Heidegger is best read in German: his neologisms and other wordplay strain the talents of even the best translators. Unfortunately, his writing is difficult to follow, even for the dedicated student. Thus, for example, 'time' is only meaningful as it is experienced: the time it takes to drive to work, eat lunch, or read a book is real to us the concept of 'time' is not. Emphasizing the 'sense of being' ( dasein) over other interpretations of conscious existence, he argued that specific and concrete ideas form the bases of our perceptions, and that thinking about abstractions leads to confusion at best. His encyclopedic knowledge of philosophy from ancient to modern times led him to rethink the most basic concepts underlying our thinking about ourselves. Martin Heidegger paved the road trod on by the existentialists with the 1927 publication of Being and Time. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Bracketed German words have also been liberally inserted both to clarify and highlight words and connections that are difficult to translate, and to link this translation more closely to the German text. The revisions to the original translation correct some ambiguities and problems that have become apparent since the translation appeared fifteen years ago.

It is also the most comprehensive edition insofar as it includes the marginal notes made by Heidegger in his own copy of Being and Time, and takes account of the many changes that he made in the final German edition of 1976. The Stambaugh translation captures the vitality of the language and thinking animating Heidegger’s original text. A work that disturbs the traditions of philosophizing that it inherits, Being and Time raises questions about the end of philosophy and the possibilities for thinking liberated from the presumptions of metaphysics. Still provocative and much disputed, Heidegger’s text has been taken as the inspiration for a variety of innovative movements in fields ranging from psychoanalysis, literary theory, existentialism, ethics, hermeneutics, and theology. Being and Time has long been recognized as a landmark work of the twentieth century for its original analyses of the character of philosophic inquiry and the relation of the possibility of such inquiry to the human situation. The publication in 1927 of Martin Heidegger’s magnum opus, Being and Time, signaled an intellectual event of the first order and had an impact in fields far beyond that of philosophy proper. A revised translation of Heidegger's most important work.

Being and time joan stambaugh