by Rj

Created on: November 08, 2007

What is really meant by the verb to be', "do we in our time have an answer to the question what we really mean by the word being? Not at all" In 1927 a young German philosopher Martin Heidegger composed his philosophical tour de force Sein und Zeit' (Being and Time), and at the heart of this immense work was the deceptively simple question, what is being? As part of his ontological project Heidegger aimed to shatter the established subject/object mode of acquiring knowledge held by the majority of philosophers heretofore, and abrogate their detached, disinterested inquiry. What Heidegger sought was a reinterpretation of philosophical beliefs, Heidegger desired to explain why and how theoretical knowledge had come to seem like the most fundamental relation to being. Heidegger's writings would so dramatically call into question the established traditions, that of phenomenology, that he would render a return to their teachings almost impossible. At the core of Heidegger's work, and subsequently his own personal philosophy, was the resolute belief that there existed a theoretical shroud in the metaphysics of presence that had veiled the reality of being. He sought to dissolve the abstractive Aristotelian ideal of an objects essence and show that man's, or any object's, existence predicates its theoretical knowledge, that existence is a process of becoming. To illustrate Heidegger's idea, he employed various neologistic distinctions, none more important than his notion of a ready-to-hand present-at hand differentiation. This distinction provides a fundamental and invaluable insight into the understanding of the human mind and it is this notion that provides the motivation and stimulus for this literature.

Most fundamentally Heidegger sought to show that practical actions demonstrate that man is forever being pulled into the future. Not to say that practical actions are primary, but to show that contemplative knowing is not our primary concern, as he qualified, "Being and time determine each other reciprocally, but in such a manner that neither can the former - Being - be addressed as something temporal nor can the latter - time - be addressed as a being." Man's purposes or intentions allow the human being to be pulled ahead of himself and that the ahead' is where one truly exists. Thus, Heidegger demonstrates that man's inherent logic is always being extended or projected into the future and this notion provides the basis for the idea that an instance exists as the

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