Being and Time

Being and Time () 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 favorably compared with several works by Kant and Hegel. Heidegger maintains that philosophers have misunderstood the concept of Being since Plato, misapplying it solely in the analysis of particular beings. The book attempts to revive ontology through an analysis of Dasein, or "being-in-the-world." It's 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.
Background.
Richard Wolin notes that the work "implicitly adopted the critique of mass society” epitomized earlier by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. This perspective "was well-established within Germany’s largely illiberal professoriate in the early 20th century,“ Wolin writes. Further, "Being and Time" is "suffused by a sensibility derived from secularized Protestantism” and its stress on original sin. Wolin cites the work's extended emphasis on “emotionally laden concepts” like guilt, conscience, angst and death, suggesting that the book portrays the human condition as "essentially a curse.”
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.
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 be an analysis of Western philosophy.
Some of the methods employed in "Being and Time" explicitly rely on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, Heidegger’s academic mentor to whom the book is dedicated. Heidegger also described part of the work's methodology as an "appropriation" of Wilhelm Dilthey.
Summary.
"Dasein".
"Being and Time" rejects the Cartesian 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). "Famously, Heidegger writes of Dasein as Being-in-the-world," writes Michael Wheeler (2011). Understood as a unitary phenomenon rather than a contingent, additive combination, being-in-the-world is an essential characteristic of Dasein, according to Wheeler.
Heidegger's account of Dasein passes through a dissection of the experiences of "Angst," "the Nothing" and mortality, and then through an analysis of the structure of "Care" as such. From there he raises the problem of "authenticity," that is, the potentiality for mortal "Dasein" to exist "fully" enough that it might actually understand being and its possibilities. "Dasein" is not "man," but is nothing other than "man"—it is this distinction that enables Heidegger to claim that "Being and Time" is something other than philosophical anthropology. Moreover, Dasein is "the being that will give access to the question of the meaning of Being," according to Heidegger. .
Being.
The work claims that Dasein's ordinary and even mundane experience of "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." 
Heidegger proposes that this meaning would elucidate ordinary "prescientific" understanding, which precedes abstract ways of knowing, such as logic or theory,
Yet the work also holds that no particular understanding of Being (nor state of Dasein and its endeavors) is to be preferred over another, according an account of Richard Rorty's analysis by Edward Grippe. This supposed "non-linguistic, pre-cognitive access" to the meaning of Being didn't underscore any particular, preferred narrative, in this account. Moreover, "Rorty agrees with Heidegger that there is no hidden power called Being," Grippe writes, adding that Heidegger’s concept of Being is viewed by Rorty as metaphorical.
"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). Nonetheless, Heidegger does present the concept: "'Being' is not something like a being but is rather "what determines beings as beings." " 
The interpreters 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.")
Heidegger claims that traditional ontology has prejudicially overlooked the question of being. His analysis employs a hermeneutic circle, relying upon repetitive yet progressive acts of interpretation.
Time.
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 essential 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. Dasein occupies itself with the present tasks required by goals it has projected on the future. Thus Heidegger concludes that Dasein's fundamental characteristic is temporality, Kelley writes.
Dasein as an intertwined subject/object cannot be separated from its objective "historicality". On the one hand, Dasein is "stretched along" between birth and death, and thrown into its world; into its "possibilities" which "Dasein" is charged with assuming. On the other hand, "Dasein's" access to this world and these possibilities is always via a history and a tradition—this is the question of "world historicality".
Methodologies.
Phenomenology.
See also: Phenomenology
"Being and Time" bore a dedication to the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, who beginning in 1917, championed Heidegger's work, and helped him secure the retiring Husserl's chair in Philosophy at the University of Freiburg. 
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).
Heidegger suggested the phenomenological methods of "Being and Time" were a departure from those established earlier by Husserl. According to Daniel O. Dahlstrom, this was an unfair misrepresentation by Heidegger. 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".
On the relation between the two figures, Gadamer wrote: "When asked about phenomenology, Husserl was quite right to answer as he used to in the period directly after World War I: 'Phenomenology, that is me and Heidegger'." " The Husserlian concept of intentionality, while scarcely mentioned in Being and Time, has been identified by some with Heidegger's central notion of "care" or concern. But there is disagreement over how much of Husserlian phenomenology informs Being and Time.
'Destructuring' of metaphysics.
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 in all its stages, was never written. 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.
As part of his ontological project, Heidegger undertakes a reinterpretation of previous Western philosophy. He wants to explain why and how theoretical knowledge came to seem like the most fundamental relation 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 at the base of previous philosophies that had become entrenched and hidden within the theoretical attitude of the metaphysics of presence. This use of the word "Destruktion" is meant to signify not a negative operation but rather a positive transformation or recovery.
Hermeneutics.
Among its methods of analysis, Heidegger's Being and Time employed the "hermeneutic circle." According to Susann M. Laverty (2003), Heiddegger believed that understanding is linked to fore-structures, including historicality. To account for this, the 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 that Kvale (1996) "viewed the end of this spiraling through a hermeneutic circle as occurring when one has reached a place of sensible meaning, free of inner contradictions, for the moment."
Influence and reception.
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, similar in this respect to works such as 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). Upon its publication, it was recognized as a groundbreaking philosophical work, with reviewers crediting Heidegger with "brilliance" and "genius". The book, which has been described as the "most influential version of existential philosophy", quickly became "the focus of debates and controversy". Heidegger claimed in the 1930s that commentators had attempted to show similarities between his views and those of Hegel in order to undermine the idea that "Being and Time" was an original work. In response, Heidegger maintained that his thesis that the essence of being is time is the opposite of Hegel's view that being is the essence of time. Karl Jaspers, writing in the first volume of his work "Philosophy" (1932), credited Heidegger with making essential points about "being in the world" and also about "existence and historicity".
Heidegger's work has been suggested as a possible influence on Herbert Marcuse's "Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity" (1932), though Marcuse later questioned the political implications of Heidegger's work. Jean-Paul Sartre, who wrote "Being and Nothingness" (1943) under the influence of Heidegger's work, has been said to have responded to "Being and Time" with "a sense of shock". Sartre's existentialism has been described as "a version and variant of the idiom and propositions" in "Being and Time". Because of Heidegger's revival of the question of being, "Being and Time" also influenced other philosophers of Sartre's generation, and it altered the course of French philosophy. Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued in "Phenomenology of Perception" (1945) that "Being and Time", "springs from an indication given by Husserl and amounts to no more than an explicit account of the 'natürlicher Weltbegriff' or the 'Lebenswelt' which Husserl, towards the end of his life, identified as the central theme of phenomenology". Heidegger influenced psychoanalysis through Jacques Lacan, who quotes from "Being and Time" in a 1953 text.
The publication of the English translation of the work by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson in 1962, helped to shape the way in which Heidegger's work was discussed in English. Gilles Deleuze's "Difference and Repetition" (1968) was influenced by Heidegger's "Being and Time", though Deleuze replaces Heidegger's key terms of being and time with difference and repetition respectively. Frank Herbert's science fiction novel "The Santaroga Barrier" (1968) was loosely based on the ideas of "Being and Time". The philosopher Lucien Goldmann argued in his posthumously published "" (1973) that the concept of reification as employed in "Being and Time" showed the strong influence of György Lukács' "History and Class Consciousness" (1923), though Goldmann's suggestion has been disputed. "Being and Time" influenced Alain Badiou's work "Being and Event" (1988). Roger Scruton writes that "Being and Time" is "the most complex of the many works inspired, directly or indirectly, by Kant's theory of time as 'the form of inner sense'." He considers Heidegger's language "metaphorical" and almost incomprehensible. Scruton suggests that this necessarily follows from the nature of Heidegger's phenomenological method. He finds Heidegger's "description of the world of phenomena" to be "fascinating, but maddeningly abstract". He suggests that much of "Being and Time" is a "description of a private spiritual journey" rather than genuine philosophy, and notes that Heidegger's assertions are unsupported by argument.
Stephen Houlgate compares Heidegger's achievements in "Being and Time" to those of Kant in the "Critique of Pure Reason" (1781) and Hegel in "The Phenomenology of Spirit" (1807) and "Science of Logic" (1812-1816). Simon Critchley calls the work Heidegger's "magnum opus", and writes that it is impossible to understand developments in continental philosophy after Heidegger without understanding it. Dennis J. Schmidt praises the "range and subtlety" of "Being and Time", and describes its importance by quoting a comment the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe made in a different context, "from here and today a new epoch of world history sets forth." Heidegger has become common background for the political movement concerned with protection of the environment, and his narrative of the history of Being frequently appears when capitalism, consumerism and technology are thoughtfully opposed. Michael E. Zimmerman writes that, "Because he criticized technological modernity’s domineering attitude toward nature, and because he envisioned a postmodern era in which people would “let things be,” Heidegger has sometimes been read as an intellectual forerunner of today’s “deep ecology” movement.
"Being and Time" also influenced the enactivist approach to cognition.
Related work.
"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: