Graduate 103: BT 01: Preliminary

So I have an idea for a series of blog entries in which I treat the material in Martin Heidegger's book, Being and Time. This would be a very long series, since the work is divided into 83 separate sections and the Macquarrie/Robinson translation runs to almost 500 pages. The idea is that writing up and synthesizing the material that I am reading might help me to process and come to a better understanding of it. Of course, without reading the original alongside my write-ups, it is unlikely that readers of my blog would be able to follow what I am saying and commenting on. Still, it might prove interesting for some and I would still be able to benefit from the writing practice.

So, here we begin. I won't say a lot now. Some readers will note that I am posting this on the night of Christmas Eve. (What a nerd I am.) What follows, in this entry, is the Foreword to Being and Time. If you don't quite understand what's going on (and decide you want to read more anyway) I will probably post more background in later entries. But not too much tonight. (It's Christmas Eve for goodness sake!)

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" 'For manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression "being". We, however, who used to think we understood it, have now become perplexed.' [quoted from Plato's Sophistes, 244a]

Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word 'being'? Not at all. So it is fitting that we should raise anew the question of the meaning of Being. But are we nowadays even perplexed at our inability to understand the expression 'Being'? Not at all. So first of all we must reawaken an understanding for the meaning of this question. Our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the meaning of Being and to do so concretely. Our provisional aim is the Interpretation of time as the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being.

But the reasons for making this our aim, the investigations which such a purpose requires, and the path to its achievement, call for some introductory remarks." (BT 19/1, Foreword to Being and Time)

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No where is it more important to remember and keep in mind, than when thinking deeply about philosophy, that God is in this place, and that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.