Electric lights and Dasein's consequent ability to turn night into day must have seemed a wondrous, practical development in Heidegger's childhood. Einstein's theory that time is a fourth dimension of the universe which should be added to space's three for an accurate physical theory and his conclusion that space is finite made their concepts more difficult to fathom when he was an adult. The infinite vistas opened up by Newton contract into an dubiously real present moment whose measurement depends on consciousness. Our contemporary debates about the difference between the qualitative and quantitative time of parenthood and turning homes into workplaces and workplaces into homes magnify Western culture's obsession with the passing of time.1 Seizing the moment becomes vital in everything we do.
In the first section of this chapter I show why Heidegger thinks that the finitude of timeliness does not preclude the infinitude of time as we ordinarily conceive of it, and the second section contrasts timeliness with this sort of time. Section 4.3 examines the relationship between the time of our daily activities and the time that we measure on clocks. Heidegger's attempt to 'derive' the time of clocks from the timeliness of Dasein is explored in Section 4.4. The concluding section shows how Heidegger was preparing for the phenomenological 'turn' to the Time of being even in the published portion of Being and Time.
After arguing that Dasein's primordial timeliness is finite, Heidegger imagines a reader objecting:
But 'does not time go on' in spite of the no-longer-being-there of my self? And can there not be an unlimited number of things which still lie 'in the future' and come along out of it?
Heidegger replies that both questions are to be answered affirmatively. Even so, they pose no objection to his conception of the finitude of timeliness 'because this is something which is no longer handled by these at all' (330).2
Heidegger's response indicates how sharply we must distinguish the finitude of timeliness from any finite character of our time, even our personal time. His claim that timeliness is finite in no way implies that ordinary time or clock-time is finite; indeed, he thinks that our concept of infinite time is derived from the primordial, finite timeliness of Dasein. Even though Heidegger sometimes refers to the distinctively authentic timeliness as well as timeliness in general as 'primordial time,' finite timeliness and infinite time are not conflicting qualities or phenomena measured on the same scale. His triply equivocal use of the word 'time' only obscures what is at stake. The dispute over the finiteness or infiniteness of ordinary or scientific time is quite a distinct issue and one not handled in the simple contrast between authentic and inauthentic timeliness or the discussion of primordial time, that is, timeliness, in general.
The sharpness of the distinction between timeliness and time makes the derivation of infinite time a more complicated matter than the one depicted by traditional commentaries. In particular, it is not a matter of a false, ego-flattering belief as if inauthentic timeliness lets the individual believe that she lasts for an infinite time while authentic timeliness makes her own up to the fact that her life span is finite. If we came up with our notion of infinite time in an attempt to conceal an essential characteristic of our own life, then why isn't infinite time an illusion, a bit of wishful thinking? And if finite timeliness was simply a matter of an individual occupying a finite span, then why isn't infinite time the more basic phenomenon with finite time just a limited partition of it?
Heidegger insists that neither of these suggestions is true. Their appeal arises out of a failure to make a sharp distinction between demise and existential death as well as ordinary time and timeliness. Both assumptions take death and the finitude of timeliness to correspond with demise.
In Heidegger's view of things, our ordinary conception of time refers to a genuine phenomenon and not an illusion created by either self-deception or the conflation of the concepts of time and space. Our idea of time arises from and is revealed by 'an essential kind of timing of primordial timeliness.' Heidegger adds: 'The fact that this is its source tells us that the time "in which" what is present-at-hand arises and passes away is a genuine phenomenon of time; it is not an externalization of a "qualitative time" into space as Bergson's interpretation of time - which is ontologically quite indefinite and inadequate - would have us believe' (333). We will return to the question of the confusion of time and space later, but here I only want to emphasize that, in trying to determine the origin and derivation of our ordinary concept of time, Heidegger is trying to explain our idea but not explain it away.
For Heidegger the problem is not how the infinite time in which objects arise and pass away becomes primordial timeliness. Rather we must understand how inauthentic, finite timeliness gives rise to infinite time. He claims that 'Only because primordial time is finite can the "derived" time "time" itself as infinite' (330.. We already have an indication of how inauthentic timeliness arises out of authentic timeliness and of how in general inauthenticity is founded upon authenticity. We could not take an understanding of being for granted unless one already 'exists.' Now we need to address the question of how inauthentic timeliness can in turn produce the conception of infinite lime. At the end of the discussion we will return to the issue of how the derived time is ultimately dependent on primordial finite timeliness.
Because of the way Dasein occupies time and lets time occupy it, Heidegger suggests that Dasein can also be called 'timely' in quite a different sense than that of the ecstatic timeliness described in Chapter 3. In spite of his insistence on his technical use of the term 'timely,' Heidegger admits:
Nevertheless, Dasein must also be called 'timely' in the sense of being 'in time.' Even without a developed historiology, factical Dasein needs and uses a calendar and a clock. Whatever may happen 'to it,' it experiences as 'in time.'
(376)
In order to avoid confusion with his technical term, Heidegger refers to this sort of being 'in time' as 'within-time-ness.3 Within-time-ness is also a characteristic of the things that are present-at-hand and ready-to-hand within the world. 'Innerworldly' things come to be, occupy a span of time, and cease to be. However, as Heidegger indicates above, Dasein finds itself 'in time' in this way, too. We want to know, though, how it is that, with our fundamental being-in-the-world as involved activity, not just our 'innerworldly' presence, we find ourselves with time on our hands?
Heidegger starts with the phenomenon of our everyday existence as project-making and tool-using, not with time-consciousness as Husserl did. He makes the connection between inauthentic timeliness and time in the following passage:
The circumspective, common sense concern is grounded in timeliness - indeed in the mode of a making-present which awaits and retains. Such concern, as concernfully reckoning up, planning, preventing, or taking precautions, always says (whether audibly or not) that something is to happen 'then,' that something else is to be attended to 'beforehand,' that what failed or escaped us 'on that former occasion' is something that must 'now' be taken hold of again.
In the 'then,' concern expresses ifself' as awaiting; in the 'on that former occasion,' as retaining; in the 'now,' as making-present.
(406)
Thus the three ecstases of inauthentic timeliness, that is, awaiting, retaining (or forgetting), and making-present, arc correlated with the 'then,' the 'on that former occasion,' and the 'now.'4
What Dasein 'awaits' in its future dimension of ecstatic timeliness is what it can deal with in some 'then' yet to come. What Dasein 'retains' is what it has been able to deal with on some 'former occasion,' and what it makes present is what it deals with 'now.' Everyday Dasein does not encounter time as a succession of bare instants. Our everyday time is always occupied by the things with which we concern ourselves, and out of our projects arise the essential features of the 'world-time' that we encounter as being-in-the-world. Dasein's experience of things happening to it 'in time' involves three fundamental characteristics: datability, significance, and spannedness.
Datability and significance seem to be closely connected aspects of the same basic feature of world-time. Every 'then' is a 'then, when' such and such will happen; every 'on that former occasion' is an 'on that former occasion as' such and such happened; and every 'now' is a 'now that' such and such is happening. Moments are given significance in relation to our involved activity. The relational structure pinning moments of time to events in the world Heidegger calls 'datability' (407). Thus datability is not a matter of events being pinned to moments of time but quite the opposite.
Not only is a moment of time pinned to an event, but moments of time gain significance and refer beyond themselves through the web of projects to which they are thus connected. 'Ten o'clock' is 'my class at ten,' 'after I read my mail,' and so on. This relational structure is an aspect of the structure of significance of the world which lays out all our projects in terms of time. Even the simplest project is laid out as a series of successive actions. For example, if we want to swim across the pool, first we walk to its edge, now we dive in, and then we begin stroking. And such particular projects arise in the context of other projects, for example, learning how to swim, setting up a plan for getting in shape. Significance sets up the way that projects are interconnected with each other 'within time.'
The spanned character of world-time, in which moments flow one after another with no gaps, and the spanning character of Dasein's everyday being both arise out of the significant interconnection of Dasein's activities. Heidegger explains: if in awaiting we understand ourselves in the 'then' and in terms of making this present, that is, in terms of realizing our projects, then the 'and-now-not-yet' has already been implied when we assign the 'then.' The 'now not yet' lies between the current 'now' and the 'then' at which we are aiming. It is the 'until then' whose significance and datability are given by the steps we must take to realize our goal. For example, it is the swim across the pool which lies between our 'now' on the deck and our goal of reaching the other side. This 'until then' itself has its earlier and later episodes in the sequence of diving and stroking. The whole series is 'embraced' as a 'during' when we awaitingly project the 'then' (409). We project the 'span' of intermediate steps which must be taken to realize our goal and 'embrace' the span of world-time in embracing the activities we project.
Most explications of Heidegger's notion of ecstatic timeliness focus on how Dasein can 'span' a stretch of time in a unified way. But notice that in Heidegger's treatment of this phenomenon, it is (1) a derivative phenomenon and not the heart of ecstatic timeliness; (2) a phenomenon of inauthentic timeliness insofar as it manifests within-time-ness; and (3) a phenomenon unifïed by the significance articulated in the world and our skill at dealing with things rather than by consciousness.
In inauthentic timeliness, says Heidegger, we interpret ourselves as stretched along within-time (409). During our everyday activities we understand ourselves as moving along through time, realizing first this project and then that project. Heidegger considers time in general to be 'the making-present which interprets itself - in other words, that which has been interpreted and addressed in the "now"' (408). In other words, time is disclosed to us when we interpret ourselves as located in a 'now,' surrounded on both sides by a span of time. Timeliness itself is familiar to us in everyday concern as its by-product, world-time. But this phenomenon appears upon reflection when consciousness directs itself upon a certain feature of our activities. Involved activity is its underlying basis.
Time, however, can appear in two different ways: it can be disclosed as the significant, datable, spanned world-time discussed above, or it can be disclosed as a succession of 'nows.' The latter, which is itself derived from the world-time of involved activity, is what we call 'time' in the ordinary sense. This is the time that we measure by a clock. Heidegger proposes to call the world-time which is 'sighted' by the use of clocks 'now-time' (421).
Our conception of time as an infinite, irreversible succession of 'nows' thus arises, Heidegger argues, from the timeliness of fallen Dasein. This conception of time is justified as long as it does not present itself as the sole possible horizon within which time can be interpreted (426). As I indicated above, for Heidegger the ordinary conception of time is quite valid, not illusory or imaginary, as long as it is recognized for what it is.
As noted in the quote at the beginning of the preceding section, Heidegger thinks that, because Dasein is also 'timely' in the sense of being 'in time,' it needs to make use of calendars and clocks. Even the isolated individual such as a hermit may need to refer to some sort of calendar and clock to organize activities such as planting a garden or beginning a journey, but obviously we need these measuring systems in order to make group cooperation possible. Even in the cultures of 'primitive' Dasein, which lack any explicitly developed interest in time, calendars were needed for public activities of hunting and planting, and clocks were needed to schedule daily activities. Of course, a primitive calendar may only chart the cycles of the moon and the seasons, and the most primitive clock is simply the movement of the sun.
All such time-reckoning arises out of Dasein's concernful involvement in the world. This sort of reckoning 'precedes any use of measuring equipment by which time can be determined. The reckoning is prior to such equipment and is what makes anything like the use of clocks possible at all' (404). At bottom this reckoning is a matter of reckoning with projects and their sequential order, but its basis is ignored or disguised when we consider only the time that a clock manifests. When we focus only on clock-time, we shear world-time of its datability and significance and empty its span of the filling which originally elicited our embrace, leaving it just a bare succession of 'nows' (422). Heidegger argues that datability and significance 'are not permitted to "come to the fore" when time is characterized as a pure succession. The ordinary interpretation of time covers them up' (422). He goes on to suggest that this cover-up is 'no accident,' but we will discuss the motives for it in the next section.
Here we need to get clearer about the nature of the time that clocks reveal. First of all, as I indicated earlier, the now-time which clocks reveal is not a time which has been confused with space, as Bergson argues. Heidegger suggests instead that what is 'ontologically decisive' for this sort of time "lies in the specific kind of making-present which makes measurement possible.' He adds;
Measuring time is essentially such that it is necessary to say 'now'; but in obtaining the measurement we, as it were, forget what has been measured as such, so that nothing is to be found except a number and a stretch.
(418)
The 'making-present' involved in the measurement of time is remarkably different from the 'making-present' involved in the measurement of space. With space, the thing measured remains present or can be made present again and can be measured again. But in order to measure time, it must vanish as we measure.
What we measure with an analog clock is not the stretch of space between two of its marks but rather the span of time during which the 'traveling pointer' moves from one to the other. Yet when we reflect on our measuring, we may not notice what we have measured. The only 'stretch' that seems to be there to be measured is that of the space on the clock. Similarly, if we are counting seconds by saying 'now,' we forget that the second is the span of time that lies between our repetitions of 'now' and hence think that the resulting number only indicates the number of times we said a word. It does indicate this as well, of course, but this is not what we are measuring when we measure time.
Such measuring is a very abstract and reflective way of encountering time. We do not use the clock to coordinate our projects but rather look at it as measuring some curious, independent thing. In contrast, world-time, the time encountered in our everyday involved activities, is, we could say, ready-to-hand time. Like the hammer, it is transparent in use: we are not aware of time per se but of our class at ten, the appointment at two, and so forth. The now-time measured by the clock and abstractly looked at as some sort of thing is present-at-hand time, which, curiously, is only evanescently present. In detached reflection, 'time is understood as a succession, as a "flowing stream" of nows, as the "course of time'" (422).
In this detached reflection, both time and things in the world lose the significance given by involvement. Time becomes detached from activities and simply 'present-at-hand with' things and events. They are not present-at-hand in exactly the same way, but 'they still get "seen" ontologically within the horizon of the idea of presence-at-hand.' The 'nows' which pass away make up the past, and the 'nows' which come along define the future.5 Unlike a tree or hammer viewed as present-at-hand, the 'now' must be continually passing and coming along. 'Yet as this thing which changes, it simultaneously shows its own constant presence' (423).
Heidegger argues that The principle thesis of the ordinary way of interpreting time - namely, that time is infinite - makes manifest most impressively the way in which world-time and accordingly timeliness in general have been leveled off and covered up by such an interpretation.' Every 'now' can be divided into a 'just-now' and a 'now-forthwith,' or a 'now' which is just past and a 'now' which is yet to come. 'If in characterizing time we stick primarily and exclusively to such a sequence, then in principle neither beginning nor end can be found in it... Time is endless on "both sides'" (424).
This argument depends on the picture of time which Heidegger is criticizing and on the fact that time, when pictured this way, appears to be infinitely divisible as well as 'endless.' As Heidegger puts it, 'The sequence of nows is uninterrupted and has no gaps. No matter how "far" we proceed in "dividing up" the now, it is always now' (423). Each 'now' can be sliced by an even sharper blade of the instantaneous present, it in turn divided, and so on. Each moment of the past and the future can also be mentally refined. Then the span of each 'now' is shorter, and in this abstract representation, we can continue the division indefinitely.
Such infinite divisibility is probably not what people mean when they say that time is infinite. But Heidegger applies the same line of reasoning in regard to our picture of time going on forever. 'If "one thinks" the sequence of nows "to the end" by directing attention to being-present-at-hand and not-being-present-at-hand, then an end can never be found. In this way of thinking time through to the end, one must always think more time; from this one infers that time is infinite' (424).
This abstract representation of the infinitude of time depends on ignoring the limitations of our actual means of measuring, and this Is part of Heidegger's point in saying that, in such a conception, we regard time as present-at-hand. We can currently measure picoseconds by the vibrations of electrons, a technique involving sophisticated instruments and relying on the web of modern scientific practices. But the detached representation of infinite time ignores all the ways we do actually measure time in favor of an abstract theorizing which knows no limits at all.
Now that we see how the ordinary conception of time relates to world-time next we need to examine in further detail the relation between this infinite time and finite primordial timeliness. The popular interpretation of Heidegger's supposed derivation takes the finite character of timeliness as simply a matter of individuals ceasing to be at certain points in time. Conceiving of time as infinite is then taken as a way of denying this fact; we want to believe that time is infinite in order to believe that we are not going to cease. This interpretation may be accurate as far as it goes, and it does fit the above picture of time as infinite. We would like to believe that there is always going to be more time between the current 'now' and the 'now' of our demise. However, what usually is not noticed in this line of argument is that we are dealing with only the inauthentic conception of death. Indeed, infinite time is disclosed 'only in Dasein's inauthentic timeliness' (426), and inauthentic existence regards death as the physical demise which will happen in the future. The conception of finitude in this understanding of timeliness does amount to 'just stopping' in contrast to the authentic timeliness which 'exists finitely' (329). Furthermore, if authentic timeliness amounted to just consciously accepting the fact that I am going to demise, rather than believing that 'one dies,' it is hard to see why we could not say that the infinite time described above arises in this mode of timeliness, too. My death would still lie in a future 'now,' and, by the above line of argument, I could conceive of infinite 'nows' between me and it.
To get clear about what Heidegger's point really is, we should keep mind that when Heidegger talks about the conception of time in relation to Dasein's flight from death, he is talking about inauthentic existence and its conception of death as demise, Heidegger comments:
... the Anyone, which never dies and which misunderstands being towards the end, gives a characteristic interpretation of fleeing in the face of death. To the very end 'it always has more time.' Here a way of 'having time' in the sense that one can lose it makes itself known. 'Right now, this! Then that! And that is barely over when . . .' Here it is not as if the finitude of time were getting understood; quite the contrary, for concern sets out to snatch as much as possible from the time which keeps coming and still 'goes on.'
(425)
The finitude of timeliness is not understood even if we take quite the opposite stance but still focus on our demise. The opposite of thinking that one always has more time is thinking that one has no time, but yet this, too, is a form of inauthentic timeliness. Heidegger remarks that we say we have 'no time' when irresoluteness completely dominates our existence (410). The future ecstasis of awaiting becomes contracted until Dasein is totally absorbed in the most immediate concerns which are pressed upon it by the Anyone. With too many things to do and not enough time to do them, we feel as if we have no time.
As Heidegger suggests above, always 'having time' indicates a way of having time in which we can also lose it. In neither case is the primordial finitude of timeliness adequately grasped. Though Heidegger claims that inauthentic existence involves both thinking that one always has more time and thinking that one has no time, the apparent contradiction is resolved when we see that these are different ways of dealing with the same sort of time and are not mutually incompatible. That is, the person who lives life from moment to moment, absorbed in the present 'now' in such a way that the future seems to vanish, may also act as if these 'nows' will go on infinitely. We fail to embrace a wide span of time, and hence have no time but the present now, but yet we could occupy ourselves with activities as if they will go on forever.
The demise of a person can scarcely have any effect on the infinite succession of time. Taking the part of the Anyone, Heidegger asks:
How is time' in its course to be touched even the least bit when a man who has been prescnt-at-hand 'in time' no longer exists? Time goes on, just as indeed it already 'was' when a man 'came into life.' The only lime the Anyone knows is the public time which has been leveled off and which belongs to everyone - and that means, to no one.
(425)
The representation of the infinitude of this sort of 'time' is strengthened by the fact that 'the Anyone never dies because it cannot die' (424). Individual people demise, but the Anyone can neither demise, since 'one's death' is always yet to come, nor undergo authentic death, since it is never 'mine.'
Unless we keep in mind that time can be understood in very different ways, it may also seem odd or even contradictory that Heidegger asserts that authentic existence, which experiences its timeliness as finite, 'always has time.' But in this case, resoluteness 'has time for what the situation demands of it and has it "constantly'" (410). The time which authentic existence 'has' is not a succession of 'nows' nor the order of particular projects in the world. It is the primordial time in which it stands open to the revelation of being and gains its authentic self. Dependent as Dasein is on being, resoluteness makes time for a moment of insight. Only in resoluteness does the finitude of Dasein's primordial timeliness authentically manifest itself.
At least on a superficial reading, some of Heidegger's comments about finite timeliness in his discussion of the derivation of time lend themselves to the common interpretation that Heidegger is simply saying that wc occupy a finite time-span. For example, Heidegger comments that because the timeliness of Dasein 'is finite, its days are already numbered.' This does sound like the proclamation of a death - or rather demise - sentence. However, if one places the remark in context and notes what Heidegger goes on to say, the sort of 'numbering' of days at issue is quite a different matter. He adds that 'concernful awaiting takes precautions to determine the "thens" with which it is to concern itself- to divide up the day' (413). Dasein's time is numbered because in its involved activity it divides its time up into hours, days, weeks, and so forth. In particular, its days are numbered because the sun provides us with the most natural way of measuring our time, giving us the daylight in which we can work. With electricity and all the gadgetry of the twentieth century, Heidegger notes our 'advanced' Dasein has the 'advantage' of being able to turn night into day (415), and thus to work at any time, but his own quotation marks indicate that he regards this as a rather dubious achievement.
In contrast, the finitude of timeliness shows up not in the length of Dasein's 'span' but in its dependency on a network of significance arising out of its understanding of being, a network 'leveled off' in the ordinary conception of time. Even in inauthentic timeliness, Heidegger argues, the finitude of Dasein's being is manifest. Our insistence on three particular characteristics of now-time shows our tacit understanding of this grounding: we think that time (1) is irreversible, (2) will not let itself be halted, and (3) passes away.
Why is time considered (1) irreversible? Heidegger notes, as many philosophers have, that 'Especially if one looks exclusively at the stream of nows, it is incomprehensible why this sequence should not present itself in the reverse direction.' He suggests that our notion of the irreversibility of time arises out of the priority of the future in ecstatic timeliness (426). We project a future which determines the significance of the past and the present activities in which we are engaged. We cannot reverse the structure of significance any more than we can reverse the process of swimming across the pool as in a film run backwards.6 Our time, like our projects, only points one way.
We also think that (2) time cannot be halted. Heidegger suggests that talk about lime 'passing away' expresses our experience of the inexorable march of time. Such an experience 'is in turn possible only because the halting of time is something we want' (425). The desire to halt time is based on the inauthentic awaiting of the future, an awaiting in which we forget the opportunities for authentic existence as they glide by. We do not want to place our understanding of being in question so we try to keep things the way they are, maintain the status quo, and ignore the changing understanding of being even if we are in the midst of it. We want to halt time because we want to avoid the changes it brings.
Finally, why do we think of time as (3) 'passing away' when, to just the same degree, it also arises? With regard to the sequence of 'nows,' the one idea is as legitimate as the other. For every 'now' that passes away, another one arises. But, as Heidegger suggests, we usually seem to think of time as sweeping everything into the past, being over and gone, rather than springing forth and carrying us into the future. Heidegger argues that the timeliness on which this conception of time is based shows through in such assumptions (425). In inauthentic existence this finite network of significance binds us to the comfortable, familiar past. We prefer to think of the present as a 'going by' that takes its place with the 'gone by' past, not as the fountainhead of novelty and creation.
Heidegger argues that, if we start with a conception of time as a succession of 'nows' or if we start by thinking of ourselves as simply moving along in world-time from project to project, that is if we start with either the ordinary conception of time or the understanding of world-time in inauthentic timeliness, we will not be able to understand Dasein's authentic timeliness. If we start with the notion of either an empty, shorn 'now' or a present whose significance is just 'given' by the significance of things, how can we explain the radical shifts in which old worlds die and new ones come to be? How can we explain the 'fullness' of time? The 'now' cannot account for the moment of insight (426f.).
Thus, Heidegger makes the same point about the relation between world-time and now-time that he made earlier about the relation between what-is ready-to-hand and what-is present-at-hand. If we start with an understanding of the former, we can comprehend the change to the latter, but if we think that things just are in themselves the latter, then we cannot explain the former.
If Heidegger succeeds in showing that the ordinary conception of time arises out of inauthentic timeliness and that inauthentic timeliness arises out of authentic timeliness, and also shows that we cannot provide an explanation of these three things in reversed order of priority, has he justified his use of the term 'primordial time' to refer to authentic timeliness (405, 426)? His own rationale seems rather feeble since to explain one concept by means of something else, for example, to explain our notion of time by means of ecstatic timeliness, does not justify using the same word, 'time,' for both. Heidegger only promotes confusion by using the same word to refer to two quite different notions, or even three if we include his notion of the 'Time of being' which we will discuss in Chapter 5. The common term quite predictably misleads the reader into thinking the issues center around time in the ordinary sense and our experience of it. Nonetheless, his use of the same word makes possible a neat architectonic and a catchy title, that is, 'Being and Time.'
Leaving questions of terminology aside, we can ask: is Heidegger's 'derivation' of the ordinary conception of time successful? Answering this question immediately involves us in other questions which take us beyond Heidegger's discussion in Being and Time. Understanding time as a sequence of 'nows' present-at-hand is only possible, Heidegger implies, in the context of an understanding of being as presence, the nature of which is the topic for my next chapter. Heidegger takes this understanding to be unique to Western culture, originating in the metaphysics developed by the Ancient Greek thinkers, which is the subject of my Chapter 6.7
But other questions would perhaps take us beyond the territory in which Heidegger offers guidance even in later works. Is the understanding of time in Western culture really distinctive or unique? Do other cultures, which do not make an issue of being or do not understand being as presence, have a remarkably different conception of time? Untouched by Western influence, would other cultures see time as a succession of 'nows,' stretching infinitely backward and forward? We would also have to enter the debate about the Greek conception of time, whether they viewed lime as cyclical or linear, and so forth. However, in this book I want to keep close to the track of Heidegger's argument.
Heidegger does make a point, though, which is relevant to this issue. In a seminar on Heraclitus he comments that, as he investigated the idea of archaic time in Pindar and Sophocles, he was struck by the lack of discussion of time as sequence. Rather, according to Heidegger, time was seen as that which grants a sequence. This is the time of the seasons, days, and hours as they grant the passing of things in a certain order and thus grant us our dealings with these things (HS 60/100). This suggests that the early Greeks had a different view of time than that which began to develop with the rise of the metaphysics of presence in, for example, Aristotle. Time was not yet the counting of 'nows' that ran concomitantly with things in motion.
Instead Heidegger suggests that the early Greeks' understanding of time was an understanding of the granting of opportunities for dealing with things which have their own cycles and rhythms and their own being. This is the sort of time apparent in crafts and work in the world in general where people must adapt themselves to the demands of the things they work upon and know when the time is 'ripe' for their response, as must, for example, someone who fashions shields out of metal or wine out of grapes. Heidegger suggests that a change in the understanding of time occurs with the rise of traditional metaphysics which 'forgets' the background context of our dealings and disinterestedly contemplates the things and properties which show up in this context.
Although we will not be in a position to understand the significance of the following remark until after we have examined Heidegger's notion of the Time of being and the way Dasein's timeliness is 'in time' with this Time, I want to quote one last passage in which Heidegger explicitly, if obscurely, connects Dasein's disclosure of time with its role as the entity which makes an issue of being. He comments:
As an entity which makes an issue of its being, Dasein uses itself primarily for itself, whether explicitly or not, Proximally and for the most part, care is circumspective concern. In using itself for the sake of itself. Dasein 'uses itself up.' In using itself up, Dasein uses itself, that is, its time. In using time, Dasein reckons with it. Time is first discovered in the concern which reckons circumspectively, and the concern leads to the development of time-reckoning.
(333)
How does Dasein, the entity which is the 'there' which discloses being, 'use itself up"? Why is this the same as using its time? Why does time-reckoning become more and more important? Why do clocks and calendars come to dominate our lives? Heidegger later suggests that time-reckoning becomes important when Dasein finds itself without any time left in the modern age (WICT 101/41). Dasein in the modern age is running out of the possibilities of its being - out of Time - and this, too, Heidegger thinks brings about a change in our way of understanding time. Now it becomes our master in quite a different way. We will examine time's place in the modern epoch of being in Chapter 7.8
Before we begin to examine Heidegger's account of the Time of being and the history of Dasein's understanding of being, I should emphasize that these investigations are not foreign to Being and Time. We have been discussing the time of Dasein's being, but other domains of what-is have their own time. In Section 69 Heidegger talks about the timely transcendence of the world, and, in doing so, prepares for the phenomenological turn to being. This section is the link in the analysis of the timeliness of Dasein which connects it with the Temporality of the other domains of what-is, but, because this early work was left unfinished, the link was left unattached. Dasein, however, is not the only domain of what-is which shows up in a Temporal way.
Dasein has been analyzed as being-in-the-world. It is not identical with its world but in it. 'So if we orient ourselves by the timely constitution of disclosedness, the ontological condition for the possibility that there can be the entity which exists as being-in-the-world must let itself be exhibited' (350). This condition for the possibility of Dasein is precisely the phenomenon of world as the 'there' in which being discloses itself. This world is not simply a product of Dasein's timing activity, and therefore Heidegger must at least announce the 'transcendence of the world,' and correlatively of being, even if he will not account for it within the confines of the analytic of Dasein.
Thus Heidegger says in the section entitled 'the problem of the timely transcendence of the world':
Just as the present arises in the unity of the timing of timeliness out of the future and having-been, the horizon of the present times' itself equiprimordially with those of the future and of having-been.
(365)
Each cstasis of Dasein has a corresponding 'horizon' into which it 'stands out.' As Heidegger puts it in another early work: 'That toward which each ecstasis is intrinsically open in a specific way we call the horizon of the ecstasis' (BPP 267/ 378). The horizon of the present ecstasis, called 'praesens' in Basic Problems of Phenomenology and other works, plays the crucial role in our understanding of being as presence because we attribute being only to things which show up in some 'now.'9
The other domains of what-is show up in this horizon with their own Temporality. The ready-to-hand, the prcsent-at-hand, and nature, for example, appear in our cultural background practices with a particular way of being; and they change from what-is created by God to subjects and objects and then to stuff to be dominated. The horizons for Dasein's timing activity must, as transcendent to Dasein, have their own timing activity. The timing activity of the horizons ultimately refers us beyond the timeliness of Dasein to the shifting background against which it is played out, that is, the Temporality of being. The ecstases stand out into their corresponding horizons just as Dasein stands out into being. The world is the locus of their interaction.
True, as Heidegger goes on to add from the perspective of the Dasein analytic, 'of course, only as long as Dasein is ... "is there" being' (212). But this does not mean that being is the invention of Dasein. Dasein finds itself 'thrown' into the world with the being of what-is revealed in a particular way. This being is that for which Dasein is open. At this point in his analysis of Dasein in Being and Time, Heidegger simply leaves the 'problem of the timely transcendence of the world' as a problem. The reference to 'transcendence' reminds the reader of Heidegger's introductory claim that being is 'the transcendens pure and simple' (38). This notion of the timely transcendence of the world is in fact a preparatory reference to the Temporality of being which was to be explicitly discussed later in the projected book.
The discussion of Dasein's historically in Being and Time also points toward a discussion of the Temporality of being. Just as Heidegger left a place in his discussion of the timeliness of Dasein which could only be filled in by his later discussion of the Temporality of being, that is, the notion that the world is transcendent, he also leaves a place in his discussion of the historicality of Dasein which would later be filled in by his discussion of the history of being. This is his notion that the world is itself historical and does not just acquire its history as some subjective coloring put there by Dasein. What-is within the world as present-at-hand, ready-to-hand, and Nature 'is as such historical, and its history does not signify something "external" which merely accompanies the inner history of the "soul'" (389). Heidegger explains:
The thesis of Dasein's historicality does not say that the worldless subject is historical but that what is historical is the entity that exists as being-in-the-world. The happening of history is the happening of being-in-the-world. Dasein's historicality is essentially the historicality of the world, which, on the ground of ecstatical-horizontal timeliness, belongs to its timing.
(388)
Heidegger's term 'world-history' is intended to indicate both the happening of the world in its essential unity with Dasein and the historical appearance of what-is within the world in so far as it is discovered with the world.
Heidegger remarks that equipment and things, buildings and institutions, all have their history. Books, for example, have their 'fates.' Nature, too, is historical as a country-side or a battlefield or the site of a cult (388f.). We ourselves do not determine how these things will appear to us, how they will speak to us or respond to us. The 'fate' of a book such as Moby Dick is a good example of this. Ignored or scorned in its own time, the book gave us insight into a future that we could only recognize when we arrived there. Since Dasein is essentially in a world which can reveal itself as historical in this way, Heidegger adds 'world-history' to 'fate' and 'destiny' as aspects of the existentiell possibility in which Dasein fünds itself (394). Our fate is co-determined by how things can manifest themselves and how we respond to them.
Heidegger cuts short the discussion of the historicality of the worldly domains of what-is by announcing that following through on the problem would require him to transgress the limits of the existential analytic when at most 'the very aim of this exposition is to lead us face to face with the ontological enigma of the movement of happening in general' (389). The existential analytic is an investigation of Dasein's being, not of the meaning of being in general which discloses all domains of what-is as what they are and hence grants them whatever history they have. Only the later analysis of being in general would put us in a position to understand how what-is present-at-hand, or ready-to-hand, or part of nature can also have a history, even though one dependent on the existence of Dasein as the 'there' in which the being of what-is discloses itself. That a novel or poem appears to us differently in different epochs or that things begin to show themselves to be quantifiable and mathematically calculable along about the seventeenth century was not up to us but, of course, could not have happened without us.
Perhaps one of the reasons why Heidegger's intentions in his discussion of historically are not obvious is that he concludes his chapter by letting Count Yorck do much of his talking for him. Heidegger uses Yorck's remarks in order to show that we cannot just stop at the distinction between what-is present-at-hand and what-is historical, that is, between things and Dasein. If we did, we would end up with Husserl's viewpoint, not Heidegger's, and would regard Being and Time as simply an investigation of the particular domain of what-is which 'has a history' in a unique way. Rather than stopping with contrasting other domains of what-is with human being, we must come to see that the being of all domains of what-is is historically determined.
The notion of the timely and historical character of what-is brings us face to face with the problem requiring the phenomenological turn to being. Why does Dasein's understanding of being change? What is Dasein's insight an insight into? At this point, we already have a glimpse of Heidegger's answer. Now we need a detailed analysis of the Temporal disclosure of being in the cultural background practices and the Temporality of being.
1 For example, see The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work by Arlie R. Hochschild (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1997).
2 The phrase 'no-longer-being-there of ray self' translates 'Nichtmehrdaseins meiner selbst. As we noted in the chapter on death, Heidegger makes a distinction between 'no-longer-being-there' or 'no-longer-Dasein,' which refers to a person ceasing to be, and 'no-longer-able-to-be-there' or 'no-longer-able-to-be-Dasein,' which indicates the finitude of existence as a standing-open-for-being. In this passage he talks about the relationship between a person's demise and infinite time.
3 The word 'timely' substitutes lor Heidegger's "zeitlich while 'within-time-ness' translates 'Innerzeitlichkeit.'
4 Note that 'then' (dann) is used to refer to some future time and that 'on that former occasion' functions as an awkward substitute for'damals' and refers to past time.
5 That which 'passes away' (vergehen) makes up the past (Vergangenheit), and the 'nows' which come along (die ankünftigen) define the future [die Zukunft).
6 Bertrand Russell suggests that it is an accident that memory reveals our past instead of our future. George Whitrow notes that this view implies that our relations to past and future would be symmetrical were it not for an arbitrary quirk of mind. Whitrow, like Heidegger, counters this line of thinking by pointing out that even in memory our thinking is oriented toward the future, that is, that we think of events in the order in which they happened, an order which proceeds from past to present to future. To reverse the sequence of remembering by remembering 'backward' requires a great mental effort. Whitrow takes this as showing that the intrinsic nature of mental activity involves reaching out toward the future. (See G.J. Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 87.) For Heidegger, it would indicate both that the ecstases of future, past, and present are the disclosure matrices for any mental activity and that the future dimension has a special priority.
7 [Chapter 6 is available online at': http://www.scu.edu/philosophy/CWhite.htm - Editor's note.]
8 [Chapter 7 is available online at: http://www.scu.edu/philosophy/CWhite.htm - Editor's note.]
9 See, for example, BPP 308/438. Since Heidegger imports the term 'praesens' from Latin and since there seems to be no particularly appropriate English word that would not invite confusion with 'presence' and other related terms, I will leave the infrequently used term in Latin.
For a discussion of being as presence see Section 5.2 below.