Study support
Reading further, and knowing what a source supports
The lessons supply the arguments the study needs; further reading is optional. If you do read further, starting with one passage and the argument around it is more useful than treating the bibliography as a second course to finish first. Section numbers, marked §, locate parts of Being and Time across editions; the page numbers below belong to the named English editions.
Primary passages to return to
For the early lessons, Being and Time §§15–18 return to equipment and world, §§26–27 to being-with and the they, and §§29 and 31 to attunement and possibility. The more demanding discussions of care (§41), death (§§46–53), conscience (§§54–60) and temporality (§65) are best approached after lessons 04–07. These are routes into connected arguments, not definitions to detach from them. The account of historicality in section 74 needs the critical context of lesson 08.
For the later lessons, David Farrell Krell’s Basic Writings, second revised and expanded edition (HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), collects the five complete essays this study uses. Its introductions help orient a first encounter with each:
| Essay | A manageable starting point and its context |
|---|---|
| “On the Essence of Truth,” pp. 115–138 | Begin with correctness and openness, then follow the turn toward concealment. John Sallis’s translation has a 1961 basis. The essay’s origin as a 1930 lecture, its first printing in 1943 and the 1949 addition to its concluding note should be kept distinct. Lesson 09 reads the complete essay and note. |
| “Letter on Humanism,” pp. 217–265 | Return to the opening discussion of thinking and language after lessons 09–10. Frank A. Capuzzi translated the letter in collaboration with J. Glenn Gray, with editorial reference to Roger Munier. The whole letter and its apparatus were read; the letter’s retrospective account does not settle the history of Heidegger’s development. |
| “The Origin of the Work of Art,” pp. 143–212 | Follow the temple and the discussion of world and earth with lesson 10, then read the essay’s qualifications and later additions. Albert Hofstadter’s translation credit names the 1960 German text. The complete reading includes the epilogue and addendum. The 1935 origin, the expanded 1936 lectures, the 1956 addendum and the 1960 reference are not one unchanged occasion. |
| “Building Dwelling Thinking,” pp. 347–363 | The bridge offers a way in before the fourfold; read on through the refusal to prescribe a return to the farmhouse. The lecture’s 1951 occasion differs from the 1954 German source credited for Hofstadter’s 1971 translation. Lesson 11 follows both divisions and the editorial footnote. |
| “The Question Concerning Technology,” pp. 311–341 | Start with the correct instrumental account and follow its transformation into the question of revealing, reading through to the uncertain prospect for art at the end. William Lovitt’s 1977 translation is slightly altered by Krell. Lesson 12 distinguishes the 1949 antecedent, the revised 1953 lecture and the 1954 and 1962 German print sources. |
The complete essays were read in English, with their relevant apparatus, but were not collated with the German originals. Neither the whole anthology nor the separate translation volumes were read in full. Selected page images were used to check passages in the imperfect scan; this was not a line-by-line comparison of every page.
Where interpretations disagree
William Blattner’s Heidegger’s Being and Time: A Reader’s Guide, second edition (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), helps with the early arguments and with differences between translations. The study used specified chapters and subsections, not the whole volume. It compares Blattner’s account of death, time and history with Piotr Hoffman’s different interpretation, without presenting the two as a documented exchange. Hoffman’s chapter in Charles B. Guignon’s The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, second edition (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 222–240, was read to the end across two lessons, with all eight of its notes, rather than in one uninterrupted reading.
The same Cambridge volume supplies Mark Wrathall’s “Truth and the essence of truth,” pp. 241–267, and Julian Young’s “The fourfold,” pp. 373–392, both read completely. Its chapter by Dreyfus on nihilism, art, technology and politics, pp. 345–372, is used more selectively: the introduction, the later part of “Nihilism,” the complete sections on art, technology and politics, and all the notes. An earlier part of “Nihilism” remains unread. Do not treat the chapter’s picture of a culture or of political development as uncontested.
Julian Young’s Heidegger’s Later Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2002) develops the religious reading tested in lessons 11–12. Chapters 3, 4, 6 and 9 were read completely, and chapter 7 only at pp. 91–94; neither its later continuation nor the full chapter 8 was read. Young’s answer to quietism therefore rests here on the argument actually followed in chapter 9, not on an implied complete reading of his book.
A different collection, A Companion to Heidegger, edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall (Blackwell, 2005), supplies three complete chapters used here: Iain Thomson on National Socialism, pp. 32–48; Cristina Lafont’s “Hermeneutics,” pp. 265–284; and Charles Taylor’s “Heidegger on Language,” pp. 433–455. Lafont questions how a framework relates to what inquiry can correct; Taylor supports the brief comparison of early discourse and later language. These specialist arguments raise further questions once you have read the relevant lessons.
Editions and the limits of the early text
The working edition is Joan Stambaugh’s translation, revised by Dennis J. Schmidt (SUNY Press, 2010). The available electronic text is defective: it has missing words, damaged Greek and no verified mapping to print pages. It can support a careful, qualified reading of the arguments, but not unverified quotation. The damaged negation in §9 was excluded, and lesson 01’s account of everydayness has separate support in §5. Fifty-two distinct section bodies in that electronic text were read, with qualifications, rather than the whole book; this records how much was read and does not certify the text’s accuracy. Notes were checked within the bounds stated in the lessons. Section 68, which falls outside that count of complete sections, was only partly read.
Two selections from John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson’s translation give limited help. The Continental Philosophy Reader, edited by Richard Kearney and Mara Rainwater (Routledge, 1996), credits Blackwell’s 1967 edition; the study used pp. 27–39 and the isolated p. 46. The Phenomenology Reader, edited by Dermot Moran and Timothy Mooney (Routledge, 2002), pp. 288–307, credits the 1962 translation and supplies §§14–17 with only part of §18. Neither selection is a complete alternate Being and Time.
Passages from Stambaugh’s unrevised 1996 translation also clarified particular doubtful readings, without silently repairing the revised 2010 text. The pages verified are pp. 114–115; 126–127 and 178–180; 244–246; 252–254 and the non-contiguous 260, 262 and 264; and 298 and 301. Pages 261, 263 and 299–300 were unavailable in the previews checked; no complete alternate §§59–62 were supplied. The relevant lessons explain what each witness supports and what remains excluded.
The political evidence and its limits
Lesson 08 read the complete rectoral address in a University of Texas teaching transcription that names the 1990 Neske and Kettering volume, pp. 5–13. The attribution of the translation to Lisa Harries is supported by bibliography but not printed on that transcription, and the text was not collated with the printed volume or with the German.
Claims about the notebooks are mediated through named scholarship, including Donatella Di Cesare’s Heidegger and the Jews: The Black Notebooks, translated by Murtha Baca (Polity, 2018), and Ingo Farin’s entry in Mark A. Wrathall’s The Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon (Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 124–126. The exact primary contexts were unavailable for three items: the quotation about worldlessness, the construction that places the Jew in the position of the stone, and the interpretation of a passage on self-annihilation against the Shoah. The qualifications lesson 08 attaches to them remain necessary. A general account of technology supplies neither those missing contexts nor evidence of repentance.
A reference inside any of these works is a lead, not proof that the cited work has been read, and the study claims no whole-book reading. Its original examples and worked responses are teaching constructions, and you can assess their arguments whether or not you agree with Heidegger.