Heidegger's 'Being and Time': A Reader's Guide

By William Blattner

Book Overview

Continuum's Reader's Guides are clear, concise and accessible introductions to classic works of philosophy. Each book explores the major themes, historical and philosophical context and key passages of a major philosophical text, guiding the reader toward a thorough understanding of often demanding material. Ideal for undergraduate students, the guides provide an essential resource for anyone who needs to get to grips with a philosophical text.
Heidegger's Being and Time is one of the most influential and controversial philosophical treatises of the 20th century. It had a profound impact on Sartre and Merleau-Ponty in their further development of phenomenology and existentialism, hugely influenced Gadamer's hermeneutics, and paved the way, partly directly and partly indirectly through Heidegger's later thought, for the emergence of deconstructionism. In addition to being a very important text, it is also a very difficult one. Heidegger presents a number of challenges to the the reader, asking them to abandon many assumptions fundamental to traditional philosophy, such as the mind/body distinction and the concept of substance. The text also introduces a whole host of new concepts and terms and as such is a hugely challenging, yet fascinating, piece of philosophical writing.
In Heidegger's 'Being and Time': A Reader's Guide William Blattner explains the philosophical background against which the book was written and provides a clear and concise overview of the key themes and motifs. The book then examines this challenging text in details, guiding the reader to a clear understanding of Heidegger's work as a whole. Finally Blattner explores the reception and influence of the work and offers the student guidance on further reading. This is the ideal companion to study of this most influential and challenging of texts.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826486096
• ISBN13: 9780826486097
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

"Being" is a revealing way of seeing; it is world disclosive

I read this book for a graduate seminar on philosophy. William Blattner's book helps to illuminate one of the most influential philosophical books of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time," which deconstructs phenomenology. Heidegger's kind of phenomenology has to do with the idea of phenomenon, which means something that appears and shows itself. His criticism of traditional philosophy is that it gets started with categories, concepts, and notions, departing from the way human comprehension of this world first shows itself. This is Aristotelian and Aristotle is an enormous influence on Heidegger. Yet, there is something very radical going on here, and that is the idea of "being" is connected to meaning and negativity. In the history of philosophy, being has a positive concept, something that "is" thus, the opposite of being is none being. Heidegger wants to show how the meaning of being is distorted by this understanding of being as a purely positive concept, as a "thing" a full present entity. For Example, he also very much critiques in modern art, the modern conception of objectivity, the world is transformed into an object independent of art, of its significance, its meaning, or interest in it. This was due in large part because of modern science, and its strong sense of objectification converting nature into a set of mere objects, time, and space that are measurable and analyzable through scientific means. Meaning, importance, and significance for Heidegger equals value; science and nature have none of this as pure objects. Therefore, anything of meaning, and of significance would be transferred into the subject it would be simply the human estimation, nature itself has no meaning or significance in that respect. Heidegger critiques this scientific model. As he says in his phenomenology, "Well how is it that human existence first understands itself? Here he is talking about things that are very ordinary and complex. We are in a world that has significance, it is meaningful to us, it matters to us, it fits into our interests in such a way that we are absorbed into its significance. So, when we come across the world, first and foremost it is not a mere object that is standing apart from us or our mind, but rather it has significant elements of our environment that fit into our lives. Some things are significant, or they are useful, or dangerous, or satisfying, etc. What Heidegger wants to say in his phenomenology is we have to pay attention to this way of being. Therefore, first and foremost he says "being" matters, it matters to us. "Being" is a significance, it is not just a bare object or a bare fact. Heidegger doesn't accept this idea of subject on one side and object on the other side, that means that when humans have their understanding of the world, it is not just a human projection, it is not just a human construction. It is a revealing way of seeing; it is world disclosive. The meaning of

A good Heideggarian overview with an Analytic bent...

Analytic philosophers half a century ago would probably find the recent "acceptance" of Martin Heidegger into their ranks a base repugnance. But here we stand in the twenty-first century with proponents of the Analytic school researching, teaching, and writing books on this once scourged Continental outcast. This somewhat begrudging acceptance seems to originate with Heidegger's radical perspective on epistemological issues. William Blattner, author of this book, one of numerous reading guides to Heidegger's 1927 magnum opus "Being and Time," attended Herbert Dreyfus' Heidegger classes at Berkeley. Dreyfus penned one of the most acclaimed American commentaries on "Being and Time" and hails predominantly from the Analytic tradition. It should come as no surprise that one of his star students, Blattner, should approach Heidegger from within more or less the same framework. "Heidegger's Being and Time" shines brightest when dealing with aspects closest to the Analytic tradition. The book comprises four main chapters. The first, "Context," contains a brief biography of Heidegger's life from his birth in 1889, his religious early years, his subsequent abandonment of theology in favor of philosophy, tutelage and mentorship under Husserl, "Being and Time," fame, his turn towards the "later Heidegger" in the 1930s, his nefarious affiliation with the Nazis throughout World War II, up to his death in 1976. Chapter two, "Overview of Themes," outlines Heidegger's attitude towards the subject-object philosophical tradition, which he depicts as a distortion of human experience. Here Blattner outlines the structure of Being and Time, namely, its two divisions. This reader's guide, he says, will cover the bulk of Division I, but only segments of Division II. Blattner finds Heidegger's view on temporality and being in that division "almost certainly unsuccessful." Later on he claims that most don't read past section 65 of "Being and Time" and calls the succeeding arguments weak, obscure, radical, and not influential. As such, those looking for help with Division II should look elsewhere. "Reading the Text," the third chapter, makes up the vast majority of the book's content. In short, it's the meat of this guide. Blattner breaks this relatively enormous chapter down into seventeen sections, each dealing with salient Heideggerian themes: Heidegger's conception of Ontology, phenomenology, Existence (Dasein), "Being-in-the-World," The self and the "Anyone" (usually translated as "the They"), Disclosedness and the "There" (ontological versus geometrical distance), Disposedness (mood), Understanding and Interpretation (contrasted with cognition), Language (discourse and assertion), Realism and Idealism (Heidegger's responses to epistemological skepticism and the ontological problem, namely, does the world depend on our experience), Heidegger's notion of truth, the everyday, owned, and disowned life, falling, Anxiety, Death, Guilt and Conscience, and resoluteness an

Goes Down Good With Free On-line Course

'Heidegger's Being And Time' by William Blattner is an instalment in the Continuum series of readers guides - intended as a companion to reading Heidegger's Being and Time. This is a nice small text (under 200 pages), Blattner has a strong grasp of Being and Time and is particularly helpful in decoding much of the abstruse jargon used by Heidegger. Blattner also comments on some of language used in standard English translation of Being and Time by Macquarrie and Robinson. Being and Time has come to be recognised as one of the more important and influential philosophical texts of the twentieth century. Despite its importance, however, for the non-Heideggerian it can seem impenetrable - stylistically speaking, it represents some of the worst aspects of German philosophy writing; verbose, rambling and ambiguous. I read this text in conjunction with Hubert Dreyfus's UC Berkley course and found it very useful - enjoying Heidegger more than I previously have. Dreyfus's Being and Time couse is available free at itunes/UC Berkley/humanities. Dreyfus also has a Being and Time commentary that is worth a look.