This could also be called: âBeing and Time: A Very Short Introductionâ. But that is in no way a complaint: as introductions to Heideggerâs opus go, Inwoodâs work is masterful. It avoids the frustrating esotericism of works like Dreyfusâs âBeing-in-the-worldâ, while achieving the accessible depth of Poltâs âHeidegger: An Introductionâ in half the number of pages.
Highlights include:
Heideggerâs critique of the unexamined grounds and assumptions of epistemology, and specifically in the concept of knowledge as a relation between knower and known
The zeroing in on Dasein, and on the understanding of Daseinâs Being, as the necessary starting point to the understanding of Being per se, since Dasein is the the Being that, in its Being, can ask the question
The nature of authenticity and inauthenticity in Dasein
The meaning of world as the interwoven web of significance in Heideggerâs phenomenological hermeneutics
Being-in-the-world as the primordial state of Daseinâs Being, which in turn enables derivative and artificial conceptualizations of Daseinâs world, like Cartesian subject-object dichotomies
The primordial temporality that makes up Daseinâs being as a field is of significance (as opposed to a series of ânowsâ) and that enables authenticity as the running ahead to death, the rebound to the past, and the resulting authentic appropriations of the possibilities in the present, as revealed through the being-towards-death, thrownness, and facticity.
The difference between conscience and Conscience, guilt and Guilt, in Daseinâs existentials
The nature of transcendence in Heideggarian existentialism as the indivisibility of Dasein and things and the world, and its distinction from the Cartesian and Kantian notions of transcendence
If youâre looking for an effective and affecting introduction to Heideggarian existentialism, this is a fantastic place to start.