History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy)

If you started with B&T, you'll probably find this enlightening. If you're curious about Heidegger's work and have never read anything, I suggest you start with this one.

Helpful for getting into B&T.

@Amazon Your product description has a typo: "Theodore Kisiel's outstanding translation premits English-speaking readers to appreciate the central importance of this text in the development of Heidegger's thought." -- Should be permits, not premits.

Great!

Anyone coming from a rational empiricist background need not be offended by Heidegger's thinking since he does manage to look at matters from a radically different perspective that is novel and worthy of consideration. In this way, he expands our own thinking and puts into critical relief our own position. This is considered by scholars to be the best exposition of phenomenology. The fact Heidegger is able to explain other thinkers and other philosophers in such a superb manner seems to indicate how thoroughly he thought through to get to his own position. Paul Edwards cursory dismissal of Heidegger, although a worthy cause in itself, doesn't do justice to Heidegger.

`Heidegger's History of the Concept of Time', translated by Kisiel, is a compilation of Heidegger's lecture notes from a 1925 course taught at the University of Marburg. These lectures cover much of the same ground articulated in `Being and Time' (1927), and can be read as an draft of Heidegger's magnum opus. Often one of the greatest challenges that students face in reading historic thinkers is the question of context. That is, what is the intellectual milieu that the writer is working within, and, what question(s) are they seeking to address? Getting a feel for these considerations can be particularly difficult with an abstruse writer such as Heidegger. As such, these lecture notes are invaluable in situating the reader and providing valuable context. Kisiel's translation of `History of the Concept of Time' is clear and accessible possessing a smoothness that is absent in some English translations of Heidegger. John Drabinski's `Between Husserl and Heidegger'(available on-line course), is an excellent companion to when reading this text - it discusses History of the Concept of Time in addition to other works by Husserl and Heidegger. Drabinski is a capable commentator and his pedagogical approach of working from within Heidegger's language, while challenging for the novice, is an ultimately rewarding approach. Overall, `The History of the Concept of Time' is an excellent addition to the corpus of Heideggerian work available in English. I highly recommended it for all students of Heidegger, particularly those approaching Being and Time for first time.

Perhaps, one of the first and least interesting of Heidegger's long phenomenology books from the 1920s. Most of what is contained within this text is worked out brilliantly in his masterwork `Being and Time, e.g., the ontological/ontic structures of temporality. Ironically, there is little exposition of `history' or the history of the `concept of time' in this work. I read this work during my thesis on Heidegger's thinking on spatiality. It contains some insights regarding this aspect of Heidegger's thought, but does not add much to `Being and Time.' I recommend this to serious and budding Heidegger scholars, but others with only a passing interest I would recommend `Being and Time' and `The Basic Problems Of Phenomenology' as much better choices.

The title of this book should invoke for us a history of the concept of time, and one benefit of witnessing such a history is to recognize the difference between the way the Humanities understand the concept of time and the way found in the “Hard Sciences.” The importance of this difference for “existentialists” is that thinking of your life as an object that can be thoroughly characterized by mathematics would be a reduction of yourself (and the natural dignity of being human). Time is not simply determinable by the theoretical and the practical, it is, first and foremost, determined by the factical. Commentators on this book usually point out that there are some insights in Being & Time (1927) that Heidegger had not yet arrived at in this book, which was constructed two years prior (1925). However, this book has many merits, and I would suggest that reading this book – even skimming it – alongside a more focused reading of Being & Time would definitely deepen one’s understanding of Being & Time. Heidegger’s insights regarding Descartes from Being & Time are already present in this book. Yet, readers will most likely find the comments regarding Descartes in this book easier to follow. As many commentators have also pointed out, this book functions as a kind of summary of Heidegger’s early, after 1919, work. Readers may find the following characterization of the phases of Heidegger’s work helpful. The Table of Contents of the Harper Collins’ anthology of Heidegger’s Basic Writings (2008) illustrates the essential “pathmarks” of Heidegger’s interests and thinking. There are four (4) such “phases”: his early work up to and including Being & Time (1927), then, “turn” in Heidegger’s thinking toward a second phase known as an ontology of events, illustrated by Contributions to Philosophy (written 1936-8); the third phase includes his thinking on technology and “the fourfold,” illustrated by his The Question Concerning Technology (1954) and his lectures from the 1950’s such as “Building Dwelling Thinking.” The fourth phase, includes his thinking regarding language and poetry, illustrated by his essays, “The Way to Language” (1959) and “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking” (1964). This book, The History of the Concept of Time, belongs, of course, to Heidegger’s early period/first phase.