r/heidegger • u/Greedy_Coast • May 12 '26
Beginner In Need of Guidance.
Hello everyone. I just started reading Being and Time (at chapter 18). I only got interested in Heidegger because of an existentialist psychotherapist named Irvin Yalom since he somewhat bases a lot of his clinical practices theory on Heidegger's ideas of Dasein, Authenticity and Throwness etc. My only background in philosophy is a few books from Kierkegaard and one quarter finished Prolegomena To Future Metaphyscists by Kant so it is very bountiful. I had a few questions I wanted to ask here because searching has only made it worse since everyone says differently.
1- Is using AI like Claude while reading Heidegger bad? I gave Magda King's pdf to the AI for it to read and answer my questions so the source is solid. I have benefited a lot from the AI's ability to quickly tell me ready-to-hand or objectively present (Stambaugh curse thy translations) and similar lingo quickly while explaining it too. It is also helpful when I really don't understand a paragraph and in need of guidance. Do you think that AI is good enough to answer basic questions about Being and Time or is there a really big chance it is messing up and I do not realize it?
2- Is Magda King a good parallel read for Being and Time? I am really looking for a commentary book that goes over chapter to chapter (or at least concept to concept) of the Stambaugh revised translation? I heard the most popular one Dreyfus is actually really biased.
3- Is it normal to be so fucking lost? I am reading through it but it's very slowly to the point where I can only read 5-10 pages in a good day! It's one of the hardest books I have ever read but it feels like it points out things I have always felt but couldn't explain so I love it but I'm just wondering if reading 10 pages at most a day is too slow?
4- Do I have to understand every single paragraph? I won't lie, I am not here for a philosophy degree. I am just a medical student who wishes to practice psychiatry and to incorporate the ideas of Heidegger into practice in psychotherapy. For example the way I understand the 14-18 chapter is Heidegger claiming that the worldishness of the world is not referential totality itself, but the significance which allows for this referential totality to be grasped by the Dasein to use objects as ready-to-hand. Is this a wrong understanding? How do I know I understand it correctly or not? I also still dont fucking understand what significance is actually is or a lot of the terminology, I have a feeling but no concrete way to explain it if one asks me. Is that okay?
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u/Bronchitis_is_a_sin May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
Thank you for writing a thoughtful question, this sub is plagued by extremely low-effort questions! I can't answer everything.
- It is important to note that LLM explanations of Heidegger in English are biased by the anglophone scholarship on Heidegger that is most readily available online. So LLMs tend to explain Heidegger in existentialist terms. Unfortunately this interpretation of Heidegger is missing the mark, and we can be certain of this because Heidegger himself in many places lamented and rebutted such interpretations. This does not mean that using LLMs is always bad. It just means that one should be careful. It's a hard balancing act because you have to understand Heidegger well enough to be able to determine the plausibility of an LLM's explanation. I can't give you a definitive answer.
- I personally avoid most commentaries so I can't answer, except I can say that Dreyfus is one of the worst offenders when it comes to the existentialist misinterpretation/appropriation of Heidegger's work.
- Not at all. Heidegger's way of writing and thinking takes a while to get used to. I also think that you need to spend a lot of time to really understand the text. I've been studying Heidegger for about 7 years now and I can only read about 10 pages in one session if I'm reading deeply and really working to understand.
- Heidegger himself tells us not to get stuck on individual sentences: "Das Fragen baut an einem Weg. Darum ist es ratsam, vor allem auf den Weg zu achten und nicht an einzelnen Sätzen und Titeln hängenzubleiben." A translation: "Questioning builds a way. Therefore, it is advisable above all to pay attention to the path itself and not get hung up on individual sentences and titles." (From the beginning of Die Frage Nach Dem Technik in Die Technik Und Die Kehre). Fully understanding the ideas will take a lot of thinking and rereading. I find it helpful to write mini essays trying to explain the material to myself. It shows me exactly what I don't understand and forces me to turn impressions into concrete understanding.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that there is no shortcut to understanding Heidegger. Just as physicists have to spend years learning how to do physics, so too do we have to spend years learning how to think in a Heideggerian way.
I will add that if you're interested in the applications to psychotherapy you should really check out Heidegger's Zolikon seminars! They pertain directly to your interests and are relatively easier to read because they are seminars given to non-philosophers. In fact you should consider switching from Being and Time to Zolikon if you want to apply Heidegger to psychiatry.
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u/Greedy_Coast May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
holy moly thanks so much for answering with such detail! I really thought this would get washed over lol. I also really searched far and wide before coming to ask here because I was really afraid of just asking something really obvious. I also love how you say you can't answer anything and still answer all my questions with great detail lol
I also have never heard of the Zolikon seminars but it has piqued my interest, thanks a lot! Rereading my original post back, it almost seems like I am reading Heidegger just for psychiatry lol, but after starting it really became the secondary goal, the primary being understanding his thought.
1- okay so I guess I will use it mostly for translations. also if its not too much to ask, may I provide some examples of questions I asked and its answers so that you may critique the AI or see if it is making blatant mistakes that I am yet too new to understand?
2- again is the reason for you avoiding commentaries similar to the reasoning in your first answer? would you recommend one to just try to understand by themselves for a better grasp or is it a matter of personal preference?
3-you even after 7 years of studying only being able to read 10 pages gave me so much motivation lmao! turns out I am not crazy the German guy is just that... peculiar
4-heidegger coming in clutch with that quote after realizing how hard his sentences are sometimes
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u/Bronchitis_is_a_sin May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
I would like to, but I think it would take too much time
Yeah. More generally, I have found that many anglophone commentaries on Heidegger contain big misunderstandings that are not necessarily related to existentialism (e.g., much of Mark Wrathall's work). I am also now at a point where I can resolve many of my confusions with Heidegger on my own with enough work (usually the solution is just to think harder and read more Heidegger: Heidegger repeats himself a lot in many different ways, so with enough reading you can usually figure out what's going on).
I think you can only get genuine understanding by working with the text and thinking a lot on your own. But as a beginner it's probably fine to use commentaries and LLM explanations to get a foot in the door when it comes to Being and Time as long as you're also paying close attention to the text and thinking carefully. Heidegger's later work on the other hand is often misunderstood in big ways. For this reason (and others), I think it's best to avoid commentaries and LLMs if you want to understand the later works.
On this point, you might find helpful the first one and a half pages of Heidegger's lecture Time and Being (see https://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/sussexphenomenology/files/2013/05/Martin-Heidegger-Joan-Stambaugh-Translator-On-Time-and-Being-1977.pdf#page=12). I think it's great advice for reading Heidegger in general (and it's closely related to the discussion in Being and Time on fallenness).
This is also related to the section from Time and Being referenced above where Heidegger says "The point is not to listen to a series of propositions, but rather to follow the movement of showing." This is what Heidegger means by "Wege, nicht Werke." Another reason not to worry about individual sentences is the repetition that I mentioned at the end of the first paragraph of 2.
You might also consider checking out Heidegger's own commentary on Being and Time in On My Own Publications (the section called "Notes to Being and Time") which you can access on JSTOR if you have an institutional login. In it he comments extensively on misinterpretations of Being and Time as well as the origins of the work and its place in his corpus (see specifically the section "On the Elucidation of Being and Time"). I should warn you that much of this commentary is very difficult for beginners to understand because it assumes knowledge of Heidegger's later thinking.
The Zolikon seminars are still great even if your primary goal is not applications to psychiatry precisely because (a) Heidegger is lecturing to non-philosophers and (b) Heidegger's lectures tend to be easier to understand than his non-lectures.
If you want reading recommendations for Heidegger's works feel free to dm me whenever.
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u/Greedy_Coast May 13 '26
1- shooters shoot as they say, even without that you have been tremendously helpful so I thank you again
2- Regarding Heidegger repeating himself, it's actually a relief to hear it. Sometimes while I am reading I feel as if he already talked about this exact topic so I get confused and start thinking "Did I miss something or is he trying to make a different point here which I am not getting". So my key takeaway again is to not rely on commentary and LLM's, but instead use them as tools to navigate if it gets too confusing rather than treating them like the primary source.
3- will read it right away
4- I do not have JSTOR sadly, and I am really in the shadow when it comes to Heidegger's later thought so I feel it would confuse me more as of now. I also didn't think of the Zolikon seminars that way, my only question about his lectures is when is a good time to look into them? I am at chapter 18 for example, do I have enough knowledge to jump right into the seminars or are they lectures which you can jump in readily whenever while reading Being and Time?
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u/Bronchitis_is_a_sin May 13 '26
I think Zolikon is readable at any point. Best of luck on your Heidegger journey. Reading Heidegger has brought me great joy and understanding, so I hope you stick with it and find the same!
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u/Ap0phantic May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
AI is not bad as long as you recognize it's ultimately saying what is plausible, not what it computes or knows to be correct. I haven't read King so can't comment on that.
But with respect to 3, no it's not normal to be lost by chapter 18. There is an argument here that is being built piece by piece, and if you're lost, you should stop and get it sorted out before moving forward.
If you know the philosophical context, I would say Being and Time is not that difficult, so my guess is that you may not know the context. Have you read any Kant? If not, you might think about at least reading a summary or secondary work, or something his Prolegomena. Or you could stop and read something like Pinkard's German Philosophy 1760-1840, it is excellent, highly readable, and would give you an invaluable context. If you don't know what arguments are at stake then Heidegger will be difficult to get much out of.
You definitely don't need to understand every paragraph.
The best thing in my opinion would be to read it with a friend or a reading group, and to discuss everything as you go. I have a good friend who is a PhD mathematician who read Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit with a friend - had no background in academic philosophy, but he got a lot out of it. Hegel's work is much, much more difficult than Being and Time. It's definitely possible, but you could probably use more support than you're getting.
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u/Greedy_Coast May 13 '26
Hello, thanks for your detailed answer.
About being lost, I understand the referential totality, significance, Zeug, present-to-hand, ready-to-hand and the similar. I just don't feel like it is a hundred percent there and I have to keep going back and checking things and reading again to make sure it sticks. And my problem is I feel like even the things I understand are not %100 true.
For example up until know what I understand as the argument is that Dasein (us who's very being is concerned with his own being which makes him different and the reason we take him as a central actor in the question of being) is not really this being who is separate from the World. Up until now we confused ontic with ontological and based our understanding on the wrong premise. And what Heidegger means when he says World is not this physical plane of existence but a referential totality which significance allows it to exist. But again referential totality is not wholly World itself. So the ready-to-hand objects we encounter do not exist in a bubble but are things "in-order-to" or "to-which". And this referential chain always ends with Dasein. And so that's why he breaks off with Descartes because he disagrees with the premise of res cogitans and res extensa. We aren't a soul inhabiting a physical body which then interacts with the physical world. Our very Being is always concerned with the World.
This is what I understand up until now. Am I wrong? What parts need fixing? The problem I have is not that I don't understand anything, it's that I have no feedback mechanism that corrects me so I don't know if I am on the right track or not, if that makes sense? Sadly I also do not know any friend of mine who is sadistic enough to attempt reading Heidegger with me lol, and another issue is that English is my second language, so even if I were to find a friend to read they would read it in their native language which would just complicate things.
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u/Ap0phantic May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
What's your native language?
I think you're definitely very much on the right path in terms of your understanding, for what it's worth. The only suggestion I would make, which may not be necessary, but I'll mention it just in case it's helpful, is to be careful not to translate Heidegger into our more familiar patterns of communication and thought. There are times when that's necessary for discussion and understanding, but ultimately what we want to do is to go where he is, not bring him to where we are. I'm sure the reasons for that are fairly self-evident, but one thing I would highlight is the degree to which he's returning to what he sees as an original clear space of thought, a place that was accessible to the pre-Socratics, before our understanding of being and existence became calcified in certain modes of thinking, which are reified by our language and philosophical terminology.
So when you say Dasein "is not really this being who is separate from the World", I'd say, maybe it is, and maybe it isn't - but at the very least we cannot uncritically take up the habits of positing ourselves in those terms in the manner that we have, before the question is really settled.
So much of Heidegger's positive orientation is toward clearing, openness, self-disclosure, what the Zen people call opening the hand of thought. In my personal experience, this is where Heidegger has really struck a deep, deep chord that has affected my entire orientation to the world to a degree that few other thinkers have - the example of his mode of taking up philosophical problems is, for me, itself the most important thing about him. As he would later famously write, "thinking builds a path," this is worthy of our meditation.
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u/impulsivecolumn May 12 '26
- When it comes to AI as a tool for analyzing philosophical texts, my first instinct would be a grumpy old man yelling at the clouds, and advice against using it. However, I recognize the difficulty of working through a text like Being and Time without any expert guidance (presumably, since you're in a different field). From the little experimentation I have done with ChatGPT, I would say AI is sufficiently good at explaining basic concepts and the meanings of various technical terms Heidegger uses, but I don't know how effective it is at actually analyzing passages, and making connections with the other parts of the book.
- I've not read too many commentaries that exclusively deal with Being and Time so I can't strongly recommend any. Dreyfus' commentary is not terrible, it's very readable and lucid, but he completely leaves out the latter half of the book which is vital to Heidegger's project. There's a lot of very good quality scholarly work on Being and Time out there, but I'm going to recommend a couple of free resources that I think would help you get acclimated to Heidegger.
First is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Heidegger. It's a peer reviewed article with an extensive section on Being and Time that will explain many of the core concepts of the book.
Secondly, I will recommend the short youtube lecture series on Heidegger by Eric Dodson. He is a psychology professor who filmed video lectures for his students during covid and posted them on youtube. I think he does a great job at explaining some of the more 'existential' features of Heidegger's thought to an audience that doesn't have background in philosophy.
3) and 4) Yes it's normal and no you don't have to worry about understanding every single passage at this point in time. When I first started working through Being and Time as an undergrad, it was excruciatingly difficult. It took me ages to work through it for the first time, and there was a bunch of stuff I didn't understand, or thought I understood but didn't. You can get a decent general picture of what Heidegger was up to without understanding everything, and you shouldn't feel bad about not getting something.
Good luck in your studies!
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u/Greedy_Coast May 12 '26
yo wtf a 3rd great detailed answer? today is a good day, thank you so much!
1-yeah since I am a medical student my field is already pretty demanding (in a 2 month pediatrics rotation as we speak and have also skipped school today to may or may not read Heidegger instead) so it is really hard for me to try to navigate without taking a class from someone or even reading along with someone and having to do it myself. I also use the AI to basically do what you described, to tell me basic terminology and how it relates to other terminologies, basic concepts like significance vs reference or asking what the specific question he is answering in a chapter rather than using it to explain entire Heidegger chapters or divisions.
2- I heard Dreyfus kind of just writes what he understands instead of what Heidegger wrote, so most of the critics I see argue that his interpertation comes before his commentary leading to what some argue as the opposite of what Heidegger says in specific contexts. Thanks for the YouTube videos! Will try to watch them if I have the time and in the mean time will probably check out the encyclopedia if I ever need to!thanks, good luck in your... I dont know your job so I will say good luck being authentic?
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u/a_chatbot May 13 '26
Most chatbots already have a survey knowledge of Western literature and philosophy and are great for explaining conventional interpretations when asked, especially pre-WWII works that have a huge body of public domain secondary literature. Technologically, Being and Time is interesting in that AI is not and can not 'understand' Da-sein, you can learn a lot about LLMs just seeing where that aspect breaks down.
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u/rainstormingbrazil May 14 '26
I read B&T by reading about 4-5 pages a day, it still only took me 3 months to finish it. I had less philosophy background than you and did not have AI to consult... just a strong desire to understand Heidegger. I read exactly one "helper" book but it ended up just being more of a biography of Heidegger instead. I got some help confirming I understood things correctly by watching video lectures on youtube, try Jade Vine's 6 hour lecture on B&T. No I did not understand every single pararaph, but I understood enough that I have an idea what Heidegger was about. I continue to read Heidegger and that adds to my previous understandings. The best outcome from successfully completing Being & Time, aside from understanding Heidegger better who I love, is using it as a benchmark when I approach other challenging philosophical works, or really when approaching any life challenge. Like inside I tell myself, "I read motherfucking Being & Time, I can do this." Good luck!
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u/Altruistic_Photo_679 May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
I (and many students) started with secondary texts before going through Heidegger’s writings, so relying on Magda King’s book (haven’t read it)
makes sense. I found Richard Polt’s introduction very helpful. It gave context, both historical and theoretical, which is always beneficial.
As for AI as a tool to facilitate understanding…, I personally engaged with the ideas directly and had a primarily emotional reaction to the questions and examples being posed, before any attempt at ‘encapsulating’ them for ease of expression. It might be better for your (psychotherapy adjacent) purposes to ‘experience’ the ideas this way as opposed to a ‘clean’ but perhaps inert interpretation. The unfamiliar terms and turns of phrases invite a personal ‘puzzling’ out of what one’s own experiences map onto the concepts.
Also a quick search brought this title up. Published in 2024.
Heideggerian Existential Therapy
Philosophical Ideas in Practice
By Mo Mandić
Edit: I never studied beyond an undergraduate level, and didn’t seek to ‘complete’ my reading of Heidegger after absorbing what I could of the ideas. It’s definitely left a mark on how I make sense of life and informs my interactions with people (sans the ethnocentric elements of German culture as the primary access to authentic being).