Being and Time

Rating:
Summary: Too muddy for my taste.
Review: My progress with reading "Being and Time," by Martin Heidegger. [Long pause...thinking] Hmmm...I'm going to be honest. I devoted a morning to reading this book. After a few hours of a terrible intellectual struggle, I've come to the conclusion that I must not have what it takes. This work leaves me feeling either very dumb or very angry. I think I'm leaning toward the anger part because a book, thought, idea, any prose at all should be conveyed with clarity and this book does anything but that. I know this book wasn't geared toward the lay reader; rather it was aimed at academia. I also understand that it is a translation of a deeply philosophical work by a highly regarded German philosopher, but this is worst than reading Kant!

I don't get it, am I missing something? I consider myself to have at least a modicum of intellect and have read many-a-book. I get the feeling that I understand what Heidegger is saying, but what keeps nagging at me is that he is spelling it out with a deliberate obscurity. I feel he is being unfair with his giant intellect and making the whole mess too complicated--on purpose. Maybe I'm just not smart enough, although I believe he could have spelled out the little I read in one paragraph!

I am angry with the author because I can see he has something profound to say, but doesn't say it with respect to his reader. The time needed to get through this book would be more than I'm willing to give. I truly want to know how many people feel that same way. The reviews I've read applauding this book's greatness throw me for a loop--are these people being honest? If you're an intellectual giant, a PhD, or some closet scholar that has waded through this work and comprehended it and found something profound, would you at least concede that it might have been written a bit clearer?

Maybe it's not fair of me to rate this book because I haven't read it in its entirety. My justification for a review is to show my disdain at the work's thick unreadable nature. I am giving it two stars because of its "probable" hidden profoundness, but I must emphasize that this profoundness is truly hidden!

Through all this I find a bit of solace in asking: "Was Heidegger smart enough, dynamic enough to make his work clear?" --This is to bolster my doubts that I am not smart enough to wade through it, essentially asking the flip to my fear.

Rating:
Summary: Too muddy for my taste.
Review: My progress with reading "Being and Time," by Martin Heidegger. [Long pause...thinking] Hmmm...I'm going to be honest. I devoted a morning to reading this book. After a few hours of a terrible intellectual struggle, I've come to the conclusion that I must not have what it takes. This work leaves me feeling either very dumb or very angry. I think I'm leaning toward the anger part because a book, thought, idea, any prose at all should be conveyed with clarity and this book does anything but that. I know this book wasn't geared toward the lay reader; rather it was aimed at academia. I also understand that it is a translation of a deeply philosophical work by a highly regarded German philosopher, but this is worst than reading Kant!

I don't get it, am I missing something? I consider myself to have at least a modicum of intellect and have read many-a-book. I get the feeling that I understand what Heidegger is saying, but what keeps nagging at me is that he is spelling it out with a deliberate obscurity. I feel he is being unfair with his giant intellect and making the whole mess too complicated--on purpose. Maybe I'm just not smart enough, although I believe he could have spelled out the little I read in one paragraph!

I am angry with the author because I can see he has something profound to say, but doesn't say it with respect to his reader. The time needed to get through this book would be more than I'm willing to give. I truly want to know how many people feel that same way. The reviews I've read applauding this book's greatness throw me for a loop--are these people being honest? If you're an intellectual giant, a PhD, or some closet scholar that has waded through this work and comprehended it and found something profound, would you at least concede that it might have been written a bit clearer?

Maybe it's not fair of me to rate this book because I haven't read it in its entirety. My justification for a review is to show my disdain at the work's thick unreadable nature. I am giving it two stars because of its "probable" hidden profoundness, but I must emphasize that this profoundness is truly hidden!

Through all this I find a bit of solace in asking: "Was Heidegger smart enough, dynamic enough to make his work clear?" --This is to bolster my doubts that I am not smart enough to wade through it, essentially asking the flip to my fear.

Rating:
Summary: Just some thoughts.
Review: OK, the prominent review by Craig basically outlined the introduction, first 30 pages I think. So you can skip over those. The logician's claim of absurdity is pretty funny, he must be a positivist. I suggest he read about Kurt Godel.

Now, for anyone approaching this book, read about Hegel's dialectic as well. This is not a book to be taken without a good amount of work. However, once you see what's happening you will be enormously enriched.

Rating:
Summary: One important shortcoming
Review: One important shortcoming of this translation is that while all of the German text is translated to English, Greek and Latin passages quoted by Heidegger are left untranslated. The Stambaugh translation on the other hand provides both the original Greek and Latin quotations and an English translation, so in the very likely event that you do not know both Greek and Latin you will need a copy of the Stambaugh translation in addition to, or instead of, this one.

Rating:
Summary: This book is about `Being' and `Time'.
Review: Perhaps, like Kant's `Critique of Pure Reason', Heidegger's `Being and Time' is an often name-dropped text but it remains unread most of the time. Well, if you read it, a few pointers are needed: 1. Heidegger assumes `Being' is expressed through Dasein (there-being); 2. Dasein is constituted by Time and Space; 3. Dasein's constitution is investigated as `ontology' (Gr.`ontos'-existence); 4. Ontology is a marking out of the ontological and ontic structures of existence qua human Dasein; 5. `Ontological' structures are meta-ta-physika (beyond the physical) and constitute the ontic (physical everyday behaviours and thoughts); 6. `Ontological' constitution of the ontic `facts of life' is an elegant description of time and spatiality, which, unlike Kant, does not ground itself in Cognition; 7. As Heidegger presents it in `BT', Existence as such Being qua being is constituted by Time temporalizing itself; 8. Heidegger attempts to ground Dasein's spatiality through time but fails, and Being and Time leaves unsaid `Being and Spatiality'. Spatiality and its relation to Time haunts Heidegger's later work as an unsolved enigma.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful counter-example in the art of writing
Review: Pretentious nonsense. The tide is (happily) against Heidegger, with many eminent philosophers now openly admitting that H. is unintelligible, and that philosophy as a discipline needs to apologize to the world for inflicting such majestic nonsense on innocent people.

Heidegger probably is the ultimate example of a man who found refuge in profundity-as-obscurity, a besetting sin of Central European philosophy. Hey, if you can't understand me, that must be because you are [not smart], right???

Wiser and better men than Heidegger have always known that the purpose of language is to convey information to other people. Shakespeare did it. Proust did it. MANY other authors have labored long hours to bring the truth to their fellow human beings, Buddha for another example.

Nevertheless, we will probably always have the pretentious bullies with us: Heidegger. James Joyce in "Finnegans Wake." Most contemporary academic novelists such as Pynchon. Take your pick: you can read forever and not learn a *&^%$ thing.

Rating:
Summary: Being and Time
Review: Reviewing Heidegger's Being and Time is slightly ridiculous. Heidegger would turn in his grave. More useful would be reviewing a particular translation, since it is translations, especially of a text like BT, which leave a second gap of representation. The question is how great this gap. My 1962 Harper edition is translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. I believe it is an intelligent translation. Unfortunately Kaufmann didn't translate Heidegger, so I think this is the best available.

Rating:
Summary: two ideas
Review: There are two ideas in being and time, one is possibility and the other is being-in-the world. Heidegger treats death as possibility, as the nothing which is, and because men are mortal, men are possibility. The other idea is being-in, which is very simple: think an inside to which there belongs no outside. If there is an outside, it doesn't matter, because its not in the world. We are in the world, but not like milk in a bottle, but in an inside to which there belongs no outside. That is as paradoxical as possibility, or the nothing which is-the concepts are a pair. Neither, of course, can be conceptualized, but in our technological thinking, being is thought in terms of the now, which thinks with the imagination, which cannot think the inside without an outside. I will have to read the Kant book again to understand the connection between imagination and the ontology--phantasia is where its at, baby. By the way, if you want to understand the second part of being and time, just think "mirror"--then it will all make sense. The only commentator worth reading is Taminiaux, although he is workmanlike and there are probably others. Most Heidegger scholarship is schlock.

Rating:
Summary: New Testament in secular terms
Review: This book made me better understand Jesus' teachings. Good stuff.

Rating:
Summary: just for fun
Review: This book simultaneously gave voice to and shaped some of the central ideas of 20th Century thought and culture. Few books can equal it in importance. It is very hard--don't imagine that you can pick it up and read it on your own--but it is immensely rewarding of serious study. Heidegger criticizes the view of the person that we have inherited from the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution--the view that people are isolated individuals, defined solely by the self-conscious possession of a rational mind--showing especially the crucial role that emotion, other people, and practical know-how play in human experience. Much of the most interesting philosophical work of the last hundred years, and many of the most interesting cultural and political developments, have come from a focus on precisely these Heideggerean themes. Though a new translation (by Joan Stambaugh, published by SUNY Press) has appeared, I still use this Macquarrie and Robinson translation as my primary text for teaching this book. Though this translation can be awkward and perhaps sometimes puts a misleading light on certain notions, I believe that it is overall more helpful for allowing the reader to enter into Heidegger's thought than the Stambaugh translation is. (Of course, it would be better to have both, and I have taught the Stambaugh translation with success as well.) This book is an essential text for any serious student of philosophy, the humanities or 20th-Century thought in general, and this is the translation I recommend.