Being and Time is Heidegger's 1927 foundational work — the major event of twentieth-century continental philosophy, reframing the central philosophical question as the question of the meaning of being and developing a systematic phenomenological analysis of Dasein.
being-and-time
Heidegger's 1927 foundational work, the major philosophical event of the twentieth century in continental philosophy: a systematic phenomenological analysis of Dasein as the entry point into the question of the meaning of being.
Published 1927 as the first half of a projected two-part work; the second half never appeared in the originally projected form.
Introduction
Being and Time (German Sein und Zeit) is Martin Heidegger's foundational work, published in 1927. It is the major philosophical event of twentieth-century continental philosophy and one of the most influential single works in any tradition. The book reframes the central question of Western philosophy as the question of the meaning of being (die Seinsfrage) and develops a systematic phenomenological analysis of human existence (Dasein) as the entry point into that question.
The work was published as the first half of a projected two-part inquiry; the second half (which was to have moved from the analysis of Dasein to the analysis of being in general) never appeared in the originally projected form. The famous turn (Kehre) in Heidegger's thinking during the 1930s involved partly a different approach to the question that Being and Time was meant to enable. Whether Being and Time is therefore a complete work, an incomplete one, or a work whose unstated continuation should be read through the later writings is a continuing scholarly question.
Form, length, date, language
Being and Time is a single treatise in two divisions, totaling approximately 200,000 words in German. The First Division (The Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein) and the Second Division (Dasein and Temporality) were published in 1927 as a single volume; the projected Third Division (which was to have addressed Time and Being) and a projected second part (a destruktion of the history of ontology engaging Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant) were never published in the projected form.
The original language is German in Heidegger's distinctively difficult style. The text deploys an extensive technical vocabulary (much of it Heidegger's own coinages: Dasein, Mitsein, Befindlichkeit, Stimmung, Sorge, Sein-zum-Tode), engages in extensive etymological analyses (especially of Greek and German terms), and proceeds through long, structurally complex sentences that resist quick reading. English translation has been a continuing scholarly challenge; the major translations (Macquarrie-Robinson, 1962; Stambaugh, 1996; revised Stambaugh-Schmidt, 2010) each make different translation choices that shape the reception.
Why it was written
Being and Time is Heidegger's response to what he takes to be a foundational failure of Western philosophy. The Greek beginning of philosophy (Parmenides, Heraclitus, the early Plato) had asked the question of being (ti to on; what is being?). Subsequent philosophy, especially after Plato and Aristotle, increasingly substituted the study of beings (particular entities and kinds of entities) for the study of being itself. The result is that the foundational question — what does it mean for anything to be at all, how do different modes of being differ, what is the relation between being and time — has been forgotten.
Being and Time is meant to reawaken the question. The strategy: take up the question through the analysis of the being that asks the question, the human being (renamed Dasein to avoid the philosophical baggage of human, subject, consciousness, etc.). The systematic analysis of Dasein's mode of being is meant to provide the conceptual foundation for the subsequent (never published) analysis of being in general.
Structure and argument
Introduction. The opening sections (§1–8) frame the project: the question of being is the most far-reaching, most basic, most concrete question; it has been forgotten; the recovery requires both substantive analysis of Dasein and methodological reflection on phenomenology as the proper philosophical method.
Division One: The Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein. Six chapters develop the basic structures of Dasein's existence:
Chapter 1 introduces Dasein and its distinctive mode of being.
Chapter 2 develops the structure of being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein) as the foundational structure. Dasein is not first a subject that subsequently relates to a world; it is essentially situated in a meaningful world from the start. The world is not a collection of objects to be cognized but a structure of significance within which Dasein always already finds itself.
Chapter 3 develops the analysis of the worldhood of the world — the structures of significance that make encounter with things (including the famous analysis of tools as zuhanden, ready-to-hand) possible.
Chapter 4 addresses being-with (Mitsein). Dasein is essentially with others; even when alone, Dasein's situation is structured by relations to others. The chapter introduces das Man (the They) as the everyday inauthentic mode in which Dasein lives as one is expected to live.
Chapter 5 develops the analysis of the structures of Dasein's being-there: Befindlichkeit (situatedness, manifested in mood), Verstehen (understanding), Rede (discourse).
Chapter 6 presents the unifying structure: care (Sorge). Dasein's being is fundamentally care — the structure of being-ahead-of-itself, being-already-in-a-world, and being-alongside entities encountered within the world.
Division Two: Dasein and Temporality. The longer second division re-analyzes the structures of Division One in light of Dasein's temporal character and the analysis of authenticity.
The famous being-toward-death (Sein-zum-Tode) analysis (Chapter 1) presents Dasein as essentially finite. The recognition of death not as a future event but as a constitutive structure of Dasein's being is what makes authenticity possible. Dasein exists as being-toward-death whether it acknowledges this or flees it; authentic existence is the mode that takes up the recognition rather than fleeing into the busy-ness of das Man.
Subsequent chapters develop the analysis of conscience and resoluteness as the modes through which authentic existence is achieved; the analysis of temporality as the unifying horizon of Dasein's being; and the analysis of historicity as the temporal structure of Dasein's being in a tradition and a community.
Key passages
- §1 — the opening on the necessity of restating the question of the meaning of being.
- §12 — the structure of being-in-the-world as the foundational structure of Dasein.
- §15–18 — the analysis of tools as ready-to-hand and the worldhood of the world.
- §27 — the analysis of das Man (the They).
- §28–38 — the analyses of mood, understanding, and discourse as fundamental existentials.
- §41 — the unifying analysis of care.
- §46–53 — the analysis of being-toward-death.
- §55–60 — conscience and resoluteness.
- §65–66 — the analysis of temporality.
- §74–75 — historicity.
Reception history
Being and Time was received as the major German philosophical event of its decade. Within five years of its publication it had reshaped European phenomenology, established Heidegger as the successor to Husserl, and begun the international reception that would continue for nearly a century.
The post-war French reception through Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943, written substantially in dialogue with Being and Time), the broader existentialist movement, and the later French phenomenological tradition (Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Henry) made Being and Time central to mid-twentieth-century continental philosophy. The hermeneutic tradition through Gadamer (Heidegger's student) developed substantial portions of the analysis in different directions.
The anglophone reception was slower. The first English translation (Macquarrie-Robinson, 1962) was substantial but contested; Hubert Dreyfus's Being-in-the-World (1991) was the foundational anglophone commentary and substantially shaped subsequent analytic engagement with the work. The contemporary analytic engagement (Stephen Mulhall, Mark Wrathall, Taylor Carman, William Blattner) treats Being and Time as a serious philosophical text engaging questions of mind, action, and embodiment that analytic philosophy has independently addressed.
The political reception has been continuously complicated by Heidegger's support for the Nazi regime in 1933–1934 and by the publication of antisemitic passages in the Black Notebooks (from 2014). The relation between the philosophy of Being and Time (composed before 1927) and the political commitments of the 1930s is one of the most-contested questions in contemporary Heidegger scholarship.
Contemporary engagement
The standard German text is in volume 2 of the Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main, 1977). The standard English translations are Macquarrie-Robinson (1962) and Stambaugh (1996; revised Stambaugh-Schmidt, 2010). Major recent scholarly work includes Stephen Mulhall's Heidegger and Being and Time (1996; revised 2005), Hubert Dreyfus's Being-in-the-World (1991), Mark Wrathall's Heidegger and Unconcealment (2011), Taylor Carman's Heidegger's Analytic (2003), and William Blattner's Heidegger's Being and Time (2006). Active scholarly debates concern the relation between Divisions One and Two, the proper interpretation of being-toward-death, the relation between Being and Time and the later Heidegger, and the political question.
Further reading
- Heidegger — the author
- Existentialism — the tradition substantially shaped by the work
- Authenticity — the central existential value
- Sartre — the philosopher whose Being and Nothingness is partly a reworking of Being and Time
- Kierkegaard — the existentialist predecessor whose work shaped the analytic
- Logos — the Greek concept Heidegger's hermeneutic engagement repeatedly returns to
The major event of twentieth-century continental philosophy. The work that reframed the central philosophical question as the question of the meaning of being.