First sentence of Being and Time

There is no way that I can actually do a commentary on B&T as that would be a major undertaking in itself. The most I can do is put down a few notes about what interests me in the book and see what interests others. About all we can do is try to see why it was and is such a ground breaking book and how it sent the Western Tradition, at least the main Continental Branch off in a different direction incomprehensible to Analytical types.

As is traditional for a slow reading, we will dwell somewhat on the first sentence which is “This question has been forgotten.” The question referred to is seen in the Introduction Title as the question of the meaning of Being. The first section is on the necessity, structure and priority of this question of Being.

A continuous theme in Heidegger is the problem that the Question of Being has been forgotten. For many years this really did not mean anything to me. I only started to understand what this meant and how important it was when I developed my idea of the Pleroma. But here it is in the first sentence of B&T that this question has as part of its significance that it is forgotten. Why is it forgotten? Well one reason is that we are immersed in our preoccupation with being and do not recognize the importance of “Being” as something different from beings.

But since we cannot help but jump ahead this all only really becomes clear in his Contributions to Philosophy: From Ereignis where he distinguishes Beyng (Seyn) from Being (Sein). The difference is that we forget Being but we are oblivious to Beyng. One of the differences between Seyn and Sein (which is what is discussed in Being and Time) is that Seyn is coming at us while Sein is receding into forgetfulness. So part of the Turning of Heidegger’s thought is from Being receding from us into forgetfulness toward the inverse dual of Being which is Beyng which is overwhelming us. This is a point that needs to be kept in mind as we read Being and Time, that this forgetfulness of Being mentioned in the first line is very significant for Heidegger’s thought in general, and it is something that gets fundamentally transformed in the course of his thinking.