Graduate 141: BT 13: Sec. 08

Introduction. Exposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being
Chapter 2. The Twofold Task in Working Out the Question of Being. Method and Design of Our Investigation
Section 08. Design of the Treatise

Well, I finally made it through to the end of the Introduction--that is to page 63 of the 488-page English translation of Being and Time. 12% of the way there. (And then on to The Basic Problems of Phenomenology.)

In this brief section, Heidegger gives the outline of his project. Interestingly this massive tome only covers the first two-thirds of the first-half of the entire project that he envisioned.

He writes, "The question of the meaning of Being is the most universal and the emptiest of questions, but at the same time it is possible to individualize it very precisely for any particular Dasein. If we are to arrive at the basic concept of 'Being' and to outline the ontological conceptions which it requires and the variations which it necessarily undergoes, we need a clue which is concrete. We shall proceed towards the concept of Being by way of an Interpretation of a certain special entity, Dasein, in which we shall arrive at the horizon for the understanding of Being and for the possibility of interpreting it; the universality of the concept of Being is not belied by the relatively 'special' character of our investigation. But this very entity, Dasein, is in itself 'historical', so that its ownmost ontological elucidation necessarily becomes an 'historiological' Interpretation." (BT 63/39)

The first part of the treatise (as I said, incomplete) comprises the Interpretation of Dasein in terms of temporality, and the explication of time as the transcendental horizon for the question of Being. The second part (never published) was supposed lay out a phenomenological "destruction of the history of ontology" that focused on Kant, Descartes, and Aristotle.

The two divisions of part one that were published cover (1) the preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein and (2) Dasein and temporality.

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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.