Knowra Being and Time Being and Time Martin Heidegger’s 1927 philosophical work investigates the meaning of Being by analyzing Dasein, human existence as situated in a world and oriented toward possibilities.
Dasein : Heidegger’s term for the human mode of existence, characterized by understanding its own Being. The analysis of Dasein is the work’s route toward asking what Being means.
Hermeneutic circle : The interpretive movement in which understanding parts depends on a prior grasp of the whole, which interpretation revises. Heidegger makes this circular structure explicit in the method of existential analysis.
Martin Heidegger : German philosopher whose work on Being, existence, and technology shaped twentieth-century continental philosophy. Heidegger developed and published this project in 1927.
Existentialism : A family of philosophies that foregrounds existence, freedom, finitude, and the formation of a life. The book became a major source for later existential thought, though Heidegger resisted the label.
Cartesian dualism : The view that mind and body are distinct kinds of substance, associated with René Descartes. Heidegger rejects the detached thinking subject as the starting point for understanding existence.
Being-in-the-world : The unified condition of existing amid meaningful surroundings rather than as a detached mind facing objects. It replaces the picture of a subject first separated from an external world.
Being-toward-death : Dasein’s relation to its own unavoidable, nontransferable possibility of no-longer-being-able-to-exist. Anticipating death discloses the finite whole within which Dasein chooses its possibilities.
Edmund Husserl : German philosopher who founded phenomenology as a method for describing structures of experience. Heidegger adapted phenomenological method while redirecting it toward existence and Being.
Jean-Paul Sartre : French philosopher and writer whose existentialism treats human freedom as central to existence. Sartre adapted Heideggerian themes while placing human freedom and consciousness at the center.
Subject-object distinction : The division between a knowing subject and an object that is known or encountered. Being-in-the-world challenges this split as a derivative interpretation of more basic involvement.
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