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The terminology of Existenz is so overwhelmingly commonplace in Being and Time (= BT) that even the most experienced editors of the Gesamtausgabe (= GA), among them his students of that period, are hard put to recall when the early Heidegger did not talk like that. And yet there is not only a time when he did not talk like that; there is also a doxographical record of his vox viva — to be clearly distinguished from the Ausgaben letzter Hand, the "editions of the dead hand" purported to be "his" — indicating that Heidegger was quite reticent, indeed "loathe", to use the existentialist jargon, then in vogue, in his public lecture courses. The most fashionable of these terms, "existentiell," is first mentioned once in passing in SS 1920, and will not be used again publicly (and still sparingly) until SS 1923.¹ Even Heidegger's contrarian spelling of the term, "existenziell," may well have been an attempt to distinguish himself — what he meant by the term — from Kierkegaard enthusiasts like his first doctoral student, Karl Löwith.² Heidegger becomes more reserved in his language in the Marburg years, revolted as he was by the jargon of "Kierkegaardism" then current in Marburg's theological circles.³ His talk to the Marburg theologians on July 25, 1924, which inaugurates the public drafting of BT, would therefore have been the last place for him to wax existential. This sets the precedent for the first two drafts of BT, which, contrary to the appearances of the Ausgaben letzter Hand, are completely devoid of the existentialist "lingo."⁴ Given this doxographical record, it is all the more surprising that this language inundates and saturates the final draft, BT itself, so completely. What led Heidegger to adopt the existentialist vocabulary so precipitously and wholeheartedly, literally at the very last minute, after such a long record of reticence and hesitation?

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-1624-6_6

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