Abstract

Although Sein und Zeit has been the object of both scorn and acclaim, all would agree that in that work Heidegger presents an abundance of new terms presented in sentences that sometimes depart from ordinary grammar. Critics thus tend to divide according to those who "speak the language," those who assert that the same can be said more simply using ordinary diction and grammar, and those who find little or no sense in it at all. I try to show, contrary to , how and why Heidegger's linguistic devices are necessary. I do this by presenting an interpretive scheme by which one can understand the goal and method of existential analysis. I argue that the guiding question in Sein und Zeit is "How is my being there originally?" The original basis of being there that gets disclosed is an a priori structure composed of various "existentialia." This structure is never an objective phenomenon within the world, but a pre-objective way of being that Heidegger calls being-in-the-world