Being and Time: A Revised Edition of the Stambaugh Translation

Citation

Heidegger, M. (2010). Being and Time: A Revised Edition of the Stambaugh Translation (J. Stambaugh, Trans.; D. J. Schmidt, Rev.). State University of New York Press.

Chapter Summary

The book is 512 pages long. Before the main text come a foreword by Dennis J. Schmidt, the translator's preface, Heidegger's preface to the seventh German edition and a short exergue. The treatise itself has an introduction and two divisions, with its sections numbered consecutively from §1. Heidegger had planned a second half but abandoned it, so the book as published is an introduction and two divisions.

Introduction: The Exposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being (§§1–8)

The introduction has two chapters. The first, "The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being" (§§1–4), argues for repeating the question of being explicitly and examines its formal structure and its ontological and ontic priority. The second, "The Double Task in Working Out the Question of Being" (§§5–8), explains why the question must be pursued through an analysis of Dasein, announces a "destruction" of the history of ontology, and presents the phenomenological method, with its concepts of phenomenon and logos, before outlining the treatise.

Part One, Division One, Chapters I–II: The Exposition of the Task of a Preparatory Analysis of Dasein; Being-in-the-World in General (§§9–13)

Chapter I fixes the theme of the analytic of Dasein and distinguishes it from anthropology, psychology and biology. Chapter II sketches being-in-the-world as Dasein's fundamental constitution and treats knowing the world as a founded mode of being-in.

Chapter III: The Worldliness of the World (§§14–24)

A chapter of eleven sections. It analyses environmentality and the beings encountered in the surrounding world (reference, signs, relevance and significance), contrasts this analysis with Descartes' interpretation of the world as res extensa, and turns to the spatiality of Dasein and of the things at hand.

Chapters IV–V: Being-in-the-World as Being-with and Being a Self: The "They"; Being-in as Such (§§25–38)

Chapter IV asks who Dasein is in everyday life and answers with Dasein-with and the "they". Chapter V analyses the "there": attunement (including fear), understanding and interpretation, statement, discourse and language, and then the everyday modes of idle talk, curiosity, ambiguity, falling prey and thrownness.

Chapter VI: Care as the Being of Dasein (§§39–44)

Anxiety is treated as the fundamental attunement that discloses Dasein as a whole, and care is identified as Dasein's being. The chapter ends by taking up reality and the "external world" and Heidegger's account of truth, including the claim that the traditional concept of truth is derivative.

Division Two, Introduction and Chapter I: Dasein and Temporality; The Possible Being-a-Whole of Dasein and Being-toward-Death (§§45–53)

Division Two begins by summarizing the preparatory analysis. It then asks how Dasein can be grasped as a whole, discusses the death of others, and sketches the existential structure of death before turning to an authentic being-toward-death.

Chapters II–III: The Attestation of Dasein of an Authentic Potentiality-of-Being and Resoluteness; The Authentic Potentiality-for-Being-a-Whole of Dasein, and Temporality as the Ontological Meaning of Care (§§54–66)

Chapter II treats conscience as a call and guilt, and the authentic potentiality-of-being attested in conscience. Chapter III moves to anticipatory resoluteness, discusses care and selfhood, and presents temporality as the ontological meaning of care.

Chapter IV and after: Temporality and Everydayness (§67 onward)

The fourth chapter of the division re-reads the earlier analysis of disclosedness (understanding, attunement, falling prey, discourse) and of being-in-the-world in temporal terms. The division continues beyond this chapter.

Key Concepts

Introduction

• The question of the meaning of being: the question the treatise sets out to renew and to pose explicitly.
• Dasein: the entity that asks the question; its analysis is the route to the question of being.
• Destruction of the history of ontology and phenomenological method: the two parts of the introduction's double task.

Division One

• Being-in-the-world: Dasein's fundamental constitution.
• Worldliness, relevance and significance: how things are encountered in the surrounding world.
• The "they": everyday being-with and being a self.
• Attunement, understanding, discourse: the existential constitution of the "there".
• Care: the being of Dasein, disclosed in anxiety.

Division Two

• Being-toward-death: the possible being-a-whole of Dasein.
• Conscience, guilt and resoluteness: the attestation of an authentic potentiality-of-being.
• Temporality: the ontological meaning of care.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Heidegger's own marginal notes. The publisher notes that the Stambaugh translation includes the marginal notes Heidegger made in his own copy and takes account of the changes he made in the final German edition of 1976.
• Revisions that address known problems. Schmidt's revisions correct ambiguities and problems that had become apparent in the years since the translation first appeared, and the edition adds a foreword by Schmidt.
• German terms in brackets. Bracketed German words are inserted liberally to flag difficult terms and tie the translation more closely to the German text, which helps a reader who wants to follow Heidegger's vocabulary across the book.
• A clear architecture. The contents show that the numbered sections are grouped into chapters and divisions, so a reader can see where each stage of the argument begins and what precedes it.

Limitations

• The project is incomplete. The book consists of an introduction and two divisions only; Heidegger abandoned the planned second half. Readers expecting the full programme announced in the introduction will not find it.
• Dense and long. At 512 pages with specialised vocabulary, the book is not suited to casual reading, and the bracketed German terms will be a distraction for readers without German.
• What the book answers. Some commentators, among them Simon Critchley, have read the book as giving an answer to what it means to be human, not to the question of being as such, so students should read it with that debate in mind.

Where It Fits in the Course

Being and Time is a primary text, and the course list places it among introductions and other primary works. Sarah Bakewell's At the Existentialist Cafe is a narrative history of phenomenology and existentialism that combines biography with explanation; Simon Critchley's short introduction presents continental philosophy since Kant as a response to a crisis of meaning; David West's introduction traces the movements from Kant through Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to phenomenology and existentialism. Any of these makes a good first stop before Heidegger.

Among the primary works, Pinkard's translation of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is a comparably demanding text; Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil is a classroom edition with an introduction, chronology and notes. Being and Time is best read after a general orientation and some of the history behind it.

How to Use This Book

The book is for advanced undergraduates and graduate students with some background in modern philosophy, including Kant and Husserl. Plan for slow, repeated reading, preferably with a lecture course or a commentary alongside.

A workable plan: read the introduction (§§1–8) closely, because it explains the method and the reason for beginning with Dasein. In Division One, take Chapter II, Chapter III's discussion of environmentality, and Chapters IV–VI as the core; the section on Descartes in Chapter III is a good place to see Heidegger's argument with the tradition. In Division Two, read Chapter I on death and Chapter II on conscience before the chapters on temporality. Keep a glossary of the key terms, using the bracketed German to track them, and check the marginal notes when a passage is unclear.