The Concept of Time

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: I enjoyed pondering the book and discussing the ideas with friends. I just wanted to share one of my favorite quotes from the book: "The clock shows us the now, but no clock ever shows teh future or has ever shown the past."

Rating:
Summary: A great way to enter the thought of Martin Heidegger.
Review: The `Concept Of Time' is a lecture Heidegger delivered to the Marburg Theological Society in July of 1924. Heidegger introduces his `ontological' way of asking the question `what is time?' Heidegger's way of asking and answering the question of time is not physical `clock-time', theological or cognitive. Rather, time is rendered intelligible through existence - Dasein. Heidegger distinguishes between authentic time as running back from the future and the inauthentic spatialization of time as a now point `t' next to spatial coordinates `x,y,z'.

Many readers are highly intimidated by Heidegger's masterwork `Being and Time' because of its lenghth, breadth of thought and fusion of language. `The Concept of Time' is a very short and clear piece and makes an excellent primer for `Being and Time' and his thought in general.

Highly recommended for the beginner and any serious scholar who ignored it in the past.

Rating:
Summary: Decent product
Review: Warning: this pre-dates "Being and Time," Heidegger's masterwork, and, by extension, late Heidegger ("Introduction to Metaphysics," "Identity and Difference"). So please don't think of this book as giving you the whole - or even a decent part - of Heidegger's thought.

What it does give are some thoughts on time, being, and another way of looking at history that are invaluable to a student of philosophy. It is a good introduction to learning how to think like a philosopher (not that I'm any good at it, but still). Heidegger in this lecture explains how time should be thought of in the context of our death (the possibility of 'not-being' causes 'being' to think about time seriously in the first place). With that in mind, 'being' at a particular time can be thought of as future-looking, even though to look at the future such 'being' must work through the past - such a 'working through,' of course, creating the present.

There's far more than that in the product, and I would encourage you to get a copy. It is a quick read, but Heidegger's reasoning is memorable, and his notion of what "Dasein" is, why time should not be thought of in the context of eternity, and how history should be looked at are all important for those of us who want to learn about how to think through such issues.