Being and Time

Easily the best of the available English translations. The attention to detail and to footnoting in this text make referring back to the German text as well as translating and, therefore, transliterating Heideggerian technical language a palpable task. Philosophy frequently makes much of the loss of meaning and the loss of significance that translations affect, however, Macquarrie and Robinson do there utmost to be consistent and connected with the German without getting mired in it. Consulting the glossary and the index in the back of the book is a must for beginners in Heidegger. The translators' use of "ready-to-hand" as opposed to "present-at-hand" seems to fit better than other translations which reverse their definitions. Being and Time is, while unfinished, a stunning work that has everything to do with how modern humanity involves itself in, comports, and reveals the world. Among the book's goals are the usurping of Metaphysics and the reformulation of all that is ontological under the scope of phenomenology. While it can be argued as to how closely Being and Time comes to subjectivism, this work nevertheless has influenced the Existentialist, Hermaneutic, Deconstructionist as well as Structuralist philosophical schools and their proponents. THough this book may be designated a "woodpath," a dead end, it has certainly raised the questions of being, identity and truth in a way that post-modern thought has struggled to improve upon or overstep ever since.

This is not the place to start if you want to understand Heidegger.If you want to understand Heidegger, you (happily) need to read a much shorter piece -- namely, chapter 1 only of _An Introduction to Metaphysics_. It's all right there. After you get through that tight little essay, you will understand the important things about who Heidegger was, what he was doing, and where he was going with it, intellectually speaking. Then you will be able to make an informed decision as to whether or not you wish to continue, one that is based on your own opinion, rather than the (many and strong) opinions of others.Heidegger is a highly controversial figure. Even his fiercest critics, however, acknowledge that his importance in philosophy is huge. (I am speaking of those critics of some stature, and disregarding the childrens' prattle found here.)Heidegger is important because he found a gaping and defining hole in every philosophical argument from Plato to the 20th century. Nietzsche had looked for it, and had suspected that something was there, something huge, but Heidegger nailed it once and for all. He deserves credit for this, and if you want to know what the hole was, see the citation above.It is what *else* Heidegger did that is the source of so much of the controversy and all of the criticism. Having produced a critique that laid the philosophical tradition of the west essentially to waste, he was vexed with the difficult problem of what to do next.He made some initial, obscure, vague, and frustratingly tentative attempts to construct something in its place. _Being and Time_ is the prime example of that effort. It was an openly acknowledged failure. It was to be preliminary to a much larger work that Heidegger soon after admitted the impossibility of himself or anyone else ever undertaking with any success. Nevertheless, this first stab at it is interesting for the same reason that Plato's first stabs at what has come to be traditional philosophy, also ultimately doomed, were interesting and continue to be valuable and worthwhile, regardless that they were failures.Most of the rest of Heidegger's work falls under two categories. One is the category of _Being and Time_ containing works that are similar except that they are even less systematic, impossible to understand in English, more tentative, and increasingly preoccupied up with German as a language. The other category consists of imaginative attempts to redeem part of the philosophical tradition he destroyed by re-reading the presocratics, Aristotle, Plato, Leibniz, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, et al. Most of these attempts were also failures, but they were fascinating failures by virtue of their imaginativeness and extreme care and rigor. It was clear that, though he fumbled around a great deal, was politically naive and morally inept (perhaps requirements for excellent philosophizing), he had opened a door. And that door opened on to something much, much bigge

I am Germanless, but in comparing this translation to MacQuarrie and Robinson I find 1)Stambaugh is easier to read with a free flow in her English which however at times leads to indefinieness; 2) Stambaugh will sometimes come to a more definite and clearer conclusion than M & R, but then sometimes the reverse; 3) Stambaugh has an excellent index organized much like M & R's with a few headings M & R does not have BUT it has NO German index as M & R has; 4) Stambaugh has the later marginal comments Heidegger made that M & R does not. However, sometimes M & R has a formulation that seems more precise and more like Heidegger than Stambaugh. M & R also has footnotes on the translation that are sometimes crucial to understanding what is going on in the main text. And it English index has a few headings not found in Stambaugh as well as having a German word index. Having BOTH translations, and being able to compare them, can be an emense help in understanding Heidegger.

Okay, reading these reviews, I am frustrated... but, of course that is to be expected. Heidegger, more than most philosophers, lends himself to a multiplicity of interpretations.Rather than add my own semi-detailed interpretation of this work and its historical importance to this list [which would just further frustrate others, I am sure], I would just like to recommend to anyone approaching this book for the first time that they keep in mind the central inquiry that Heidegger is engaging in: the meaning of Being... and, as he explicitly states, this book is a preparation for further exploration, and not to be read as a completed "system" in itself. While the influence of Kierkegaard is obvious, relating this work to Dostoevsky (as another reviewer has) I think misses the point entirely. For all of the talk of "authenticity" and the "psychologizing" of this work that later commentators have engaged in, Heidegger is intersted in re-grounding all philosophical inquiry... not in explicating some mere existential-humanistic outlook. Whether he suceeds or not is, to say the least, debatable.I would also recommend giving a _very_ close and thorough reading to his essay "What is Metaphysics" before approaching _Being and Time_.A final note on this translation-- I had already wrestled with the previous translation from beginning to end before purchasing this one. This translation was more than worth the price of purchasing the book again. Stambaugh's translation is simply masterful.

I am afraid people might get a little confused by the other reviewer's comments. It basically boils down to this: if you are adequately grounded in the most rigorous european and eastern philosophical systems you will probably understand what Heidegger is doing in this book, but if you aren't you won't. It's not for everybody, but it is for those who want to see how far they can go with 20th century philosophy. The book is hard to read, the concepts are hard to grasp, the work is in my opinion worth it if you're asking the questions in the first place. It is not positivism, which is to say it is not easy, which is not to say that it is unintelligible. Some parts may not work for some people, but you'll never know which parts those will be for you unless you read it. Obviously german philosophy doesn't work for everybody, especially for those in the anglo/american 'tradition', since it requires both intense work and intense discipline to get through it. Philosophy was never supposed to be easy. Don't be fooled by those who fall by the wayside then crawl into their holes preferring candlelight to the sun. It's the best book of philosophy written in the 20th century, which is why it's been the most influential.