[BRYAN MAGEE]: Professor Barrett, if you can imagine that I am somebody who knows absolutely nothing at all about the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, and you are going to set about giving me some basic idea, how would you begin?

PROFESSOR WILLIAM BARRETT: … I would start with the fundamental concept of 'being in the world'. You and I are together in the same world. You are not a mind attached to a body, and I am not a mind attached to a body; primarily, we are two human beings within the same world. The way in which average, ordinary (or extraordinary) human beings are concretely in the world—that is where we start from and that is where we begin to philosophise about it….

How does Heidegger then proceed?

Once you are planted in the world, the task of philosophy becomes primarily one of description. The philosopher aims...