Organizational Meeting

10/4 Organisational Meeting

1. Introductions


2. Description of the group: the group is not a class; we will not be teaching Being and Time (SZ). Rather, it will be a guided discussion in which we figure it out together and compare different interpretations. You will be expected to have read the assigned text and to be prepared to discuss it. You need not have understood it, but should be able to ask intelligible questions about what you don't understand.


3. Why read SZ? Group discussion. Mentioned: those who Heidegger influenced; the differences between 'early' Heidegger and 'later' Heidegger; the phenomenological method; the incompleteness of SZ (we have 1/3 of the planned text); the topics covered in SZ: tool use, the world, society and conformity, understanding, moods, death, angst, conscience, time; the question of SZ as the question of what it means to be and its relation to time, given that 'to be' is most generally understood as 'to be present'. We also read the preface to SZ aloud.


4. Reading schedule handed out:







5. Translations: Macquarrie and Robinson translation preferred over Stambaugh.