27.7.09

Simon Critchley on Martin Heidegger's Being and Time

A complete list of articles
Photograph by Kerry Kelly (2006): Beech-Maple Forest on Pierce Stocking Drive

Simon Critchley's final article on Martin Heidegger's Being and Time has been published today at The Guardian website:
To try and compress 437 dense pages of Being and Time into eight brief blogs was obviously a difficult exercise from the start. But, I must admit, this was also part of the attraction. Despite the limits of this virtual medium, I hope that something of the book has been conveyed in a way that might encourage people to read more and further. Being and Time is extraordinarily rich, difficult and systematic work of philosophy that repays careful reading and rereading.

That Heidegger continues to arouse controversy and heated misunderstanding is evidenced by some of the responses to these blogs. All I would ask is that Heidegger's detractors (you know, the "this is bullshit" brigade) take the trouble to read his work with a little care and to pause before reacting.

Although there is no much more we could say about division two of Being and Time, there is one final topic that I'd briefly like to explore and which some readers think is the climax of the book: temporality. Let me begin by describing what Heidegger is trying to avoid in his discussion of time. [Read more]


The complete archive:

Read Part 1: On Being and Time: Why Heidegger matters.