It is also noted for an array of neologisms and complex language, as well as an extended treatment of "authenticity" as a means to grasp and confront the unique and finite possibilities of the individual.
Richard Wolin notes that the work "implicitly adopted the critique of mass society” epitomized earlier by Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche.
The human condition is portrayed as "essentially a curse.”[1] Wolin cites the work's extended emphasis on “emotionally laden concepts” like guilt, conscience, angst and death.
The book is likened to a secularized version of Martin Luther's project, which aimed to turn Christian theology back to an earlier and more “original” phase.
Taking this view, John D. Caputo notes that Heidegger made a systematic study of Luther in the 1920s after training for 10 years as a Catholic theologian.
[5] The critic George Steiner argues that Being and Time is a product of the crisis of German culture following Germany's defeat in World War I.
In this respect Steiner compared it to Ernst Bloch's The Spirit of Utopia (1918), Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918), Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption (1921), Karl Barth's The Epistle to the Romans (1922), and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (1925).
Heidegger's mentor Edmund Husserl developed a method of analysis called "phenomenological reduction" or "bracketing," that emphasized primordial experience as its key element.
[21] In this vein, Robert J. Dostal asserts that "if we do not see how much it is the case that Husserlian phenomenology provides the framework for Heidegger's approach," then it's impossible to exactly understand Being and Time.
Laverty writes (Kvale 1996), "This spiraling through a hermeneutic circle ends when one has reached a place of sensible meaning, free of inner contradictions, for the moment.
This explanation takes the form of a destructuring (Destruktion) of the philosophical tradition, an interpretative strategy that reveals the fundamental experience of being hidden within the theoretical attitude of the metaphysics of presence.
[28]: 11–13 In later works, while becoming less systematic and more obscure than in Being and Time, Heidegger turns to the exegesis of historical texts, especially those of Presocratic philosophers, but also of Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Plato, Nietzsche, and Hölderlin, among others.
[34] Heidegger's work influenced the output of the Frankfurt School including Jürgen Habermas's hermeneutics and Herbert Marcuse's early and abortive attempt to develop "Heideggerian Marxism.
Adorno accused Heidegger of evading ethical judgment by disingenuously presenting "authenticity" as a value-free, technical term –rather than a positive doctrine of the good life.
[40][41] Bertrand Russell was dismissive of Being and Time ("One cannot help suspecting that language is here running riot"), and the analytic philosopher A. J. Ayer outright called Heidegger a charlatan.
[42] The conservative British writer Roger Scruton called (2002) Being and Time a "description of a private spiritual journey" rather than genuine philosophy.