The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time [Paperback]

Theodore Kisiel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 24, 1995

This book, ten years in the making, is the first factual and conceptual history of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927), a key twentieth-century text whose background until now has been conspicuously absent. Through painstaking investigation of European archives and private correspondence, Theodore Kisiel provides an unbroken account of the philosopher's early development and progress toward his masterwork.
Beginning with Heidegger's 1915 dissertation, Kisiel explores the philosopher's religious conversion during the bleak war years, the hermeneutic breakthrough in the war-emergency semester of 1919, the evolution of attitudes toward his phenomenological mentor, Edmund Husserl, and the shifting orientations of the three drafts of Being and Time. Discussing Heidegger's little-known reading of Aristotle, as well as his last-minute turn to Kant and to existentialist terminology, Kisiel offers a wealth of narrative detail and documentary evidence that will be an invaluable factual resource for years to come.
A major event for philosophers and Heidegger specialists, the publication of Kisiel's book allows us to jettison the stale view of Being and Time as a great book "frozen in time" and instead to appreciate the erratic starts, finite high points, and tentative conclusions of what remains a challenging philosophical "path."

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Martin Heidegger's Being and Time holds unchallenged rank as the most influential work of 20-century Continental philosophy. But its complexities baffle many readers. Kisiel (philosophy, Northern Illinois Univ.) argues that the key to understanding Being and Time lies in a detailed account of the book's origins. Accordingly, he analyzes Heidegger's dissertation, university classes, and preliminary drafts of Being and Time . Heidegger continually struggled with the project of his teacher Husserl to make philosophy a strict science. In these efforts, he made detailed studies of the New Testament and Aristotle. Under the influence of Kant, he claimed in Being and Time to establish philosophy as a strict science, a view he soon abandoned. Kisiel's work will prove indispensable to scholars and students of Heidegger. Recommended for academic libraries.
- David Gordon, Bowling Green State Univ., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"[Kisiel] surveys the conceptual laboratory in which Heidegger in those years mixed his 'blasting powder.' The English reader can thus for the first time get acquainted in depth with the philosophical 'inside story.' The German reader is likewise indebted to Kisiel for many a surprise. . . . An impressive and important book." -- Dieter Thom, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

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Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (March 24, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520201590
• ISBN-13: 978-0520201590
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #967,585 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most important philosophical inquiry into Heidegger-EVER, November 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time (Paperback)

Dr. Kisiel's painstaking work elaborately explicates seemingly every mode of thought leading up to Heidegger's creation of Being & Time. In my opinion, no other philosopher has ever penetrated deeper into both the historical and philosophical origins of Being & Time. While due to the "density" of the arguments proffered, Genesis is a difficult book to wholly grasp, it still stands as one of the BEST resources to compliment Being & Time. It's a MUST HAVE for any student of phenomenology.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely essential..., September 9, 2010

By 

Brian C. - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time (Paperback)

There are two books, in my opinion, which are absolutely essential reading for anyone who is serious about understanding Heidegger's Being and Time and this is one of them (the other is Heidegger's lecture course on Plato's Sophist). This is not an introductory book and so it should not be the first book you read on Heidegger or on Being and Time, but if you have already read Being and Time and have at least a basic idea of what Heidegger is attempting to do in Being and Time this book will deepen that understanding a hundred fold.

Kisiel attempts to locate the origins of some of the major concepts of Being and Time (such as facticity, hermeneutic situation, falleness, etc.) in some of the lecture courses Heidegger was giving both before and during the time when he was working on Being and Time. Heidegger was often a far more lucid lecturer than he was a writer (one of the reasons I place so much value on his lecture course on Plato's Sophist) so focusing on his lecture courses is a good way of getting to the heart of what Heidegger is trying to do with his new vocabulary and neologisms without getting bogged down in them. Heidegger's course on the phenomenology of religion (as discussed in this book) is especially illuminating in that regard. I'm not sure anyone can fully understand what Heidegger is doing when he determines Dasein's being as care without reading what he has to say about Augustine in those courses and without understanding Heidegger's claim that Augustine's "restless heart in search of God" penetrates much more deeply into the self-world and factic life of Dasein than Descartes's cogito ergo sum. As a bonus many of the lecture courses Kisiel discusses are now available in English translation for the reader who would like to compare the lectures themselves to Kisiel's descriptions.

Kisiel also points out the importance of the notion of formal indication in understanding Heidegger's concepts. This whole problematic arises out of Heidegger's confrontation with the Neo-Kantians (who are not widely read anymore). The problem, put simply, is a question as to how it is possible to approach the nonobjectifiable subject matter of phenomenology without already inflicting an objectification on it? (pg. 48). Or, to put it another way, how is it possible to describe the concrete movement of life reflectively without falsifying it? Formal indication is Heidegger's solution to this problem. With formal indication the philosopher searches for a concept that is drawn from the actual temporal intentional movement of experience and which "says to show" as opposed to a concept which subsumes a particular under an abstract universal. This is the method Heidegger uses in Being and Time and it is part of what makes Being and Time so difficult for those who are new to Heidegger.

I should point out quickly that the first 50 to 100 pages of Kisiel's book are the most challenging. I had to read the first sections of this book three or four times before they started to sink in, but the later sections, while not easy by any means, are at least easier. So do not be discouraged if you are having a hard time making it through the beginning sections. I would suggest just plowing through, trying to make sense out of what you can, and then returning when you have digested the later sections of the book.

When I have time I intend to add to my review and provide a fuller summary of the contents of this wonderful book, but for now I will simply give it my wholehearted endorsement and encourage anyone who is at all serious about Heidegger to get a copy as soon as possible. It is a book you will want to read and return to over and over.

-Brian

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely valuable and insightful, January 30, 2010

By 

Jason Powell (wash, dc, usa) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time (Paperback)

By extensive research and investigation into the earliest records of Heidegger's development as a philosopher, Kisiel's book gives great insight into the perspective that enframed Being and Time. It is a heavy duty book, it is by no means a summary or interpretation of Being and Time, but it is extremely insightful for getting into the way Heidegger thought and his understanding of philosophy prior to him because it gives such a rich context and background. The amount of documentation and scrutiny outlining the intellectual scene and Heidegger's progressive reactions is unmatched.