§ 1. Exposition and general division of the theme
This course1 sets for itself the task of posing the basic problems of phenomenology, elaborating them, and proceeding to some extent toward their solution. Phenomenology must develop its concept out of what it takes as its theme and how it investigates its object. Our considerations are aimed at the inherent content and inner systematic relationships of the basic problems. The goal is to achieve a fundamental illumination of these problems.
In negative terms this means that our purpose is not to acquire historical knowledge about the circumstances of the modern movement in philosophy called phenomenology. We shall be dealing not with phenomenology but with what phenomenology itself deals with. And, again, we do not wish
1. A new elaboration of division 3 of part 1 of Being and Time. [The 7th edition of Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1953) carries the following prefatory remark:
"The treatise Sein und Zeit first appeared in the spring of 1927 in the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, volume 8, edited by E. Husserl, and simultaneously as a separate printing.
"The new impression presented here as the seventh edition is unaltered in its text, although quotations and punctuation have been revised. The page numbers of the new impression agree down to slight variations with those of earlier editions.
"The caption 'First Half,' affixed to the previous editions, has been dropped. After a quarter of a century, the second half could no longer be added without giving a new exposition of the first. Nevertheless, the path it took still remains today a necessary one if the question of being is to move our own Dasein.
"For the elucidation of this question the reader is referred to the book Einführung in die Metaphysik, which is appearing simultaneously with this new printing under the same imprint. It contains the text of a lecture course given during the summer semester of 1935."
See Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1953), trans. Ralph Manheim, Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959; Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1961).]
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