Existence & Being

This is a good book for introducing a form of thinking that may be called for on special occasions, when people have to consider what is not truly mundane. My second-hand copy of this book, the Gateway edition, published 1979, based on the First American edition published 1949, begins with a long attempt to explain Heidegger's main early work, BEING AND TIME, Part I. (1927). Way back then "only the first two out of six planned sections of the book were published." (p. 8). I thought that the explanation by Werner Brock took too long to get to the items by Heidegger which finally appear from page 233 to the end of this book. As an example of the explanation for what is included, I would like to quote the following paragraph: Some of the critics seem to think that there has been a considerable change in Heidegger's outlook, if not immediately after the publication of "Being and Time," at least since the first essay on Hoelderlin (1936). I for one do not share in this opinion. In my view, the themes of all the four essays, but especially of the two philosophical ones, are directly and most intimately related to "Being and Time," but not so much to the first two published Sections as rather to the third one on "Time and Being." (p. 119).Heidegger's Inaugural Lecture, "What is Metaphysics?" is included at the end of this book. On page 349, an undated "Postscript" admits that "The question `What is Metaphysics?' remains a question. For those who persevere with this question the following postscript is more of a foreword." The obstacles encountered in the preceding lecture are described as "good. It will make our questioning more genuine." (p. 351). The first of the "misgivings and misconceptions to which the lecture gives rise" has been "The lecture makes `Nothing' the sole subject of metaphysics." (p. 352). The other problems are explained as mood problems we acquire when we do not "shut our ears to the soundless voice which attunes us to the horrors of the abyss" (p. 354) through such a concept. "Without Being, whose unfathomable and manifest essence is vouchsafed us by Nothing in essential dread, everything that `is' would remain in Beinglessness." (pp. 353-354).After long consideration of "Nothing, conceived as the pure `Other' than what-is, is the veil of Being," (p. 360) comes some ancient Greek described as the last poem of a tragedy, "Oedipus in Colonos" by Sophocles, and at last, an English translation that also seems fair enough to be remembered on Memorial Day, 2003:But cease now, and nevermoreLift up the lament:For all this is determined.