Introduction

At the beginning of his essay “Heidegger for Beginners”, Simon Critchley asks the question of where one should begin with Heidegger. The two authors of this book answer this question in different, yet complementary, ways. Critchley argues that we must read Heidegger “forwards” from phenomenology. At the foundation of Heidegger’s new approach is a phenomenology of ‘mindless’ everyday coping skills as the basis of all intelligibility”. Heidegger does not claim that the subject–object model that underlies the theory of knowledge is wrong, but rather that it is derivative upon a more primordial way of being-in-the-world. Reiner Schurmann attempts to demonstrate the continuity of the early and later Heidegger through a close reading of the first eight sections of Being and Time. The interpretation of authenticity is controversial, because it rejects the notion that Heidegger’s disastrous political commitments can be traced back to this concept.