A Guide to Heidegger's Being and Time

By Magda King
Edited by John Llewelyn

Subjects: Continental Philosophy
Series: SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Paperback : 9780791448007, 413 pages, January 2001
Hardcover : 9780791447994, 413 pages, January 2001

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Table of contents

Editor's Foreword

Author's Foreword

Acknowledgments

Bibliography and Key to Abbreviations

PART ONE. What Is The Question?

Introductory

Exposition

1. A Formal Statement of the Question
2. A Provisional Explanation of "Meaning" (Sinn): The Theme of Being and Time Restated
3. Why Has Traditional Ontology Failed to Get to the Root of the Problem of Being?
4. The Uniqueness of the Concept of Being: The Problem of Its Unity. Aristotle's "Unity of Analogy"--A Lead into Heidegger's Question
5. How Is the New Inquiry into Being to Be Concretely Worked Out? Difficulties Arising from the Nature of the Problem Itself

PART TWO. Basic Features and Problems of Being and Time

Introductory

I. The Being of Da-sein

1. Existence, Everydayness and Da-sein

 

(a) Existence and Care, in Contrast with Reality
(b) The Two Basic Ways of Existing: Owned or Authentic and Disowned or Inauthentic Existence. The Undifferentiated Modality of Everydayness
(c) The Ontological-Existential Terminology of Being and Time

 

2. A Discussion of the Meaning of Da-sein

II. The Worldishness of World

1. The Fundamental Existential Constitution of Da-sein: Being-in-the-World. Heidegger's Conception of World
2. The Theoretical and Practical Ways of Taking Care of Things
3. The Ontic Basis of the Ontological Inquiry into World: The Umwelt of Everyday Existence. The Meaning of Umwelt

III. The Reality of Beings within the World

IV. Being-with-Others and Being-One's-Self

1. The Basic Concept of Being-with
2. The Everyday Self and the "They"
3. The Publicity of Everydayness

 

(a) Discourse and Language: Everyday Discourse as Idle Talk
(b) The Everyday Way of Seeing: Curiosity
(c) Ambiguity

 

4. Falling and Thrownness

V. The Basic Mood of Dread (Angst) and the Being of Da-sein as Care

1. The Disclosure of Being through Dread
2. The Structure of Da-sein's Being as Care

VI. Truth, Being, and Existence: Heidegger's Extential Interpretation of Truth

VII. The Concept of Phenomenology

VIII. A Preview of the Tasks and Problems of Division Two

PART THREE. Division of Being and Time: Da-sein and Temporality

Introductory

IX. The Articulation, Language, and Method of Division Two

1. The Articulation of Division Two
2. The Langauge of Division Two

 

(a) Timeishness
(b) The Tenses of "To Be"
(c) Heidegger's Tautologies
(d) Primordial Time (Ursprungliche Zeit)
(e) The "Originality" of an Ontological Interpretation

 

3. The Method of Division Two

X. Da-sein's Possibility of Being-a-Whole and Being-toward-Death

1. Can Da-sein be Experienced as a Whole?
2. Experiencing the Death of Others
3. Incompleteness, End, and Wholeness
4. The Existential Analysis of Death in Contrast with all Other Kinds of Interpretation
5. A Preliminary Sketch of the Existential Structure of Death
6. Being-Toward-Death and Everydayness
7. Everyday Being Toward an End and the Full Existential Concept of Death
8. The Existential Structure of an Owned, Authentic Way of Being-Toward-Death

XI. Witness to an Owned Existence and Authentic Resolution

1. Conscience as the Call of Care
2. Understanding the Call and Owing
3. Interpolation: Ground-Being and Nothing
4. Owing, Guilt, and Morality: The Authentic Hearing of the Call of Conscience and the Existenial Structure of Owned or Authentic Experience

XII. Authentic Ability-to-Be-a-Whole and Temporality as the Meaning of Care

1. Anticipatory Forward-Running Resoluteness as the Authentic Way of Being-a-Whole
2. Justification of the Methodical Basis of the Existential Analysis
3. Care and Selfhood
4. Temporality as the Ontological Meaning of Care
5. A Primordial Repetition of the Existential Analysis Arising from the Temporality of Here-Being [Da-sein]

XIII. Temporality and Everydayness

1. The Temporality of Disclosedness in General

 

(a) The Temporality of Understanding
(b) The Temporality of Attunement
(c) The Temporality of Falling
(d) The Temporaltiy of Discourse

 

2. The Temporality of Being-in-the-World and the Problem of the Transcendence of the World

 

(a) The Temporality of Circumspect Taking Care
(b) The Temporal Meaning of the Way in Which Circumspect Taking Care Becomes Modified into the Theoretical Discovery of Things Objectively Present in the World
(c) The Temporal Problem fo the Transcendence of the World

 

3. The Temporality of the Roominess Characteristic of Here-Being
4. The Temporal Meaning of the Everydayness of Here-Being

XIV. Temporality and Historicity

1. The Vulgar Understanding of History and the Occurence of Here-Being
2. The Essential Constitution of Historicity
3. The Historicity of Here-Being and World History

XV. Temporality and Within-Timeness as the Origin of the Vulgar Concept of Time

1. The Incompleteness of the Foregoing Analysis of the Temporality of Here-Being
2. The Temporality of Here-Being and the Taking Care of Time
3. Time Taken Care of and Within-Timeness
4. Within-Timeness and the Genesis of the Vulgar Concept of Time
5. The Contrast of the Existential and Ontological Connection of Temporality, Here-Being, and World-Time with Hegel's Interpretation of the Relation between Time and Spirit

 

(a) Hegel's Concept of Time
(b) Hegel's Interpretation of the Connection between Time and Spirit

 

XVI. Conclusion: An Attempt to Outline Heidegger's Answer to the Question Asked at the Beginning of Being and Time

Notes

Glossary of German Expressions

Index

An indispensable guide to the major work of one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers.

Description

This is the most comprehensive commentary on both Divisions of Heidegger's Being and Time, making it the essential guide for newcomers and specialists alike. Beginning with a non-technical exposition of the question Heidegger poses—"What does it mean to be?"—and keeping that question in view, it gradually increases the closeness of focus on the text. Citing Joan Stambaugh's translation, the author explains the key notions of the original with the help of concrete illustrations and reference to certain of the most relevant works Heidegger composed both before and after the publication of Being and Time.

Born in Budapest in 1910, Magda King was educated there, in Vienna, and at Edinburgh. She contributed papers to The Human Context, to the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology and conducted seminars on Heidegger at the University of Edinburgh. John Llewelyn is the author of many books including most recently, The HypoCritical Imagination: Between Kant and Levinas.

Reviews

"Originally published in the early sixties as one of the first English-language commentaries on Heidegger's Being and Time, Magda King's masterful Guide has now been vastly expanded to cover the whole of Being and Time, its renderings of Heidegger's German terms revised to correspond to Joan Stambaugh's new translation of Being and Time, and its discussions of Heidegger's later texts supplemented with references to his recently published earliest texts before Being and Time. In this expanded and revised edition prepared by John Llewelyn, King's Guide is now the best companion volume to use with Stambaugh's new translation of Being and Time." — John van Buren, author of The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King

"Of all the studies of Being and Time with which I am familiar, Magda King's is the most direct, the simplest, and the clearest. Remarkably, the simplicity and clarity are achieved without loss of detail or accuracy and without dodging difficult interpretive problems. This makes her book an extraordinarily effective guide to a complex work and thus a virtually perfect companion text for use with Being and Time." — Joseph P. Fell, J. H. Harris Professor Emeritus, Bucknell University