Vasily Sesemann’s Review of “Being and Time” of Martin Heidegger: analytical commentary

Abstract

In my paper, I give an analytical commentary on Vasily Sesemann’s review of Martin Heidegger's treatise Being and Time (1927) published in the journal entitled The Way in 1928. The aim of this commentary is to evaluate the adequacy of Sesemann’s perception of Heidegger’s thought and the acceptability of his review for today’s reception of the Heideggerian ontological project. In my text, I state that Sesemann accurately fixes the transcendent essence of Heidegger’s ontological investigation, its basic theme and the main stages of its explication. In this regard, the Sesemann’s evaluation of the project of fundamental ontology in Heidegger is much closer to the very idea of this project in comparison to the evaluations of it given by both Edmund Husserl and Nicolai Hartmann. Sesemann also offered several successful or - at least - original translations of Heideggerian terms into Russian. Since he understands the incompleteness of the project, the results of which were presented in the initial divisions of Being and Time, Sesemann remains very far from being able to provide a final judgement about it. And yet, he points out the key achievements of Heidegger: the special significance of the differentiation of the ways of being of Dasein and the inner-worldly entities, emphasis of care-structure, which allows to grasp Dasein in its integrity and systemic essence of Heidegger’s work. I also acknowledge that although the interpretation proposed by Sesemann contains some weaknesses, f.i., the interpretation of Dasein as being-awareness and the neo-Kantian understanding of the systematic essence of the ontology of Heidegger, the review written by Vasily Sesemann is highly keen and may be valid for reception of Heideggerian philosophy up to nowadays.

Keywords

• fundamental ontology
• phenomenology
• neo-kantianism
• being
• temporality
• being and time