Introduction
Section 7 of Being and Time is Heidegger's definition of phenomenology. He builds it word by word from the two Greek terms that make up the name, phainomenon and logos. The argument is short and careful, and a single misreading of the first term throws the rest off.
This reading follows the section's three moves. It ends with a model paraphrase you can check your reading against.
Locating the Passage
The section runs from H. 27 to H. 39 (Heidegger [1927] 2008, §7, H. 27–39). It has three subsections: A, on the concept of phenomenon; B, on the concept of logos; and C, on the preliminary conception of phenomenology. Both English translations print the German page numbers (H.) in the margin, so you can follow along in either. Key phrases below are quoted from Macquarrie and Robinson.
No free English translation is available. The free Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Heidegger summarizes his method (Wrathall 2025, §2).
Before you start, note Heidegger's aim. He has just argued that the question of being must be raised through an analysis of Dasein. He now needs a method for that analysis. He takes over the name "phenomenology" and its maxim, "To the things themselves!," but he redefines what the method is for.
Walking Through the Argument
Step 1: "Phenomenon" as what shows itself in itself (§7A)
Heidegger starts from the Greek verb phainesthai, "to show itself." A phenomenon, he concludes, is "that which shows itself in itself, the manifest" (§7A, H. 28).
He then separates this from two nearby ideas.
- Semblance (Schein). A thing can show itself as something it isn't: a stick that looks bent in water, or a false friend who seems loyal. Semblance is still a kind of self-showing. It's a privative one, showing itself falsely.
- Appearance (Erscheinung). Here something announces itself through something else that does show itself, while it doesn't show itself at all. Heidegger's example is the symptoms of an illness (H. 29). The symptoms show themselves. The illness doesn't. It is indicated by them.
The order of dependence matters. Appearance depends on phenomena, because something must show itself for anything to be announced through it. Semblance depends on phenomena too, because only what can show itself can show itself falsely. The phenomenon, in the strict sense, comes first.
Step 2: "Logos" as letting something be seen (§7B)
Heidegger now turns to logos. It's usually translated as "reason," "judgment," or "definition." He argues that its basic sense is discourse that makes manifest what the discourse is about. The logos is a way of "letting something be seen" (§7B, H. 32–33).
Heidegger ties this to his account of truth. Discourse is true when it takes what it talks about out of hiding and lets it be seen as uncovered. He glosses the Greek word for truth, aletheia, in these terms, as unconcealment. Truth, on this view, isn't first of all agreement between a judgment and a fact. It's the uncovering that such agreement presupposes.
Step 3: The combined definition (§7C)
Putting the two terms together, Heidegger renders the Greek as a formula: phenomenology means "to let that which shows itself be seen from itself" in the very way it shows itself from itself (§7C, H. 34). This, he says, is just the maxim "To the things themselves!" stated formally.
So the name says nothing about the subject matter. It names a how: a way of letting things be seen, without imposing constructions on them.
Why the Definition Makes Phenomenology the Method of Ontology
The next step turns the formal definition into a program. What is it that most needs to be brought into view by such a method? Heidegger's answer: what doesn't show itself at first, what lies hidden behind what does show itself, yet belongs to it essentially. That is the being of beings (§7C, H. 35).
Beings show themselves all the time. Their being usually doesn't. It's covered over, forgotten, or disguised by received concepts. Phenomenology is needed precisely because the phenomena are not simply given. Heidegger concludes that "only as phenomenology, is ontology possible" (§7C, H. 35). And since the being who asks the question is Dasein, the method takes the form of an interpretation of Dasein: it's hermeneutic (§7C, H. 37).
Key Considerations
Terms and translations. Heidegger works from the Greek and from German. Track them as you read.
| Greek or German | Heidegger's gloss | Macquarrie & Robinson |
|---|
| phainesthai | To show itself | "to show itself" |
| Phänomen | What shows itself in itself | "phenomenon" |
| Schein | Showing itself as what it isn't | "semblance" |
| Erscheinung | Announcing itself through something that shows itself | "appearance" |
| logos / Rede | Discourse that lets something be seen | "logos," "discourse" |
| aletheia | Unconcealment | "truth," "uncovered" |
A common misreading. The most common misreading treats Heidegger's "phenomenon" as a mental appearance or a sense datum: an item in consciousness that stands in for an outer thing. That reading gets §7 backward.
- It confuses phenomenon with appearance. On the misreading, a phenomenon is a representation that points to something beyond it. That's exactly Heidegger's definition of appearance, which announces something that doesn't itself show.
- It relocates the phenomenon in the mind. For Heidegger, the phenomenon is the thing itself as it shows itself: the hammer, the landscape, and ultimately being. It's not an inner proxy.
- It misses the target. The phenomenon phenomenology most needs to uncover is the being of beings, which is not a datum at all.
Summary
Section 7 defines phenomenology from its Greek parts. A phenomenon is what shows itself in itself, distinct from semblance and appearance. Logos lets something be seen. Together they define phenomenology as letting what shows itself be seen from itself. Because being is what mostly doesn't show itself, phenomenology becomes the method of ontology. Here is a model paraphrase to check your reading against:
For Heidegger, a phenomenon is whatever shows itself as it is, in itself. It isn't a representation in the mind, which he'd call an appearance, and it isn't a false show, which he calls semblance. Logos is discourse that lets something be seen. So phenomenology is a method, not a subject matter: it lets things be seen as they show themselves. What most needs this method is the being of beings, which is usually hidden. That's why, for Heidegger, ontology is possible only as phenomenology, and why the phenomenology of Dasein must be interpretive (Heidegger [1927] 2008, §7).
References
- Heidegger, Martin. (1927) 2008. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Harper Perennial Modern Thought. New York: Harper Perennial.
- Wrathall, Mark. 2025. "Martin Heidegger." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. https\://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/.