Being and Time

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 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. "Elitist complaints about the 'dictatorship of public opinion' were common currency to the German mandarins of the twenties," according to Jürgen Habermas (1989). 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." 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. Similarly, Hubert Dreyfus likens Division II of the volume to a secularized version of Kierkegaard's Christianity. Almost all central concepts of Being and Time are derived from Augustine, Luther, and Kierkegaard, according to Christian Lotz.

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).

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.

Being and Time explicitly rejects Descartes' notion of the human being as a subjective spectator of objects, according to Marcella Horrigan-Kelly (et al.). 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). 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).

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.

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." This meaning would then elucidate ordinary "prescientific" understanding, which precedes abstract ways of knowing, such as logic or theory.