Reddit reviews A Companion to Heidegger

I have read several translations of Being and Time in English as well as the German text. I believe that John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson have performed the best translation at this time. That was the older one from the 60's.

I would also recommend reading some of the work about how to read Heidegger1 2


I believe that Dreyfus and Wrathall are the best Heideggarian scholars currently and I tend to agree with most of their insights.

In the context of the SEP article, the disclosure of the world is its emergence as significance. How do things become significant? By becoming more, or other, than their mere material components. The temple is something qualitatively different from the stone that comprises or supports it. When we look at it, we forget the stone ("earth"), although that is what we are actually, physically seeing – it is concealed from us, retreats – in recognizing the temple (the signifying "world"). In Being and Time, the same point is made with reference to sounds. No one hears naked sounds ("earth"). What we hear is the car going past, the friend coming up the stairs, the meaning "I love you" ("world").

But don't take my word for it. Read Heidegger’s essay. It’s not as difficult as some people make it out to be. There’s a chapter on Heidegger’s ontology of art in Dreyfus & Wrathall’s Companion to Heidegger by Dreyfus himself that takes a somewhat different line, but is also worth reading.