Being and Time describes his project in the following way: "our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the sense of "being" and to do so concretely." Heidegger claims that traditional ontology has prejudicially overlooked this question, dismissing it on the basis that being is the most universal and emptiest concept, that is indefinable or obvious. Instead Heidegger proposes to understand being itself, as distinguished from any specific entities (beings). "'Being' is not something like a being." Being, Heidegger claims, is "what determines beings as beings, that in terms of which beings are already understood." Heidegger is seeking
Rage and Time was "a first step" toward such a thing. "Publishers Weekly" called the book "a brilliant and conceptually rich analysis of the influence of rage on the development of Western culture". The critic continued: "Though frequently hampered by excessive academic jargon and a theoretically questionable oscillation between the non-equivalent notions of Thymos and rage, the book offers a fascinating account of the historical dynamics of social development". The French translation of the book received the Prix européen de l'essai Charles Veillon in 2008. Rage and Time Rage and Time: A Psychopolitical Investigation () is a 2006 book by the German philosopher