Towards Authentic Existence--Heidegger's Understanding of Guilt: A New Selected Translation and Commentary of Section 58 of Sein Und Zeit‪.‬

Introduction In section 58 of Being and Time (BT) Martin Heidegger considers the importance of guilt within the economy of human emotions. In what follows I provide a selected and up-to-date translation and commentary of this section which makes relevant his work to existential therapists and psychoanalysts today (1). Heidegger's theory of emotion/mood is radically different from traditional conceptions that regarded them as little more than sensuous states that accompany the higher faculty of reason, and that can be classified according to their qualities of pleasure, pain and desire. The unique contribution made in BT to our understanding of emotions/moods is the idea that they are a pre-cognitive means of disclosing Dasein's Beinginthe-world, a deep-rooted ontological insight that evades formulation by rational contemplation and allows Dasein access to Being.