Author | Martin Heidegger |
---|---|
Original title | Sein und Zeit |
Translator | 1962: John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson 1996: Joan Stambaugh |
Language | German |
Subject | Being |
Published | 1927 (in German) 1962: SCM Press 1996: State University of New York Press 2008: Harper Perennial Modern Thought |
Publication place | Germany |
Pages | 589 (Macquarrie and Robinson translation) 482 (Stambaugh translation) |
ISBN | 0-631-19770-2 (Blackwell edition) 978-1-4384-3276-2 (State University of New York Press edition) |
Followed by | Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics |
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 is among the most influential texts of 20th-century philosophy. It had a notable impact on subsequent philosophy, literary theory and many other fields. Though controversial, its stature in intellectual history has been compared with works by Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel. The book attempts to revive ontology through an analysis of Dasein, or "being-in-the-world." It is 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.
Richard Wolin notes that the work "implicitly adopted the critique of mass society” epitomized earlier by Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. [1] "Elitist complaints about the 'dictatorship of public opinion' were common currency to the German mandarins of the twenties," according to J. Habermas (1989). [2] Wolin writes that Being and Time is "suffused by a sensibility derived from secularized Protestantism” and its stress on original sin. The human condition is portrayed as "essentially a curse.” [1] Wolin cites the work's extended emphasis on “emotionally laden concepts” like guilt, conscience, angst and death.
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. [3] Similarly, Hubert Dreyfus likens Division II of the volume to a secularized version of Kierkegaard's Christianity. [4] Almost all central concepts of Being and Time are derived from Augustine, Luther, and Kierkegaard, according to Christian Lotz. [5]
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. In this respect Steiner compared it to 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). [6]
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 include a critique of Western philosophy. [7]
Being and Time explicitly rejects Descartes' 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] Understood as a unitary phenomenon rather than a contingent, additive combination, being-in-the-world is an essential characteristic of Dasein, according to Michael Wheeler (2011). [9]
Heidegger's account of Dasein passes through an analysis of Angst, "the Nothing" and mortality, and of the structure of "Care" as such. He then defines "authenticity," as a means to grasp and confront the finite possibilities of Dasein. Moreover, Dasein is "the being that will give access to the question of the meaning of Being," according to Heidegger. [10]
The work claims that ordinary and even mundane "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] This meaning would then elucidate ordinary "prescientific" understanding, which precedes abstract ways of knowing, such as logic or theory. [12]
Heidegger's concept of Being is metaphorical, according to Richard Rorty, who agrees with Heidegger that there is no "hidden power" called Being. Heidegger emphasizes that no particular understanding of Being (nor of Dasein) is to be valued over another, according to an account of 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.
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.") [14] [15] 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). [16] Nonetheless, Heidegger does present the concept: "'Being' is not something like a being but is rather "what determines beings as beings." [17]
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 fundamental characteristic and 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. [18] Dasein occupies itself with the present tasks required by goals it has projected on the future. [19]
Dasein as an intertwined subject/object cannot be separated from its objective "historicality," a concept Heidegger credits in the text to Wilhelm Dilthey. Dasein is "stretched along" temporally between birth and death, and thrown into its world; into its future possibilities which Dasein is charged with assuming. Dasein's access to this world and these possibilities is always via a history and a tradition—or "world historicality".
Heidegger's mentor Edmund Husserl developed a method of analysis called "phenomenological reduction" or "bracketing," that emphasized primordial experience as its key element. Husserl used this method to define the structures of consciousness and show how they are directed at both real and ideal objects within the world. [20]
Being and Time employs this method but purportedly modifies Husserl's subjectivist tendencies. Whereas Husserl conceived humans as constituted by consciousness, Heidegger countered that consciousness is peripheral to Dasein, which cannot be reduced to consciousness. Consciousness is thus an "effect" rather than a determinant of existence. By shifting the priority from consciousness (psychology) to existence (ontology), Heidegger altered the subsequent direction of phenomenology.
But Being and Time misrepresented its phenomenology as a departure from methods established earlier by Husserl, according to Daniel O. Dahlstrom. [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 publication in 1927, Being and Time bore a dedication to Husserl, who beginning a decade earlier, championed Heidegger's work, and helped him secure the retiring Husserl's chair in Philosophy at the University of Freiburg in 1928. [23] [24] 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). [25] : 253–258
Being and Time employed the "hermeneutic circle" as a method of analysis or structure for ideas. According to Susann M. Laverty (2003), Heidegger's circle moves from the parts of experience to the whole of experience and back and forth again and again to increase the depth of engagement and understanding. Laverty writes (Kvale 1996), "This spiraling through a hermeneutic circle ends when one has reached a place of sensible meaning, free of inner contradictions, for the moment." [26]
The hermeneutic circle and certain theories concerning history in Being and Time are acknowledged within the text to rely on the writings of Wilhelm Dilthey. [27] The technique was later employed in the writings of Jürgen Habermas, per "Influence and reception" below.
In Being and Time Heidegger briefly refutes the philosophy of René Descartes (in an exercise he called "destructuring"), but the second volume, intended as a Destruktion of Western philosophy, was never written. Heidegger sought to explain how theoretical knowledge came to be seen, incorrectly in his view, as fundamental 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 hidden within the theoretical attitude of the metaphysics of presence. [28] : 11–13
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] : 24
Upon its publication, reviewers credited Heidegger with "brilliance" and "genius". [30] The book was later seen as the "most influential version of existential philosophy." [31] Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism (of 1943) has been described as merely "a version of Being and Time". [32] The work also influenced other philosophers of Sartre's generation, [33] and exerted a notable influence on French philosophy. [34]
Heidegger's work influenced the output of the Frankfurt School including Jürgen Habermas's hermeneutics and Herbert Marcuse's early and abortive attempt to develop "Heideggerian Marxism." [35] [36] Theodore Adorno, in his 1964 book The Jargon of Authenticity, was critical of Heidegger's popularity in post-war Western Europe. Adorno accused Heidegger of evading ethical judgment by disingenuously presenting "authenticity" as a value-free, technical term—rather than a positive doctrine of the good life. [37] Heidegger influenced psychoanalysis through Jacques Lacan as well as Medard Boss and others. [38] Paul Celan, in his essays on poetic theory, incorporated some of Heidegger's ideas. [39] Being and Time also separately influenced Alain Badiou's work Being and Event (1988), [33] and also separately the enactivist approach to cognition theory. [40] [41]
Bertrand Russell was dismissive of Being and Time ("One cannot help suspecting that language is here running riot"), and the analytic philosopher A. J. Ayer outright called Heidegger a charlatan. But the American philosopher Richard Rorty ranked Heidegger among the important philosophers of the twentieth century, including John Dewey and Ludwig Wittgenstein. [42] The conservative British writer Roger Scruton called (2002) Being and Time a "description of a private spiritual journey" rather than genuine philosophy. [43] But Stephen Houlgate (1999) compares Heidegger's achievements in Being and Time to those of Kant and Hegel. [44] Simon Critchley (2009) writes that it is impossible to understand developments in continental philosophy after Heidegger without understanding Being and Time. [45]
Being and Time is the major achievement of Heidegger's early career, but he produced other important works during this period:
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:
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was an Austrian-German philosopher and mathematician who established the school of phenomenology.
Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus on hermeneutics, Truth and Method.
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. His work covers a wide range of topics including ontology, technology, art, metaphysics, humanism, language and history of philosophy. He is often considered to be among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th century, especially in the continental tradition.
Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. As necessary, hermeneutics may include the art of understanding and communication.
Phenomenology is a philosophical study and movement largely associated with the early 20th century that seeks to objectively investigate the nature of subjective, conscious experience. It attempts to describe the universal features of consciousness while avoiding assumptions about the external world, aiming to describe phenomena as they appear to the subject, and to explore the meaning and significance of the lived experiences.
German philosophy, meaning philosophy in the German language or philosophy by German people, in its diversity, is fundamental for both the analytic and continental traditions. It covers figures such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle, and the Frankfurt School, who now count among the most famous and studied philosophers of all time. They are central to major philosophical movements such as rationalism, German idealism, Romanticism, dialectical materialism, existentialism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, logical positivism, and critical theory. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is often also included in surveys of German philosophy due to his extensive engagement with German thinkers.
Continental philosophy is an umbrella term for philosophies prominent in continental Europe. Michael E. Rosen has ventured to identify common themes that typically characterize continental philosophy. These themes proposed by Rosen derive from a broadly Kantian thesis that knowledge, experience, and reality are bound and shaped by conditions best understood through philosophical reflection rather than exclusively empirical inquiry.
"Dasein" is a technical term in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Adopted from the ordinary German word Dasein meaning "existence", Heidegger used it to refer to the mode of being that is particular to human beings. It is a form of being that is aware of and must confront such issues as personhood, mortality, and the dilemma or paradox of living in relationship with other humans while being ultimately alone with oneself.
Wilhelm Dilthey was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist, and hermeneutic philosopher, who held Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey's research interests revolved around questions of scientific methodology, historical evidence and history's status as a science.
Existential phenomenology encompasses a wide range of thinkers who take up the view that philosophy must begin from experience like phenomenology, but argues for the temporality of personal existence as the framework for analysis of the human condition.
The phenomenology of religion concerns the experiential aspect of religion, describing religious phenomena in terms consistent with the orientation of worshippers. It views religion as made up of different components, and studies these components across religious traditions in order to gain some understanding of them.
Martin Heidegger, the 20th-century German philosopher, produced a large body of work that intended a profound change of direction for philosophy. Such was the depth of change that he found it necessary to introduce many neologisms, often connected to idiomatic words and phrases in the German language.
Thrownness is a concept introduced by German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) to describe humans' individual existences as being 'thrown' (geworfen) into the world.
Eugen Fink was a German philosopher.
Phenomenology within sociology, or phenomenological sociology, examines the concept of social reality as a product of intersubjectivity. Phenomenology analyses social reality in order to explain the formation and nature of social institutions. The application of phenomenological ideas in sociology, however, is not reduced to the notion of the "Lifeworld", nor to "grand" theoretical synthesis, such as that of phenomenological sociology.
In Being and Time, the philosopher Martin Heidegger makes the distinction between ontical and ontological, or between beings and being as such. He labeled this the "ontological difference." It is from this distinction that he develops the concept of fundamental ontology.
John Russon is a Canadian philosopher, working primarily in the tradition of Continental Philosophy. In 2006, he was named Presidential Distinguished Professor at the University of Guelph, and in 2011 he was the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute's Canadian Lecturer to India.
The Logical Investigations is a two-volume work by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, in which the author discusses the philosophy of logic and criticizes psychologism, the view that logic is based on psychology.
Thomas Seebohm was a phenomenological philosopher whose wide-ranging interests included, among others, Immanuel Kant, Edmund Husserl, hermeneutics, and logic. Other areas of Professor Seebohm's interests included the history of philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of the formal sciences, methodology and philosophy of the human sciences, the history of 19th century British Empiricism, American pragmatism, analytic philosophy, philosophy of law and practical philosophy, and the development of the history of philosophy in Eastern Europe. Despite this diverse span of interests, Seebohm was chiefly known as a phenomenologist, who "above all...considered himself a creative phenomenologist, who as a critically reflecting philosopher would look at all major issues with which he became confronted, from a transcendental phenomenological point of view."
Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann was a German philosopher. He was known for his expertise on Heidegger's thought, having worked with him at the University of Freiburg from 1972 to 1976. Herrmann taught there as professor from 1979 to 1999.
In a word, I think the record shows that the Dilthey appropriation taught the young Heidegger how to philosophize.[127]