Postgraduate Reading Group: Difficulties in Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ and Related Texts

Chaired by: Dr. Laurence Hemming

Philosophy Department, UCL, 19 Gordon Square, Seminar Room 1st floor each Tuesday 6.00 - 7.30pm, beginning 2nd October (except Reading Week).

Open to: Any MPhil / PhD Students of the University of London. MA students who wish to attend should first contact Dr. Hemming by email: others are also welcome to request to attend by email. 

The seminar will consider in close detail key passages of Martin Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ / ‘Sein und Zeit’.  The aim is for participants to become acquainted with Heidegger’s manner of presenting the central questions of the text – particular attention will be given to difficult and obscure passages as well as to general arguments.  We will work from the English (Macquarrie Robinson) translation published by Blackwell, Oxford.  Reference will be made to the German text, from the 17th (1953) edition, which is the one currently in print with Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen.  Participants will not be expected to have a reading knowledge of German (although it would certainly help) but will be expected to work with German terms.  Reference will occasionally be made to Heidegger’s other (translated) writings.

Reading Scheme

Seminar 1: 2nd October 2007.  Preparatory Reading: §§1–8 of 'Being and Time / Sein und Zeit.  The seminar will make a close reading of §3 'The Ontological Priority of the Question of Being' / Der ontologische Vorrang der Seinsfrage.

Seminar 2: 9th October 2007.  Preparatory Reading: §§9–13 of 'Being and Time' / Sein und Zeit.  The seminar will make a close reading of §12.

Seminar 3: 16th October 2007  Preparatory Reading: §§14–18 of 'Being and Time' / Sein und Zeit.  The seminar will make a close reading of §16.

Seminar 4: 23rd October 2007  Preparatory Reading: §§19–24 of 'Being and Time' / Sein und Zeit.  The seminar will make a close reading of §24.

We will also discuss the 'destructuring' (Destruktion) of Descartes' cogito – ergo sum mentioned at §19 of Sein und Zeit as something to be carried out in the unpublished sections of Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) – and so therefore not completed as envisaged.  Suggested background reading for this: Nietzsche by Martin Heidegger edited and translated by D. F. Krell, London, Harper Collins, 1987 (1982), vol. IV, pp. 91–138.  See for the German text Heidegger, M., Nietzsche, vol. II (Gesmatausgabe vol. 6.2), Neske, Tübingen, 1961, pp. 118–170 (See Gesamtausgabe Vol. 48, Nietzsche: Der europäische Nihilismus, Frankfurt, Klostermann, 1986 [1961], §§15–23 for the wider, unedited version of this text.  Unfortunately no translation exists for this).

Seminar 5: 30th October 2007  Preparatory Reading: §§25–38 of 'Being and Time' / Sein und Zeit.  The seminar will make a close reading of §35.

Seminar 6: 13th November 2007  Preparatory Reading §§39–44 of 'Being and Time' / Sein und Zeit.  The seminar will make a close reading of §44.  My sincere apologies for having been unable to reach the seminar until 6.30pm on this evening.  Next week will start on time!

Seminar 7: 20th November 2007  Preparatory Reading §§45–50 of 'Being and Time' / Sein und Zeit.  The seminar will make a close reading of §47.

Seminar 8: 27th November 2007    Please note Dr. Hemming is unable to be present at this meeting of the seminar.

Seminar 9: 4th December 2007    Preparatory Reading §§51–57 of 'Being and Time' / Sein und Zeit.  The seminar will begin with a recapitulatory discussion of Sein zum Tode ('being towards death') to complete the survey of §§45–53, and then make a close reading of §§54–57.

Seminar 10: 11th December 2007    Preparatory Reading §§58–65 of 'Being and Time' / Sein und Zeit.  The seminar will begin with a further discussion of conscience (§§54–57) and then make a close reading of §§58–65.  Regular attendees of the seminar are reminded of the invitation for 10th December, 6.30–8.00pm: please email or telephone me if you have mislaid the address or need directions.

Seminar 11: 18th December 2007    Preparatory Reading §§66–75 of 'Being and Time' / Sein und Zeit.  The seminar will make a close reading of §§71–74.

Commentaries on 'Being and Time' / Sein und Zeit

Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger’s and Being and Time (Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks) by Stephen Mulhall (Routledge, London, 2005).

Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Michael Inwood. OUP, Oxford, 2000.

Being in the World: Commentary on Heidegger’s “Being and Time”: Division 1 by Hubert L. Dreyfus (MIT Press, Cambridge Mass., 1991).

Heidegger’s “Being and Time”: Critical Essays (Critical Essays on the Classics) by Richard Polt, (Rowman & Littlefield, London, 2005).

Secondary Texts and Articles

The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time by Theodore Kisiel, University of California Press, Huntingdon, 1995.

Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being translated and edited by Jean T. Wilde & William Kluback, bi-lingual edition (College & University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1958). A translation of Heidegger’s 1956 essay Zur Seinsfrage (Über die Linie), which contains good introductory essays.

A selection of essays on Being and Time can be found in the first section of Martin Heidegger, edited by Stephen Mulhall (Farnborough, Ashgate, 2006). Many of these articles are reprinted from other sources.

For a discussion of how Heidegger’s work as a whole should be interpreted, see chapters two and three of my own Heidegger’s Atheism: The Refusal of a Theological Voice by Laurence Paul Hemming (Notre Dame, Notre Dame University Press, 2002).

Biography and Background

Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil by Rüdiger Safranski (Harvard University Press, Harvard, 1999). Translation by Ewald Osers of Ein Meister aus Deutschland, Munich, Hanser, 1994.

Heidegger’s Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas and Herbert Marcuse by Richard Wolin (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001).

A full Bibliography of Heidegger’s Works in German and English available at http://www.webcom.com/~paf/hb/gesamt.html

A Bibliography of works on Heidegger is available at http://www.webcom.com/~paf/hbooks.html