Heidegger's Being and Time: Week 2 Guide

Heidegger's Being and Time: Week 2 Guide

Dear micro-philosophers,

I wanted to share with you a short guide to help you prepare for our next session.

What you will find below is the selected reading for our next session, some general notes on the selected readings, and some key terms you will encounter in the reading (including ontical vs ontological).

Selected Reading:

• Untitled first page

• Introduction I: sections 1-3

Notes

Untitled First Page

• Heidegger begins the book with a quote from Plato’s Sophist.

  • Michael Gelvin suggests that Heidegger chooses to begin with this quote from Plato for a variety of reasons.

• First, Plato was unique in relating the problems of the individual human being to the immensely speculative reaches of abstract metaphysics.

  • For example, Plato’s theory of Forms arose out of immediately existential needs such as love, death, and justice.

  • Gelvin suggests that Heidegger may have wished to achieve a similar kind of unity between his own ontological theorizing and the immediate existential realities of everyday life.

• S…