Being and Time

What the treatise Being and Time attempts to do is to consider the truth of being - and no longer the truth of beings - to determine the essence of man by asking nothing other than his relation to being, and to conceive at its core the essence of man, itself designated as Da-sein in the clearly fixed sense of the term.

Despite the fact that a more original concept of truth had been simultaneously developed, because it had become inwardly necessary, and for thirteen years since the book was published, there has not been the slightest trace of any understanding regarding this questioning, there are two reasons for this. Inveterate, and which even tends to become definitively established, to think in the modern way - man is thought of as a subject; all reflection on man is understood as anthropology.

But, on the other hand, the misunderstanding stems from the attempt itself, which could well draw its sap and vigor from history without anything in it being "fabricated," which comes from what has prevailed so far but struggles to extract itself from it and thereby previously refer and constantly to this tradition and even calls it for help (cf. what the book on Kant understands by "metaphysics of Dasein") to say something entirely different.

But above all, this path is interrupted at a decisive point. An interruption that can be explained by the fact that, despite everything, the attempt made in this direction runs, against its will, the risk of only further strengthening subjectivity and, so to speak, preventing itself from crossing the point of no return or, more precisely: the presentation where it would reach what it tends towards by definition.

Any orientation towards "objectivism" or "realism" remains "subjectivism"; the question of being takes place elsewhere than in the subject-object relationship." Martin Heidegger.