Another book is born. One could conclude, from the old Heidegger's account of it, that it simply occurred to him sometime in SS 1923 to start jotting down notes for a book which would bear the title "Being and Time" (US 95/9). But the Story we have been telling uncovers a far more complex context which places this matter-of-fact anecdotal simplification in a far richer trajectory of precedents and tendencies. BT as an overall program had its birth in the Introduction to an Aristotle book drafted in October 1922. The work on Aristotle dominated Heidegger's publication plans well into 1924. The following two years, through 1926, were dominated by the publication project which first bore the titles "The Concept of Time" ( 1924) and "History of the Concept of Time" (1925) before it eventually was entitled "Being and Time" (1926). But this overlapping of publication projects is already an indication of their interdependence. Of course, in 1922, Heidegger was not yet aware of the fact that, in introducing a book on Aristotle, which he never managed to publish, he was laying the ground for another book which would precipitate him to world fame. But in 1922, he was already acutely aware of the close relationship between the historical and the systematic dimensions of his overall program. Thus, as early as February 20, 1923, he reports to Lowith that he is expanding that Introduction to include basic elements of earlier interpretations of the facticity of life—the systematic part—to the extent that these are related to the interpretations of Aristotle that are to follow. And when the very first draft of BT does take shape, it is then redrafted in 1925 to relate it back to the historical purpose from which it sprang, "as a basis for the destruction of Greek ontology and logic"1—literally the same goal which was operative in the book on Aristotle. The same backftow undoubtedly took place with the treatise on
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