Being and Time

Author: Heidegger, Martin Year: — Publisher: —

Summary

Heidegger's 1927 masterwork undertakes a "fundamental ontology": an investigation of what it means to be, approached through the analysis of the being who asks the question (Dasein, "being-there," the human being in its concrete existence). The book argues that Western philosophy since Plato has progressively forgotten the question of Being, substituting beings (objects, entities, properties) for Being itself. This "forgetting of Being" is not an intellectual error but a structural feature of how the tradition developed.

The analysis proceeds through existential structures: being-in-the-world (we are always already situated, not detached observers), temporality (Dasein's being is fundamentally temporal), being-toward-death (authentic existence requires confronting mortality), and care (Dasein's mode of being is caring involvement with its world). Division I establishes these structures. Division II develops the temporal interpretation but was left incomplete; the promised Division III, connecting time to Being itself, was never written.

Relevance to Project

Heidegger's analysis of being-toward-death is the philosophical equivalent of the initiatory confrontation with mortality. The Eleusinian initiate's transformation through encounter with death has its existential-philosophical analogue in Heidegger's claim that authentic existence requires anticipatory resoluteness toward death. The "forgetting of Being" parallels Barfield's hardening (CON-0011) and Gebser's deficient mental-rational: all three diagnose the same withdrawal from participatory awareness.

Cross-references: FIG-0013 (Heidegger), CON-0011 (the hardening, parallel diagnosis).

Key Arguments

• Western philosophy has "forgotten" the question of Being, substituting the study of entities for the investigation of what it means for anything to be at all
• Dasein (human being) is not a subject observing a world of objects; it is being-in-the-world, always already involved
• Temporality is the horizon of Being; Dasein exists as a being whose being is an issue for it because it is finite
• Being-toward-death is the condition of authentic existence; confronting mortality opens Dasein to its ownmost possibilities
• The history of metaphysics is the history of a specific withdrawal from the question of Being; this withdrawal is not accidental but structurally determined

Key Passages

"The question of Being has today been forgotten." — Introduction, §1

"Dasein is a being for which, in its being, that being is an issue." — §4

Agent Research Notes

[AGENT: claude-code | DATE: 2026-03-22] Populated body sections. The Stambaugh translation (SUNY) is in the library. The Macquarrie/Robinson translation (Harper) is the older standard. Heidegger's politics are addressed per editorial-guidance.md §IV: engage the ideas based on what they illuminate, not on the thinker's biography.