Being and Time

What is this book about?

Being and Time was written in 1926 and published in 1927. It is Martin Heidegger's principal work and one of the most influential philosophical texts of the twentieth century. The book begins from the ontological difference: all beings are, yet Being itself is not a being, and traditional metaphysics had studied beings while forgetting Being. Heidegger enters the question from Dasein, the being whose own being is at issue for it, and analyzes its structures of existence: being-in-the-world, being-with-others, attunement (mood), understanding, falling, and care. In its later divisions the book argues that temporality is the horizon of any understanding of Being, recasting ontology and the subject-centered philosophy inherited from Aristotle and Kant.

Why read it?

It is the pivotal text of twentieth-century continental philosophy: existentialism, hermeneutics, deconstruction, theology and literary criticism all proceed from it. What the reader gains is less a set of theses than a transformed way of asking — from what the world is made of to how Being shows itself at all. In an age of machine intelligence the question of what a human being is no longer belongs only to the seminar room; this book remains one of its sharpest formulations, and explains why understanding cannot be reduced to a set of computable functions.

Core Ideas

• The ontological difference: all beings are, but Being itself is not a being; traditional metaphysics forgot this and studied beings instead.
• Dasein: what distinguishes human existence is that its own being is an issue for it; its being is a matter of possibility rather than a fixed set of properties.
• Being-in-the-world: the world is not a collection of objects confronting a subject but the field in which Dasein's existence unfolds, with concern and equipment weaving a web of significance.
• Temporality: Dasein's existence stretches toward death, unifying past, present and future; any understanding of Being must be reached through time.

What questions does this book try to answer?

• When we say Being, what exactly do we mean, and why has this question been forgotten since Parmenides?
• What distinguishes the human way of being from every other being, such that only humans can raise the question of Being?
• If death is Dasein's ownmost possibility, how does being-toward-death transform our understanding of everyday life?

Who should read it?

For patient readers: students and researchers of philosophy, and anyone who wants a rigorous first encounter with the questions of what a human being is and how the world shows itself. No German is required, but patience is; the difficulty lies in the concepts rather than the language.

How to Read It

Read the Introduction (sections 1-8) first to frame the problem, then move to Division I's analysis of Dasein's existential structures (sections 12-36); Division II on temporality and death is the hinge of the book. The Chen and Wang translation was first published by The Commercial Press in 2015. For a first pass, a Heidegger reader's guide helps considerably.