieve two things. First, he hopes to revolutionize our understanding of philosophy and the ordinary world. Second, he aims to show how readers, through this radical re-orientation, can reclaim their true selves and achieve what he calls “authenticity.”

Being and Time is composed of an introduction of two chapters, and two “divisions,” each containing six chapters. The chapters are divided into numbered sections, of which there are 83. Through these sections, Heidegger develops an analysis of human being, its different aspects, and the possibilities therein for authentic or inauthentic existence. This guide is composed of 10 analysis sections that broadly map onto the chapters in the text. Two chapters are sometimes treated jointly in one analysis section, while Chapter 6 of Division 1 is dealt with only indirectly, as it treats issues already touched on or nonessential to the main argument.

In the introduction, Heidegger outlines the problem of “Being” and why an investigation into human being, or “Dasein,” is key to addressing this problem. He also discusses the phenomenological method he will employ for this task. In Chapters 1 and 2 of Division 1, he provides more detail regarding the nature of Dasein and how his study of it differs from other ways of understanding human being. Chapter 3 deals with what Heidegger calls the world of “equipment,” that world with which human beings are for the most part engaged. He distinguishes between the “ready-to-hand,” as our primary means of encountering the world, and “present-at-hand” objects or “things.”

In Chapter 4, Heidegger builds on his analysis of the common world of equipment to discuss how we are related to others. He suggests that there is a fundamental connectedness with other Dasein, called “Mitsein,” that constitutes our being but is overlooked by ordinary understanding. He sets up the possibility of becoming lost in the public world of others or “the they.” In Chapter 5, Heidegger looks at the nature of “moods” as essential to our “being-in-the-world” and as constituting rather than merely coloring it. He also investigates the nature of language. He then combines his analyses of “the they,” moods, and language to articulate the nature of Dasein’s lostness in the public world. The mood and language of the they is that of idle talk and curiosity, which alienate us from an original relationship to the world. This means that, for the most part, human beings and their understanding are marred by inauthenticity.

Division 2 begins by asking how we might escape inauthenticity and find our authentic selves. This can be accomplished, Heidegger argues, through a proper relationship with death. Our death is something that, unlike other aspects of our worldly existence, another cannot stand in for. Hence it is uniquely individualizing. In Chapter 2, Heidegger asks how we concretely attain this possibility of authentic being-towards-death. This can be done only by a “call of conscience”—something in ourselves connected to, but distinct from, ordinary conscience that calls us back to our unique possibilities of being. In Chapters 3 and 4 Heidegger argues that Dasein is fundamentally time. That is, our being is a relation to an as-yet-unrealized future and an escape from the past. An analysis of temporality, then, is reapplied to the initial analysis of our being-in-the-world. In the last two chapters, Heidegger discusses the relationship between Dasein’s temporality and history. He considers what an authentic relation to history might look like and gives an account of the origins of our ordinary conception of time.