Book · 1927
Being and Time
by Martin Heidegger
Heidegger's argument that human existence only gets its meaning from death — 162 Reddit mentions, mostly from people explaining why it's so hard to read.
What does Reddit think of Being and Time?
r/askphilosophy owns 139 of those mentions — the book functions as a recurring touchstone in threads about death, boredom, existentialism, and the analytic-continental split. The ↑255 comment on Sein zum Tode is the standard Reddit explanation of Heidegger's death argument and gets recycled constantly. The Heidegger-as-Nazi thread dominates r/philosophy's 23 mentions. The ↑175 and ↑130 comments work through his Nazi party membership and the Black Notebooks with more care than most newspaper takes, but the conclusion is still that the political context shadows the philosophy. Mentions have held steady since 2019 — 33 that year, 20 in 2025 — which tells you the book stays in circulation not because it's popular but because the questions it asks stay on the table. Nobody on Reddit says it's easy. The ↑225 comment about pseudoHeideggerian pseudophilosophy is the most upvoted insult in the dataset.
Community feedback & reader fit
Themes
- · Being-toward-death (Sein zum Tode)
- · Authenticity and inauthenticity
- · Dasein and human existence
- · Temporality as the meaning of being
- · The analytic-continental divide
- · Heidegger's Nazism and its relationship to his philosophy
Common praise
- + The being-toward-death framework still generates serious discussion in r/askphilosophy threads about mortality and meaning.
- + The boredom analysis — described in r/askphilosophy's ↑95 comment — gives a precise vocabulary for states that most philosophy ignores.
- + Postgrads in both analytic and continental departments cite it as unavoidable, even where they disagree with it.
- + r/askphilosophy uses it as the reliable corrective whenever someone conflates Heidegger with Sartre-style existentialism.
Common criticism
- − r/philosophy commenters spend nearly as much time on Heidegger's Nazi involvement as on the philosophy itself.
- − The ↑225 comment on pseudoHeideggerian pseudophilosophy warns that the book's difficulty makes bad downstream interpretation easy to pull off.
- − r/askphilosophy regularly flags that the existentialism label is misleading — the ↑122 r/philosophy comment makes clear that Heidegger's project is not the same as Sartre's.
- − Annual mentions have trended down from 33 in 2019 — the book is losing ground as a live recommendation even in philosophy-forward spaces.
Who it's for
If you've finished an intro to continental philosophy and want the primary source for everything that follows — Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida — this is it. Philosophy postgrads appear in both r/askphilosophy and r/philosophy threads citing it as unavoidable rather than optional. Come in without that background and you'll hit the neologism wall in the first chapter. The Nazism question is real and not resolved; r/philosophy's high-upvote threads engage it seriously rather than dismissing it.
Mentions over time
Top subreddits
Which Reddit comments matter for Being and Time?
Top-upvoted quotes across the subreddits where this book is mentioned. Click through to read the full thread.
“The German philosopher Martin Heidegger famously argued that being human is "Sein zum Tode" (being-to-death): that human existence gains its meaning (Heidegger calls it "Sinn des Seins") only by being directed towards death. This is in his main work "Sein und Zeit" (Being and Time). Heidegger's argu…
“I watched around 30 hours of this man talking and I challenge *anyone* on this sub to make it even ten minutes through *any* of his lectures from either of his major series (*Awakening from the meaning crisis* and especially *After Socrates*). He wants to teach a kind of pseudoheideggerian pseudop…
“That was the main issue I had with the article. I've had a look at the black notebooks myself, and I did not interpret them as slanderous to this extent. Yes, he was a Nazi. Yes, he supported Nazi rhetoric for some time. But his involvement remains questionable. Heidegger himself never published pol…
“I graduated from a heavily analytic department, I'm currently a postgrad at a continental department. I really love both, and I see the analytic-continental split as broadly sociological. First, I'd say I don't think you've had enough time to really digest these philosophers to make a substant…
“Alright, a cursory search of this page did not return relevant results, so I'll post some obligatory sources around this debate. In the annals of this question there are roughly three important points of reference: 1) Heidegger's appointment as rectory of a state-run university (Freiburg) in 1933 w…
“Except in the very earliest writings of Heidegger, his philosophy really cannot be entangled with existentialism. It is true that for him the meaning of being was time, but this had nothing to do with the general maxim 'to live life to the fullest.' It is true that "Being and Time" does trace out th…
“Martin Heidegger wrote on boredom as a encounter with existence, describing different kinds of boredom and how they demonstrate the relationship between being and time.
“For existentialism, probably the best place to start is Jean-Paul Sartre's *Existentialism Is A Humanism'*. It's an excellent introduction to existentialism. *Nausea*, his first novel, is an existential classic. John Macquarrie's *Existentialism* is excellent in terms of giving you an overview of e…
Convinced? Pick up Being and Time
Readers also mention
Books that share discussion threads with Being and Time — counted from the comments, not curated.
Being and Nothingness
Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre's 700-page argument that you are nothing until you choose what to be — and that terror is the correct response to that fact.
Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant
Kant's 1781 attempt to settle the limits of human knowledge — the book that split philosophy in two and still hasn't been fully digested.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein built a numbered ladder from logical atomism to the inexpressible, then said the ladder had to be discarded once you climbed it.
Fear and Trembling
Søren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard uses Abraham's knife at Isaac's throat to ask whether any act of faith can be explained to the person standing next to you.
Philosophical Investigations
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein's public recantation of his own first masterpiece, dismantling the picture theory of meaning one language-game at a time.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Albert Camus
A 1942 essay that opens with the question of whether life is worth living and ends by insisting Sisyphus is happy.
Being and Time — frequently asked
What does Reddit actually say about Being and Time?+
Mostly explanation, not enthusiasm. Across 162 mentions over seven years, r/askphilosophy (139 mentions) uses it to correct misreadings of existentialism and separate Heidegger's ontology from Sartre. The sentiment is neutral throughout — commenters engage the argument without landing on a clear recommendation. The ↑255 thread on Sein-zum-Tode is the most upvoted single treatment.
Can I read Being and Time without a philosophy background?+
Depends on your tolerance for sustained confusion. r/askphilosophy regulars (↑144 thread) advise that you need time to digest continental philosophers before evaluating them. The ↑91 thread recommends starting with Sartre's Existentialism Is a Humanism as a foothold. Reading Being and Time cold is technically possible but the community doesn't recommend it.
Does Heidegger's Nazi involvement make Being and Time unreadable?+
r/philosophy has run this question twice at high upvote counts (↑175, ↑130). The answer that surfaces: yes he was a Nazi, yes the Black Notebooks exist, and his rectorship at Freiburg in 1933 is documented. What commenters disagree on is whether that contaminates the philosophy. No consensus. The book keeps getting cited despite the question staying open.
Is Being and Time the same as existentialism?+
No, and r/askphilosophy says so at ↑122. Heidegger's concern is the meaning of Being — not a practical ethics of how to live. The Sein-zum-Tode argument is about the structure of existence, not a prompt to 'live fully.' Readers who come in expecting Camus or Sartre will find a different project entirely.