Summary: Being and Time (page 3)

From the very outset, thought falls into this confusion, according to Heidegger. And indeed, Aristotle lays himself open to this objection, since later in the Metaphysics he claims that the fundamental meaning of being is substance (ousia), which belongs to beings—or rather, is the being par excellence.

This is what we find in the first chapter of Book Z:

We cannot […] decide whether walking, being in good health, or sitting are, or are not, beings; and the same goes for all other similar states. For none of these modes has, in itself, an existence of its own, none can be separated from substance. […] These things seem to bear so strongly the character of being only because beneath each of them there is a being, a determinate subject.

And this subject is substance, the particular being that appears under the various attributes. 'Good', 'sitting', mean nothing without this substance.

It is therefore clear that the existence of each of these modes depends on the very existence of substance. Accordingly, substance will be primary being: not this or that mode of being, but being taken in its absolute sense.¹

In these lines we can already see the fateful destiny of the question of being: no sooner does it appear than it disappears. If substance—which belongs to the domain of beings—is taken as the truth of being, thought will focus on it and thus on beings, and an essential line of questioning will be lost from view.

These initial considerations are enough to help us grasp the horizon within which Heidegger's thought unfolds. His task is to renew a dialogue, across the centuries, with Plato and Aristotle—to return to this originary question of which they had an intimation, but which they only sketched and brushed against before letting it slip away.

We can now better understand the meaning of Heidegger's injunction in the opening lines of the work: we are compelled to pose afresh the question of the meaning of being.

So, without further delay, let us open Being and Time and immerse ourselves in the thread of the text as one might plunge into a life-giving current…

Introduction: Setting Out the Question of Being

Chapter 1 – Necessity, Structure and Primacy of the Question of Being

Here Heidegger does not embark on a broad historical survey; he does not set out to summarise the various answers given to this question in the history of philosophy. And with good reason: there is no history of this question, since it fell into oblivion as soon as it appeared. His overview is accordingly brief. Plato and Aristotle, as well as Hegel, are mentioned only in passing:

It is [this question] that kept the investigations of Plato and Aristotle in motion, before dying out after them—at least as a thematic question for genuine philosophical inquiry. What these two thinkers had won was preserved only at the cost of various distortions and accretions, right up to Hegel's logic.

Heidegger's focus is on the present rather than the past. What is it that makes this question seem no longer meaningful or interesting to his contemporaries in the early twentieth century?

Three prejudices prevent us from devoting to this question the attention it deserves—these are what underlie contemporary indifference. Heidegger sets out to dismantle them one by one.

1. Being is the most universal concept. Heidegger replies that the 'universality' of 'being' is not that of a genus; rather, the universality of being 'transcends' any generic universality, as Aristotle had already glimpsed when he treated it as something different from, and overarching, the categories. But what does this new kind of universality actually mean? What does it refer to? In other words, what is the relation between being and the categories? Neither Aristotle nor medieval ontology managed to answer this question. Nothing, then, is yet settled concerning the universality of being.

2. Being is an indefinable concept, since we define something by indicating its genus and species (for example, the human being is Homo sapiens), and there is no genus that could stand above being: Being can neither be derived from higher concepts nor explained with the help of lower ones. Heidegger replies: all this allows us to conclude is that being cannot be defined on the basis of predicates belonging to beings. But this does not put an end to the problem of being or resolve it; it remains intact.

3. Being is an obvious concept: everyone understands the meaning of this word as it is used in any judgement, such as 'the sky is blue' or 'I am happy'. There is therefore no problem of being—rather its exact opposite: a self-evidence of being. Heidegger replies that this average level of understanding hardly demonstrates anything other than a lack of understanding. We thus arrive at an intriguing paradox, which should spur us to think this problem through rather than abandon it:

That we always already live in an understanding of being and that at the same time the meaning of being is shrouded in darkness – this shows the fundamental necessity of repeating the question of the meaning of "being".

As we can see, the question of being is not devoid of meaning, nor is there any obvious answer to it. It should not be brushed aside, but faced squarely and with courage.

¹ Our translation. The references for the quotations are available in the book Heidegger: A Close Reading