Editing Being and Time (section)

===Being===
The work claims that ordinary and even mundane "being-in-the-world" provides "access to the meaning, or 'sense of being' [''Sinn des Seins'']." This access via Dasein is also that "in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something."<ref>"aus dem her etwas als etwas verständlich wird," ''Sein und Zeit'', p. 151.</ref> This meaning would then elucidate ordinary "prescientific" understanding, which precedes abstract ways of knowing, such as logic or theory.<ref name="Ibid., p. 12">''Sein und Zeit'', p. 12.</ref>

Heidegger's concept of Being is metaphorical, according to [[Richard Rorty]], who agrees with Heidegger that there is no "hidden power" called Being. Heidegger emphasizes that no particular understanding of Being (nor of Dasein) is to be valued over another, according to an account of Rorty's analysis by Edward Grippe.<ref name="Grippe, Edward 2007">Grippe, Edward, ''Richard Rorty (1931—2007)'' Internet Encyclopedia</ref> This supposed "non-linguistic, pre-cognitive access" to the meaning of Being did not underscore any particular, preferred narrative.

[[Thomas Sheehan (philosopher)|Thomas Sheehan]] and [[Mark Wrathall]] each separately assert that commentators' emphasis on the term "Being" is misplaced, and that Heidegger's central focus was never on "Being" as such. Wrathall wrote (2011) that Heidegger's elaborate concept of "unconcealment" was his central, life-long focus, while Sheehan (2015) proposed that the philosopher's prime focus was on that which "brings about being as a givenness of entities."<ref>Wrathall, Mark: Heidegger and Unconcealment: Truth, Language, and History, Cambridge University Press, 2011</ref><ref>see also, Sheehan, "Making sense of Heidegger. A paradigm shift." New Heidegger Research. London (England), 2015.</ref>
''Being and Time'' actually offers "no sense of how we might answer the question of being as such," writes [[Simon Critchley]] in a nine-part blog commentary on the work for ''[[The Guardian]]'' (2009). The book instead provides "an answer to the question of what it means to be human" (Critchley).<ref>Critchley, S., [https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/27/heidegger-being-time-philosophy "Heidegger's Being and Time, part 8: Temporality"], ''The Guardian'', July 27, 2009.</ref> Nonetheless, Heidegger does present the concept: "'Being' is not something like a being but is rather "what determines beings as beings."<ref>"...das Sein, das, was Seiendes als Seiendes bestimmt, das, woraufhin Seiendes, mag es wie immer erörtert werden, je schon verstanden ist,"''Sein und Zeit'', p. 6.</ref>