A knowledge of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit is essential for anyone who wishes to understand a great deal of recent continental work in theology as well as philosophy. Yet until this translation first appeared in 1962, this fundamental work of one of the most influential European thinkers of the century remained inaccessible to English readers. In fact the difficulty of Heidegger's thought was considered to be almost insuperable in the medium of a foreign language, especially English.

That this view was unduly pessimistic is proved by the impressive work of John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson who have succeeded in clothing Heidegger's thought in English without sacrificing the richness and poetic subtlety of the original.

Table of Contents

I. The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being

1. The necessity of an explicitly restating the question of Being

2. The formal structure of the question of Being

3. The ontological priority of the question of Being

4. The ontical priority of the question of Being

II. The Twofold Task in Working Out the Question of Being. Method and Design of Our Investigation

5. The ontological analytic of Dasein as laying bare the horizon for an Interpretation of the meaning of Being in general

6. The task of Destroying the history of ontology

7. The phenomenological method of the investigation

8. Design of the treatise

Part One: The Interpretation of Dasein in Terms of Temporality, and the Explication of Time as the Transcendental Horizon for the Question of Being

Division One: Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein

Division Two: Dasein and Temporality

45. The outcome of the preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein, and the task of a primordial, existential Interpretation of this entity

I. Dasein's Possibility of Being-a-Whole and Being-Towards-Death

46. The seeming impossibility of getting Dasein's Being-a-whole into our grasp ontologically and determining its character

47. The possibility of experiencing the death of Others, and the possibility of getting a whole Dasein into our grasp

48. That which is still outstanding; the end; totality

49. How the existential analysis of death is distinguished from other possible Interpretations of this phenomenon

50. Preliminary sketch of the existential-ontological structure of death

51. Being-towards-death and the everydayness of Dasein

52. Everyday Being-towards-the end, and the full existential conception of death

53. Existential projection of an authentic Being-towards-death

II. Dasein's Attestation of an Authentic Potentiality-forBeing, and Resoluteness

54. The problem of how an authentic existentiell possibility is attested

55. The existential-ontological foundations of conscience

56. The character of conscience as a call

57. Conscience as the call of care

58. Understanding the appeal, and guilt

59. The existential Interpretation of the conscience, and the way conscience is ordinarily interpreted

60. The existential structure of the authentic potentiality-for-Being which is attested in the conscience

Ill. Dasein's Authentic Potentiality-for-Being-a-Whole,and Temporality as the Ontological Meaning of Care

61. A preliminary sketch of the methodological step from the definition of Dasein authentic Being-a-whole

62. Anticipatory resoluteness as the way in which Dasein's potentiality-for-Being-a-whole has existentiell authenticity

63. The hermeneutical situation at which we have arrived for Interpreting the meaning of the Being of care; and the methodological character of the existential analytic in general

64. Care and selfhood

65. Temporality as the ontological meaning of care

66. Dasein's temporality and the tasks arising there-from of repeating the existential analysis in a more primordial manner

IV. Temporality and Everydayness

67. The basic content of Dasein's existential constitution, and a preliminary sketch of the temporal Interpretation of it

68. The temporality of disclosedness in general

69. The temporality of Being-in-the-world and the problem of the transcendence of the world

70. The Temporality of the spatiality that is characteristic of Dasein

71. The temporal meaning of Dasein's the Everydayness

V. Temporality and Historicality

72. Existential-ontological exposition of the problem of History

73. The ordinary understanding of history, and Dasein's historizing

74. The basic constitution of historicality

75. Dasein's Historicality, and world-history

76. The existential source of historiology in Dasein's Historicality

77. The connection of the foregoing exposition of the problem of historicality with the researches of Wilhelm Dilthey and the ideas of Count Yorck

VI. Temporality and Within-Time-ness As the Source Of the Ordinary Conception of Time

78. The incompleteness of the foregoing temporal analysis of Dasein

79. Dasein's temporality, and our concern with time

80. The time with which we concern ourselves, and within-time-ness

81. Within-time-ness and the genesis of the ordinary conception of time

82. A comparison of the existential-ontological connection of temporality, Dasein, and world-time, with Hegel's way of taking the relation between time and spirit

83. The existential-temporal analytic of Dasein, and the question of fundamental ontology as to the meaning of Being in general

Amazon Review

It has been said, and not without good reason, that much of what we know as modern Continental Philosophy is no more than a mere footnote to Martin Heidegger's (1889-1976) mammoth Being and Time. Without doubt Heidegger's major work this translation, by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, was the first English interpretation of Sein und Zeit, Heidegger's groundbreaking investigation into the question of Being, and although it has its critics it has served as the standard rendering of the work for many years. Whilst Joan Stambaugh's more idiomatic translation is certainly a little easier to read, the Macquarrie and Robinson work has not been surpassed for its fidelity to the original German. Serious students of Heidegger should perhaps read both translations whilst bearing in mind that Heidegger himself was profoundly concerned with the thought structures of any language that so handicap the possibility of translation. Being and Time is an essential reference book for anyone interested in modern philosophy. --Mark Thwaite

About the Author

Born in southern Germany, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) taught philosophy at the University of Freiburg and the University of Marburg. His published works include: Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929); An Introduction to Metaphysics (1935); Discourse on Thinking (1959); On the Way to Language (1959); Poetry, Language, Thought (1971). His best-known work is Being and Time (1927).