Martin Heidegger, Being and Time Review

Overall Rating

Tells you what reality is about.

Book falls apart as you read it very cheaply made.

Being and Time by M Heidegger reviewed by J R Kelly.

The problem is Plato and Aristotle had truth, the essence of life in people other than ourselves, however, the nature the essence of what we are, or can be is in us as a self-defining interpreting of ourselves. The individual is then not as a description but an effect which overall is poetic. Existence is not then individually in the imagination it is pragmatic in action. It is our own relation to our present experience that moves it forward. Heidegger pointed out in Being and Time that anxiety over death is fundamental not ontological. Death it is not random as it has a structure leading up to it. Three ways of living are as a description after the event in terms of our existence "I am." Another is the investigations of science in relation to beings in a thought. The third is from the perspective of inside of our self knowledge all are limited by what we can know. The World and life are not separate but one. Heidegger says he wants a focus on the "I am" after the event.

Consciousness is integral operation of all the senses a practical activity within the world. Nature a raw material, a natural resource is task-based. Life is experienced in moods' passive states, such as happiness, sadness and states of ecstasy and depression. Moods are both subjective and objective, both illusory and/or reality based. Moods both discriminate and are real emotional states that can reveal something of being its world subject to the prejudicial and illusory. Contact is caring or aggressive toward other's integrity is within us not in others. Distinguishing between any conformity/non-conformity in us leads to anxiety not integrity. Consciousness of guilt involves caring so it cannot be rejected. To be or not to be is the question of listening to self consciousness; guilt.

Heidegger claims Western Civilization is oblivious to reality as it bypasses the wood for the trees, understanding not in the sense of what it means to be or not to be but in a technological sense that is of a pure resource available on demand for manipulation exploitation. Life is then hidden missing: life is about how we can care. Care is fundamental to our contemplation of our own existence, our finite nature and our own personal and fundamental anxiety. A technological understanding is the subject knowing nothing but known by all objectively is not to treat life as a phenomenon that is on going a historical event after the fact as art in living. Life dealt with as a question as our experience is in terms of its significance for us alone and how it should be.

"I" has no distinguishing of our finitude contingency or dependence needed as we need to question our self not our existence. The "I" misses the subjective experience called reality a responsibility about how we live in the world, and death makes this a personal one. This world is a given and we are thrown into it. We do not determine ourselves but language discloses ourselves to ourselves. Man is thrown into the truth he has to watch over his truth. He is a sentinel in the 'cleaning', and 'the shepherd' of it to use Heidegger's terminology. I am free in my own eyes and a determined in the eyes of others as others are to me. This is our situation then undermined by anxiety towards our death. Everyday attunements give clues to how we should live our life. This means all of our choices our reinforced so as too define ourselves. We have to be against public opinion an attempt tranquilize us. Society wants to hide potential it is an emotional truth that is our own and it is the most private of any truth from nothing emotions or experiences which we can know but they can never know about. Our care about life to make it all meaning full on the, "I am" after the event. This is as we 'know' before we realize it our attitudes and assumptions are an 'exemplary intuition'. This to avoid a harmful phoney life so it is up to you to come up with your own sense of importance a metaphysical system intuited by you. This is why Being and Time is important so as to experience release life is created in poetry and by those that think and control language it says in the excellent book.