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HEIDEGGER, Martin. Being and Time. A Translation of Being and Time.
SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press, 1996. xix + 487 pp. Cloth, $57.50; paper, $18.95-This is the much anticipated publication of Joan Stambaugh's translation of Martin Heidegger's major work. As the translator notes in her preface: "This translation was begun some time ago and has undergone changes over the years as colleagues have offered suggestions" (p. xiv). An earlier version of the translation was privately circulated among scholars during the nearly twenty years that passed before SUNY Press was able to make available the work, which is based on the seventh edition (1953) of Sein und Zeit. The translation includes Heidegger's marginalia to his copies of the book which have been part of the published German text since 1977. An earlier version of Professor Stambaugh's translation of the "Introduction" of the work was published that same year. The text is equipped with a lexicon prepared by Theodore Kisiel, a leading American Heidegger scholar and champion of a critical edition of Heidegger in German and, one hopes, in English as well.
It is peculiar indeed that this is only the second English translation of such an important work during the seventy years it has been on the scene. For example, five Japanese translations have been brought out since 1929, two years after the book first appeared. The first English translation, which did more to bar access to Heidegger's thought for several generations of readers than has even the voluminous secondary literature that attempted to imitate what was taken to be Heidegger's style, was published in London in 1962 by the Student Christian Movement Press. The present rendering is offered to "remedy some of the infelicities and errors of the previous translation" (p. xiv). Unlike the first translators, Professor Stambaugh had direct contact with Heidegger as his student and later continued to consult with...