The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time

by Theodore J. Kisiel

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."

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

626 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Score one for the narrative structure of the understanding because this one is a page turner!

Kisiel’s Story takes the form of a Bildungsroman, a novel which concerns the formation and development of one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century, right next to Finnegans Wake. And when I say ‘literary’ I mean the world of letters, of intellect, of mind, of spirit -- of Geist, of Dasein. And the least interesting element of the mode of letters known as the novel is the question of veracity. To read a work as structured narratively, but knowing too that one does not read a work of philosophy or scholarship, which Kisiel’s Genesis book is, like one reads a novel as distraction or entertainment. Nonetheless, the organizing principle is the same. Even a mathematical formula has a beginning, a middle, and an end, becoming understandable in its temporal movement.

So much for the first-person experience of reading. The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time is one of those seminal works of Heidegger scholarship and should be included along with William Richardson’s Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought as standard reference. Of course, and fortunate for us, it too has become slightly dated. It’s matter is the development of Heidegger’s thought which, in seemingly finished form, burst upon the landscape in one tome-shaped Blitz! And even as Heidegger’s book remained a truncated torso even in its massiveness, Kisiel’s story too remains only half told because the demise of Being and Time in the course of Heidegger’s thinking belongs most properly to the work itself as well.

Let’s visit the usefulness portion of the Tale Kisiel tells. First and foremost for my purposes, it serves as a reintroduction after many years of stale chewing upon Being and Time to the work itself ; a refresher and reminder of the great path of thinking which has made the world understandable. Next, a survey of the story of early Heidegger’s path of thinking, from the Habilitation of 1915 to publication in 1927. During this time Heidegger had published nothing ; the past forty years has seen the publication of his courses at Freiburg and Marburg in the Gesamtasusgabe. Quite uncontrovertibly, never has there been a better point-time in history to understand Heidegger’s opus. Third, Kisiel’s book works as a guide and companion in reading these early lecture courses, indicating conceptual and problematical development, the Holzwege or paths leading nowhere in the course of his thinking.

I said above that there is something dated about Kisiel’s book. During the ten year course of writing (publication in 1993) Kisiel had little reason to believe that the curators of the Gesamtausgabe would be publishing everything they could possibly publish, ie, their principle of “aus letzter Hand” would not include courses for which only student transcripts were extant. For this reason, Kisiel paraphrases these courses to much larger extent than would otherwise be necessary. Fortunately, these courses, in particular the religion courses, have since been included in the Gesamtausgabe. In terms of decadent reading pleasure, these extensive paraphrases distract somewhat. One already looks up from Kisiel’s text to the eventual reading of Heidegger’s courses themselves.

Also in terms of this decedent pleasure in reading, I could not quite conceive reading something like this without having an intimate familiarity already with Being and Time, that the Story itself assumes that its readers will already know the outcome, that Dasein in its reading is already projecting ahead of itself to where it will have become. And just as projection and expectation provide for the pleasure of musical understanding, so too in reading scholarship one finds pleasure in the moment of knowing how the story will result. On the other hand, these ten years of intellectual development and conceptual formation-struggle led Heidegger down many a Holzweg, and here, due to lack of familiarity, that the story of this path breaks off, understanding is left in relative obscurity and again looking up from Kisiel’s text toward the possibility of treading those paths in Heidegger’s texts themselves.

And to the ToC itself; my short hand for the aboutness of the work.

Part 1 :: The Breakthrough to the Topic
Phenomenological Beginnings: The Hermeneutic Breakthrough (1915-19) -- Theo-Logical Beginnings: Towards a Phenomenology of Christianity -- The Deconstruction of Life (1919-20) -- The Religion Courses (1920-21)
Part 2 :: Confronting the Ontological Tradition
What Did Heidegger Find in Aristotle? (1921-23) -- Aristotle Again: From Unconcealment to Presence (1923-24)
Part 3 :: Three Drafts of Being and Time
The Dilthey Draft: “The Concept of Time” (1924) --The Ontoeroteric Draft: History of the Concept of Time (1925) -- The Final Draft: Toward a Kairology of Being

As appendix we find a listing of Heidegger’s teaching activities from the years 1915-30, including corrections to the list found in Richardson ;; a documentary chronology of being-underway to the publication of Being and Time ;; a genealogical glossary of Heidegger’s basic terms ;; Bibliography, Indexes of names, subject matter, greek and latin terms.

And not to be missed is Kisiel’s constant quetching about the fully unscholarly approach taken in the publication of Heidegger’s works. In 2175 some poor village of scholars will have an enormous mess to untangle.


Here’s your Ruf -- if you want to know what it’s like to be a fucking human being, you will need to read Heidegger. Period.

[Geoff]

Check is in the gotdang mail.

Additional comment 5/14/2015 : This gotdang thing is huge! Ack.