Being and Time

1. Introduction

Being and Time (Sein und Zeit, 1927) is Martin Heidegger’s major early work and a landmark in 20th‑century Continental philosophy. The treatise sets itself a single overarching task: to renew and clarify the question of the meaning of Being by analyzing the being of the human way of existing, which Heidegger names Dasein. Rather than offering a traditional metaphysical system, it proceeds through detailed descriptions of everyday life, practical activity, social existence, and temporality.

Heidegger argues that Western philosophy, from the Greeks onward, has largely taken for granted what it means for entities to be, focusing instead on particular kinds of beings (physical objects, mental states, God, values, etc.). Being and Time attempts to retrieve the forgotten question “What is the meaning of Being?” by investigating the being of that entity for whom this question is an issue: human existence itself.

The work is programmatic and incomplete. Heidegger published only the first part of what was planned as a two‑part book; the unwritten second part was meant to extend the analysis of human temporality to Being in general. Despite this incompleteness, Being and Time has been widely regarded as inaugurating existential phenomenology, reshaping discussions of subjectivity, world, time, and interpretation.

The text is notoriously dense and introduces a specialized vocabulary, often built through novel uses of German. It combines a revisionary account of concepts such as world, self, time, and truth with a methodological claim that phenomenology—understood as letting what shows itself be seen—is the appropriate way to disclose the fundamental structures of existence. Subsequent sections of this entry treat the historical background, the structure and main arguments of the book, and its reception and influence.

2. Historical and Philosophical Context

Intellectual Milieu

Being and Time emerges within, and in reaction to, early 20th‑century German philosophy:

Relation to Husserl and Phenomenology

Edmund Husserl, Heidegger’s mentor, had founded phenomenology as a descriptive science of consciousness, using methods such as the epoché (bracketing) to investigate how objects are given. Heidegger adopts the slogan “to the things themselves” but shifts focus from consciousness to Dasein’s being‑in‑the‑world. Many commentators characterize this shift as an “existential” or “hermeneutic” transformation of phenomenology.

Some interpreters stress continuity with Husserl—e.g., the emphasis on intentionality and givenness. Others emphasize rupture: Heidegger rejects a foundational role for a transcendental subject and replaces it with a situated, finite existence.

Reactions to Modernity and Science

Heidegger writes against the backdrop of rapid technological modernization, World War I, and crises in European culture. He critically addresses the dominance of:

• Scientism, which equates Being with the objectively present and measurable.
• Cartesian subject–object frameworks, which define humans primarily as knowing subjects.

Being and Time contests these by arguing that practical involvement and everyday coping with tools and others are ontologically prior to detached scientific observation.

Historical Sources

Heidegger’s analyses draw extensively on:

• Aristotle, especially his ontology and practical philosophy.
• Kierkegaard, for themes of anxiety, individuality, and decision.
• Medieval and Reformation theology, particularly notions of care, guilt, and conscience.

Scholars disagree on how directly these sources inform individual doctrines, but there is broad agreement that Being and Time is deeply embedded in—and critical of—the broader tradition of Western metaphysics and theology.

3. Author and Composition History

Heidegger’s Academic Trajectory

When composing Being and Time, Heidegger (1889–1976) was transitioning from promising phenomenologist to leading figure in German philosophy. Key stages include:

Genesis of the Project

Theodore Kisiel and other historians trace Being and Time to Heidegger’s early post‑war courses on factical life experience, biblical hermeneutics, and Aristotle. Over several years, Heidegger progressively reformulated his aims:

• From a hermeneutics of facticity (interpretation of lived life in its historical situation),
• To an existential analytic of Dasein as groundwork for ontology,
• To a projected full‑scale fundamental ontology deriving the meaning of Being from time.

Heidegger’s 1925–1926 lectures (e.g., History of the Concept of Time and Logic: The Question of Truth) already anticipate many analyses of worldhood, being‑in‑the‑world, and temporality that appear in Being and Time.

Planning and Revisions

The composition involved multiple outlines and rewritings. Heidegger initially envisaged a work more oriented toward the history of ontology (Parmenides to Kant) but gradually foregrounded the analysis of Dasein. The final structure, as published, presents:

• An Introduction on the question of Being and method.
• Part One, “The Interpretation of Dasein in Terms of Temporality…,” of which only Division One and Division Two appear.
• A Part Two, “Time and Being,” planned but never written.

Commentators debate why Heidegger abandoned the project. Some argue that conceptual difficulties—especially about time and Being—forced a methodological “turn.” Others suggest practical pressures (teaching, institutional roles) or a sense that the book’s language no longer suited his evolving thinking.

Relation to Heidegger’s Life Circumstances

The mid‑1920s were also a period of professional ambition and personal strain. While direct biographical motives for specific theses are contested, it is generally accepted that Heidegger’s intense teaching schedule, intellectual competition with neo‑Kantians, and the consolidation of his own position vis‑à‑vis Husserl shaped the urgency and scope of Being and Time’s composition.

4. Publication and Textual History

Original Publication

Being and Time was first published in 1927 as volume 8 of Edmund Husserl’s Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung. It appeared as a stand‑alone fascicle within the series, with the well‑known dedication to Husserl “in respectful admiration and friendship.”

The original German text quickly went through additional printings. The work later became volume 2 of the Gesamtausgabe (GA), Heidegger’s collected writings, which now serves as the standard reference edition.

Planned but Unfinished Structure

Heidegger had announced a work in two parts:

The unwritten sections were meant to connect the analysis of Dasein’s temporality with an explicit interpretation of Being as such. Later texts, including the 1962 lecture “Zeit und Sein” (Time and Being), are often read as partial attempts to fulfill this aim.

Manuscripts and Editorial Status

The surviving manuscripts and lecture courses from the 1920s show close overlap with Being and Time’s themes and vocabulary. The Gesamtausgabe editors rely on the 1927 printed text, as Heidegger did not substantially revise the book afterward, though he later distanced himself from aspects of its language and framework.

No complete author‑prepared second edition exists. Minor textual variants between early printings are documented in scholarly apparatuses, but they have not significantly altered interpretation.

Translations

The two most influential English translations are:

Debates over translation often turn on how best to render Heidegger’s neologisms and whether to preserve German compounds or “naturalize” them. Comparable issues arise in French, Italian, and other translations, which have shaped regional receptions of the text.

5. Structure and Organization of Being and Time

Macro‑Structure

Heidegger organizes Being and Time into a carefully staged progression:

The published material comprises the Introduction plus Part One, Division One and Part One, Division Two.

The Introduction

The Introduction clarifies:

• Why the question of Being must be reawakened.
• Why Dasein is the necessary starting point for ontology.
• How phenomenology is understood as the method.
• The distinction between ontical (about particular beings) and ontological (about Being) inquiry.

It sets formal constraints on the later “existential analytic” without yet offering detailed descriptions of everyday life.

Division One: Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein

Division One develops the existential structures of Dasein’s everyday being‑in‑the‑world:

1. Task of the analysis: Why Dasein has ontological priority and how it differs from other entities.
2. Being‑in‑the‑world: As the basic constitution of Dasein, overcoming subject–object dualism.
3. Worldhood of the world: Analysis of equipment, readiness‑to‑hand, and practical involvement.
4. Being‑with and selfhood: Exploration of coexistence and the they (das Man).
5. Being‑in as such: Moods, understanding, and discourse as ways the world is disclosed.
6. Care (Sorge): Synthesis of structures into the thesis that Dasein’s being is care.

Division Two: Dasein and Temporality

Division Two deepens the analysis by focusing on finitude and time:

1. Being‑toward‑death and Dasein’s possibility of being‑a‑whole.
2. Conscience, guilt, and resoluteness as attestation of authentic existence.
3. Temporality as the meaning of care and the basis of authenticity/inauthenticity.
4. Historicity and communal historical existence.
5. Within‑time‑ness and the derivation of the ordinary concept of time.

Heidegger intended to proceed from here to Part Two, where the temporality of Dasein would ground a general ontology of Being, but this further step remains only projected.

6. The Question of Being and Heidegger’s Project

The “Forgotten” Question

Heidegger begins from the claim that philosophy has largely forgotten the question “What is the meaning of Being?” While many ontologies classify beings (substances, properties, causes), they rarely clarify the more basic sense in which anything is at all. Heidegger argues that:

• The question is formal‑indicative: it does not ask about a particular entity, but about the horizon that lets entities appear as beings.
• The tradition tends to treat Being as the highest, most general being (e.g., God, a supreme entity), thereby obscuring the distinction between Being (Sein) and beings (Seiendes).

Proponents of this reading emphasize that Heidegger is reviving a problem implicit in Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle, but now thematized with phenomenological method.

Fundamental Ontology

Heidegger names his overall project fundamental ontology. Instead of a regional ontology (e.g., nature, mind, society), fundamental ontology investigates the conditions under which any regional ontology is possible. It asks:

• How must Being be understood for entities to show up as objects of science, tools, persons, or historical events?
• What structures of the inquirer’s own existence are presupposed in posing these questions?

To answer this, Heidegger proposes an existential analytic of Dasein as the “first philosophy” required before other theoretical enterprises.

Priority of the Question

Heidegger assigns the question of Being a kind of priority:

• Ontic‑ontological priority: Dasein is a being whose own Being is at issue; hence, analyzing Dasein reveals ontological structures.
• Ontological priority: The understanding of Being already operates in everyday life (in how we use tools, interact with others), even if only pre‑thematically.
• Ontic priority: Because Dasein asks the question, its existence is pivotal for any ontology.

Some commentators see this as a re‑founding of metaphysics; others interpret Heidegger as seeking to overcome traditional metaphysics by exposing its presuppositions. There is also debate whether the project is ultimately descriptive (phenomenological) or quasi‑transcendental (laying out necessary structures of intelligibility).

7. Dasein and the Analytic of Existence

What is Dasein?

Dasein literally means “being‑there.” Heidegger uses it as a technical term for the kind of being that we ourselves are, defined by:

• An understanding of Being (even if vague and pre‑theoretical).
• The ability to relate to itself in its Being.
• Openness to possibilities and to a meaningful world.

Unlike substances or objects, Dasein’s essence “lies in its existence” (its way of being), not in a set of fixed properties.

Existential vs. Categorial Analysis

Heidegger distinguishes:

The “analytic of Dasein” is thus existential, not psychological or anthropological in the empirical sense. It aims at the ontological structures that make any concrete life‑story possible, rather than describing particular characters or cultures.

Existentiale: Key Structural Features

Heidegger’s analysis (especially in Division One) describes Dasein through existentials such as:

• Being‑in‑the‑world: Dasein is always already involved with a meaningful environment.
• Being‑with: Coexistence with others is a basic structure, not an add‑on.
• Thrownness: Dasein finds itself already in a situation it did not choose.
• Projection: Dasein is always ahead of itself in possibilities.
• Care (Sorge): The unified structure that holds thrownness and projection together.

These are not inner states but ways of existing.

Ontic and Ontological Dimensions

Heidegger continually differentiates:

• Ontic descriptions of Dasein (empirical traits, psychological states).
• Ontological structures (existentials) that underlie any such traits.

The analytic of existence operates at the ontological level but is motivated by our everyday, ontic self‑concern. Some interpreters understand this as a form of hermeneutic circle: we start from our vague self‑understanding and clarify it by interpretation, which in turn reshapes our self‑understanding.

8. Being‑in‑the‑World, Worldhood, and Equipment

Being‑in‑the‑World as a Unitary Structure

Heidegger’s notion of being‑in‑the‑world rejects the idea of a subject inside a mind confronting external objects. Instead, Dasein is always already:

• In a world (not spatially contained, but immersed in meaningful contexts),
• Engaged with entities practically,
• Oriented toward possibilities.

This structure has three interconnected moments: the “in‑ness,” the “world,” and the “who” that is in the world.

Worldhood and Significance

The world is not merely the totality of objects but a web of significance:

• Things show up as “for” certain tasks (for writing, for driving, for shelter).
• Relations of in‑order‑to, for‑the‑sake‑of‑which, and with‑which form a network within which entities are meaningful.

Worldhood, then, is the ontological structure of this referential whole. The analysis of worldhood is meant to precede and ground any theoretical picture of an objective universe.

Equipment, Ready‑to‑hand, and Present‑at‑hand

Heidegger’s famous tool analysis introduces a distinction between two basic modes of encountering entities:

In ordinary coping, tools recede into the background of activity and are primarily ready‑to‑hand. They become conspicuous as present‑at‑hand often only when something goes wrong (breakdown, malfunction) or when we step back into theoretical contemplation.

Interpretative debates focus on whether this priority of readiness‑to‑hand implies a critique of science, or merely a claim about the order of phenomenological access. Some commentators link the equipmental analysis to later discussions of technology; others emphasize its role in dismantling Cartesian epistemology by showing that practical involvement precedes representational cognition.

9. The They, Everydayness, and Authenticity

Everyday Being‑with and the They (das Man)

Heidegger describes Dasein’s ordinary social existence as being‑with others. Within this, he identifies an impersonal agency he calls the they (das Man), often translated as “the One” or “the They.” It is:

• Not a particular group, but the diffuse norms governing what “one” does, says, and values.
• Manifest in average public opinions, social expectations, and conventional roles.

In everydayness, Dasein tends to understand itself and its possibilities through the they’s interpretations.

Structures of Everydayness

Heidegger analyzes several interconnected features of everyday existence:

• Idle talk (Gerede): Discourse that circulates interpretations without firsthand appropriation.
• Curiosity: A restless seeking of novelty without dwelling or commitment.
• Ambiguity: Indeterminacy where everything seems understood yet nothing is grasped in depth.

These phenomena express how the they maintains a leveling down of distinct possibilities and fosters a sense that everything is accessible and already known.

Inauthenticity

In this context, inauthenticity (Uneigentlichkeit) names a pervasive, but not morally blameworthy, mode of existence:

• Dasein flees from confronting its own finite possibilities.
• It loses itself in tasks, entertainments, and public interpretations.
• Its choices are guided by “what one does” rather than by a resolute appropriation of its ownmost potential.

Heidegger insists that inauthenticity is an existential possibility of Dasein and, in many respects, its default state.

Authenticity and Its Ambiguities

Authenticity (Eigentlichkeit), which will be developed more fully in connection with death and resoluteness, is first thematized as a modification of everydayness:

• Dasein can retrieve itself from absorption in the they.
• It can own up to its distinct possibilities within the same shared world.

Interpretations diverge on whether Heidegger’s notion entails normative guidance. Some read authenticity as primarily formal (owning one’s possibilities without substantive ethical content); others see implicit ethical or even political overtones. The text itself emphasizes that authenticity remains rooted in everyday being‑with, not a withdrawal into a private interiority.

10. Death, Conscience, and Resoluteness

Being‑toward‑Death

In Division Two, Heidegger investigates death as Dasein’s “ownmost,” “non‑relational,” and “unsurpassable” possibility. Rather than treating death as a biological event or metaphysical transition, he focuses on being‑toward‑death:

• As anticipation: a way Dasein can relate to its finite possibility.
• As individualizing: death cannot be taken over by others.
• As disclosive: it reveals the null basis of Dasein’s possibilities.

Everyday attitudes tend to evade death through euphemisms, generalizations (“everyone dies”), or medicalization; Heidegger interprets these as modes of fleeing from finitude.

Conscience and the Call

Heidegger then turns to conscience (Gewissen), understood ontologically rather than morally. Conscience is analyzed as:

• A call coming “from me and yet over me.”
• Characterized by silence, interrupting everyday chatter.
• Summoning Dasein to its ownmost potentiality‑for‑Being.

Heidegger interprets guilt not primarily as moral fault, but as an existential structure: Dasein is “guilty” in that it always already stands before possibilities it has not chosen and can never “make good” fully. Some commentators find in this an ontological refiguration of Lutheran notions of guilt and grace; others emphasize its formal character.

Resoluteness (Entschlossenheit)

Resoluteness is the mode in which Dasein responds to the call of conscience:

• It owns up to its thrownness and finite possibilities.
• It makes concrete decisions in the face of uncertainty.
• It is not a heroic self‑assertion but a lucid openness to the situation (“what is to be done”).

Heidegger also develops the idea of anticipatory resoluteness, where the anticipation of death shapes how Dasein chooses among possibilities.

Debates focus on whether resoluteness carries implicit ethical or political content. Some interpreters construe it as a formal structure compatible with diverse commitments; others argue that its emphasis on decision and destiny may have facilitated certain political appropriations, though the text of Being and Time itself remains largely abstract on such matters.

11. Care, Temporality, and Historicity

Care (Sorge) as the Being of Dasein

At the close of Division One, Heidegger synthesizes the analyses of being‑in‑the‑world into the thesis that Dasein’s Being is care (Sorge). Care structurally comprises:

• Ahead‑of‑itself (projection into possibilities),
• Already‑being‑in‑a‑world (thrownness into a situation),
• Being‑alongside entities (concernful dealings and being‑with others).

Care is not an emotion but the formal unity of these existential dimensions, expressing that Dasein’s own Being is at issue for it.

Temporality (Zeitlichkeit)

Division Two argues that the meaning of care is temporality. Heidegger distinguishes an originary temporality from the ordinary notion of time:

• Originary temporality is ecstatic: a unified structure of future, having‑been, and present.
• The future (projection) is primary: Dasein exists by projecting itself toward possibilities.
• The having‑been (past) is not a sequence of moments behind us but the way thrownness is taken over.
• The present is a mode of making‑present grounded in these two.

Authentic and inauthentic ways of existing correspond to different modes of temporalizing: e.g., anticipatory resoluteness vs. absorption in the everyday “present.”

Interpretations diverge on whether Heidegger is offering a phenomenological description of lived time, a transcendental account of the conditions for any experience, or both.

Historicity (Geschichtlichkeit)

Building on temporality, Heidegger articulates historicity as Dasein’s way of being historical:

• Dasein always inherits a tradition, language, and “heritage” of possibilities.
• It can relate to this heritage authentically, by repetition (Wiederholung): a re‑appropriation of selected possibilities in light of the present.
• Concepts like fate (Schicksal) and destiny (Geschick) describe individual and communal historicity.

The notion of historicity underlies Heidegger’s later claims about the historical unfolding of understandings of Being. Some scholars emphasize the productivity of this idea for hermeneutics; others raise concerns about its potential links to notions of collective mission or destiny that become more explicit in Heidegger’s 1930s writings.

12. Philosophical Method: Phenomenology and Ontology

Phenomenology as Method

Heidegger defines phenomenology as:

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“to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself.”

He reformulates Husserl’s method to focus not on consciousness but on Being. Key features include:

• Descriptive rather than deductive: starting from concrete phenomena of everyday life.
• Hermeneutic: involving interpretation of pre‑theoretical understanding.
• Formal indication: using concepts not as rigid definitions but as guides to phenomena.

Ontology and Ontic/Ontological Distinction

Heidegger distinguishes:

Phenomenology, as Heidegger practices it, is inherently ontological: it seeks to disclose the structures that make ontic facts intelligible.

Destruction (Destruktion) of the History of Ontology

Part of the method is a destruction (sometimes translated “deconstruction”) of prior ontology:

• Not a rejection, but a critical retrieval of concealed possibilities.
• Aims to uncover how traditional concepts of Being (substance, presence, causality) arose and where they obscure more originary phenomena.

Heidegger sketches but does not fully execute this historical destruction in Being and Time itself; later works take it further.

Relation to Transcendental Philosophy

There is debate whether Heidegger’s phenomenology is a form of transcendental philosophy (in a Kantian or Husserlian sense). Some argue:

• It uncovers necessary conditions for the possibility of understanding and world, hence is transcendental.
• Dasein functions analogously to a transcendental subject.

Others stress that Heidegger insists on Dasein’s finitude and facticity, rejecting the notion of a timeless, purely formal subject. On this reading, his method is better characterized as hermeneutic phenomenology, rooted in historical existence rather than detached conditions of cognition.

13. Key Concepts and Technical Vocabulary

This section outlines some of the most important terms as they function within Being and Time, complementing the more concise glossary.

Dasein

As noted, Dasein designates human existence insofar as it understands Being. It is not a species concept (“human being” in the biological sense) but an ontological term for the entity that we each are in living our lives, characterized by openness, self‑relation, and possibility.

Being‑in‑the‑World

Being‑in‑the‑world signifies the basic way Dasein exists:

• “In” is not spatial containment but involvement.
• “World” is a structured context of significance.
• The phrase expresses a unitary phenomenon rather than three separate items (subject + relation + environment).

Ready‑to‑hand / Present‑at‑hand

These designate distinct modes of encountering entities:

• Ready‑to‑hand (Zuhandenheit): the practical, equipmental mode.
• Present‑at‑hand (Vorhandenheit): the theoretical, objectifying mode.

Heidegger sometimes speaks of the same entity (e.g., a hammer) shifting modes depending on context.

The They (das Man)

Das Man is the anonymous “one” that dictates everyday norms. It functions as a structural feature of social existence, not a sociological group.

Care, Thrownness, Projection

• Care (Sorge): the unified structure of Dasein’s Being.
• Thrownness (Geworfenheit): the fact of finding oneself already in a world with a past.
• Projection (Entwurf): Dasein’s constant orientation toward possibilities.

Authenticity / Inauthenticity

• Authenticity (Eigentlichkeit): owning up to one’s finite possibilities, often linked with anticipatory resoluteness.
• Inauthenticity (Uneigentlichkeit): absorption in the they and everyday distractions.

These are not moral categories in the usual sense but designate modes of existence.

Temporality and Historicity

• Temporality (Zeitlichkeit): ecstatic unity of future, having‑been, and present.
• Historicity (Geschichtlichkeit): Dasein’s existence as shaped by and shaping history, including notions of repetition, fate, and destiny.

Interpretive controversies often revolve around how strictly these terms should be read (e.g., whether “care” is purely formal or also affective) and how closely translations should stick to the German compounds.

14. Famous Passages and Their Interpretation

Tool Analysis and Worldhood (§§15–18)

Heidegger’s discussion of hammering and equipment is one of the most frequently cited parts of the book. It illustrates:

• The priority of readiness‑to‑hand over presence‑at‑hand.
• How breakdown reveals the world as a referential totality.

Some interpreters (e.g., Hubert Dreyfus) seize on this passage to argue for an embodied, skill‑based understanding of intelligence. Others caution against over‑psychologizing the analysis, emphasizing its ontological intention.

The They (§§27–38)

Passages on das Man famously describe how:

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“In utilizing public means of transport, in the use of information services… we enjoy and have recourse to what is available and as such we are in the ‘they’.”

Scholars have read these sections as a critique of mass society, modern media, or liberal individualism. More text‑internal readings treat them as articulating the structural conditions of social interpretation rather than a historical diagnosis.

Being‑toward‑Death (§§45–53)

The analysis of death includes striking formulations such as Dasein’s “ownmost, non‑relational, unsurpassable possibility.” Interpretations vary:

• Existentialist readings (e.g., Sartre) emphasize individual authenticity and anxiety.
• Others stress the role of death in grounding temporality and care rather than a heroic stance.

There is ongoing debate about whether Heidegger’s argument depends on controversial claims about the knowability or anticipation of one’s own death.

Call of Conscience and Guilt (§§54–60)

Heidegger’s description of conscience as a silent call, and guilt as an existential structure, has invited both theological and secular interpretations. Some see a secularized Lutheranism; others highlight the formal character of these notions. The ambiguity of “resoluteness” in these passages has played a role in later debates about the political and ethical implications of Being and Time.

Care and Temporality (§§39–44, §§64–68)

The passages where Heidegger identifies care as the Being of Dasein and temporality as care’s meaning are central for understanding the book’s projected transition to a general ontology. Commentators differ on whether these texts succeed in deriving time from existence, or instead presuppose an already temporal framework. They are also key for later engagements with phenomenological accounts of time (e.g., by Levinas, Derrida, and others).

15. Reception, Criticisms, and Debates

Early Reception

Upon publication in 1927, Being and Time quickly established Heidegger as a leading philosopher in German‑speaking academia. Phenomenologists and existentially oriented thinkers engaged deeply with it, while neo‑Kantians and members of the emerging analytic movement often criticized its style and method.

Rudolf Carnap’s 1931 essay “The Elimination of Metaphysics” famously targeted Heideggerian sentences as examples of meaningless metaphysics, reflecting a broader divide between logical empiricism and Continental phenomenology.

Major Lines of Criticism

Key criticisms include:

Defenders often respond that technical language is needed to disrupt inherited metaphysical categories, that Dasein is not “humanity” in a straightforward sense, and that incompleteness is intrinsic to a project that aims to reopen questions rather than finalize a system.

Ongoing Debates

Contemporary scholarship exhibits multiple lines of interpretation:

• Existentialist readings emphasize freedom, anxiety, and individual choice.
• Hermeneutic readings foreground understanding, interpretation, and history (e.g., Gadamer).
• Pragmatist and analytic appropriations (e.g., Dreyfus, Brandom) draw on the critique of representation and the primacy of practice.
• Theological interpretations explore resonances with Christian thought while disputing whether Heidegger’s project is secularizing or quasi‑religious.
• Deconstructive and post‑structuralist readings (e.g., Derrida) engage the text’s internal tensions, especially around presence and time.

These debates concern not only how to understand Being and Time but also whether its central claims can be separated from, or must be revised in light of, subsequent developments in Heidegger’s thought and his political commitments.

16. Influence on Existentialism and Hermeneutics

Existentialism

Being and Time significantly shaped 20th‑century existential thought, though Heidegger himself resisted the “existentialist” label.

• Jean‑Paul Sartre drew heavily on concepts such as being‑in‑the‑world, facticity, and authenticity in Being and Nothingness, though he reframed them in terms of consciousness and freedom and stressed human subjectivity more than Heidegger’s Dasein.
• Hannah Arendt transformed Heideggerian motifs (world, plurality, natality) into a political theory centered on action and public space.
• Other figures (Merleau‑Ponty, Jaspers) adapted the emphasis on lived existence, anxiety, and finitude while differing on method and metaphysics.

Some scholars argue that “existentialism” simplifies Heidegger by focusing on individual choice and angst, downplaying his ontological and temporal analyses. Others see existentialist appropriations as legitimate developments of themes implicit in Being and Time.

Philosophical Hermeneutics

Heidegger’s redefinition of understanding as an existential structure and his account of historicity had a major impact on hermeneutics:

• Hans‑Georg Gadamer, a student of Heidegger, elaborated these ideas in Truth and Method, interpreting understanding as a historically effected event rather than a method of securing objectivity. Gadamer credits Heidegger with turning hermeneutics from a theory of text interpretation into an ontology of understanding.
• The notion of fore‑structures of understanding (prejudices, prior horizons) becomes central for theories of interpretation in the humanities and social sciences.

Debates within hermeneutics concern the extent to which Heidegger’s ontological hermeneutics leaves room for norms of better or worse interpretation, and how it relates to questions of ideology and power.

Broader Cultural and Theoretical Impact

Beyond philosophy proper, Being and Time influenced:

• Theology, particularly dialectical and existential theologians (Bultmann, Tillich) who used Heideggerian concepts to reinterpret Christian doctrines.
• Literary theory and deconstruction, where its analyses of language, world, and temporality inform readings of textuality and difference.
• Critical theory and social thought, sometimes through critical engagement with its alleged neglect of material and social structures.

Interpretations differ on whether these influences extend or betray Heidegger’s intentions, but there is wide agreement that Being and Time helped shift 20th‑century thought toward questions of interpretation, historicity, and lived existence.

17. Later Heidegger and the Unwritten Second Part

The Planned Part Two: “Time and Being”

Heidegger had announced a Part Two of Being and Time titled “Time and Being” (Zeit und Sein), which was to:

• Derive the meaning of Being in general from the analysis of temporality.
• Include a “destruction” of the history of ontology (from Aristotle to Hegel).
• Provide a systematic account of how Being “gives itself” in and through time.

This part was never written. Instead, Heidegger’s later work develops related themes in a different idiom, leading scholars to question whether the original plan remained viable.

The Kehre (“Turn”)

From the 1930s onward, Heidegger’s thinking undergoes what he later calls a turn (Kehre). Interpretations of this shift differ:

In later texts, Heidegger focuses less on Dasein and more on Being itself, the event (Ereignis), language, and the history of metaphysics. He comes to see the earlier emphasis on Dasein’s subject‑like role as still too tied to modern metaphysical frameworks.

“Time and Being” (1962) and Retrospective Remarks

Heidegger’s 1962 lecture “Zeit und Sein” explicitly returns to the themes announced in the unwritten Part Two. It explores:

• The relation between Being and time understood as a “sending” or “giving.”
• How traditional metaphysics has conceived Being in terms of presence, overlooking the temporal “truth” of Being.

Commentators disagree on whether this lecture should be read as the long‑delayed fulfillment of Being and Time’s program or as a fundamentally new approach that only loosely connects to the earlier project.

Heidegger himself later expressed dissatisfaction with aspects of Being and Time, particularly its language of subjectivity and its insufficiently radical question about the “truth of Being.” However, he also insisted that the book was a necessary step toward his later thinking.

Scholarly Assessments

Debate continues over:

• How to integrate Being and Time with later writings into a coherent philosophical trajectory.
• Whether the failure to complete Part Two reveals limitations inherent in the Dasein‑analytic or reflects extrinsic factors.
• To what extent later notions like Ereignis can be seen as reworking the temporal structures initially analyzed in terms of Dasein.

These questions shape contemporary interpretations of Heidegger’s oeuvre as a whole.

18. Legacy and Historical Significance

Place in 20th‑Century Philosophy

Being and Time is widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophical works of the 20th century. Its legacy includes:

• A reorientation from epistemology and logic toward existence, world, and time.
• The foundation of existential phenomenology and major contributions to hermeneutics.
• Lasting effects on theology, literary theory, psychology, and social thought.

Even critics who reject Heidegger’s conclusions often acknowledge the book’s impact on the philosophical agenda.

Influence Across Traditions

The work’s reception spans multiple traditions:

Some scholars highlight convergences between Heidegger and pragmatism or ordinary language philosophy, particularly regarding the primacy of practice and context.

Contested Legacy

Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism and later political silence have profoundly shaped assessments of Being and Time:

• Some argue for a sharp separation between the 1927 text and later political entanglements.
• Others contend that concepts such as resoluteness, destiny, and historicity already contain problematic possibilities that were later actualized.
• Still others propose critical retrievals that preserve philosophical insights while rejecting political implications.

The publication of the Black Notebooks and other archival materials has intensified these debates.

Ongoing Relevance

Despite controversies, Being and Time continues to be studied for its:

• Analyses of everyday activity and social norms.
• Phenomenological account of temporality and finitude.
• Hermeneutic understanding of interpretation and history.

Its technical vocabulary and dense style pose challenges, but they have also generated rich commentarial traditions and reinterpretations. For many, the book remains a central reference point for any philosophical inquiry into what it means to exist in a world, with others, in time.