Krdytkyu

I’ll be taking a class on Heidegger’s Being and time next spring, which would be my first rigorous philosophy class. The class would begin by reading Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, and then proceed to Being and Time. The followings are the description of the course:

“Being and Time” and Politics

An exploration of the political implications of Heidegger’s ontology, understood primarily as a phenomenology of mind. We will begin by considering some of the contexts of Heideggerian thought through an examination of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, and we will end by tracing certain aspects of its moral and political influence both in the writings of Levinas and Arendt and in the more recent critical literature on the question of Heidegger and National Socialism. Our principal task, however, will be to pursue a close and systematic study of Being and Time, focusing on central elements of its conceptual apparatus, including, for example, notions of entity and world, care and concern, anxiety and resoluteness, temporality and death, history and the state.

I have very limited experiences in reading philosophy for fun, including Russel’s History of western philosophy, and also Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.

How should I prepare for the coming class?

Should I read some of the works of Aristotle, like Metaphysics, and maybe Categories? Or should I jump Husserl’s Idea I? I have a month and half free before the start of next semester, so I can probably read 2 or 3 books during that time.

Given that you have about a month and a half to prepare, in which you estimate you can read two or three books, I would not recommend starting with Aristotle to understand Being and Time.

Instead, I might focus on the skills necessary to grasp Cartesian Meditations and also to understand the sort of problems Being and Time is dealing with. Neither of these texts are easy reads especially in the absence of a strong background.

If we're limiting ourselves to primary texts, then

I would recommend starting with Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy because this, is after a sense, what the Cartesian Meditations are working from.

I would then suggest reading sections of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Because this will give you some background on what "metaphysics" means for the people you're reading.

In both cases, relevant entries from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or if that's too difficult the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy or Spark Notes to get some background.

If you still have time after that, you could read Aristotle's Metaphysics and then parts of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit to get the gist for some more of the background. Depending on the focuses of the class, you could also look at Kierkegaard's account in Sickness unto Death.

But rather than that, I'd actually suggest working from an introduction to Heidegger volume, but some are better than others. I've found Peperzak easy to read but I don't know if there's an introductory volume from him rather than articles.