Abstract
Heidegger’s “destruction” of classical ontology, pursued with the question of the meaning of Being in view, had for its first task the overthrow of the “ordinary concept” of time. This task formed a precondition for the analytic of Dasein, which is there through its openness to the question of the meaning of Being, that is, through its pre-comprehension of Being. Temporality constitutes “the being of a being-there (Dasein) which comprehends Being,” and is the “on-tological meaning of care” as the structure of Dasein. Consequently, the question of Being can be approached only through the horizon of time. The aim of Being and Time thus becomes clear; it is at once preliminary and urgent. Not only must there be an explicitation of temporality as seen in the traditional concepts underlying everyday language and the history of ontology from Aristotle to Bergson, but the possibility of this ordinary conceptuality must also be accounted for by recognizing in it a “rightful due.”1
Translated by Edward S. Casey (Yale University). This essay has appeared in French in L’endurance de la pensée (Paris, 1968) pp. 219–266. This translation is personally authorized by the author, and the translator had occasion to go over it with him.
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References
Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York, Harper, 1962, p. 39. All further references to Being and Time will be to the pagination of this translation. — Trans.
Ibid., p. 47. The same problem, in the same form, is central to Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. This is not surprising, for the work “envelopes” Being and Time: based on courses given in 1925–26, it is presumed to correspond in content with the second unpublished part of Being and Time. In setting forth “the aim of fundamental ontology,” as well as the necessity of the analytic of Dasein and the exposition of “care as temporality,” Heidegger writes: “What is the significance of the fact that ancient metaphysics determines the ontos on — the being that exists in the highest degree — as dei on? The Being of beings is clearly understood here as permanence and persistence (Beständigkeit and Ständigkeit). What project is found in this comprehension of Being? A project related to time; for even ‘eternity,’ interpreted as the nunc stans, is thoroughly conceivable as a ‘now’ and as ‘persistent’ only on the basis of time. What significance is there in the fact that a being properly speaking (das eigentlich seiend) is understood as ousia, parousia, and in terms of a meaning that basically signifies ‘presence’ (das Anwesen), the domain immediately and constantly present (gegenwärtigen Besitz), or ‘having’ (Habe?) This project reveals that Being means permanence in presence. Is it not in this way that — even in the spontaneous comprehension of Being -temporal determinations accumulate? ... The essence (Wesen) of time, such as it was presented by Aristotle in a manner decisive for the subsequent history of metaphysics, does not furnish an answer to these questions. On the contrary: one could show that, precisely, this analysis of time is guided by an understanding of Being which, hidden from itself in its own operation, sees Being as permanent and as a present (Gegenwart), and then determines the ‘being’ of time on the basis of the ‘now’ (Jetzt) — that is, a character of time which in itself is always present (anwesend), and thus really is in the ancient sense of the word” (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, sect. 44; cf. the English translation by James S. Churchill. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1962, pp. 248–50).
The following pages can be read as the timid prolegomena to a problem of translation. Yet who more than Heidegger has shown what such a problem involves? The problem is thә following: how to transmit, [and indicate what has occurred in transmitting], in the single originally Latin word “presence” the entire differentiated system of translation in which Heideggerian language is produced (oὐσία, παϱoυσία, Gegenwärtigkeit, Anwesen, Anwesenheit, Vorhandenheit, etc.)? And how may we do this while accounting for the fact that the two Greek words, and those associated with them, already possess translations charged with a history (“essence,” “substance,” etc.)? Here we meet with the special problem of transmitting in the single word “presence” — at once too rich and too poor — the history of Heidegger’s writings which associate or disjoin these concepts in a subtle and regulated manner over a period of nearly forty years. How should we translate this game of shifting meanings into another language ? We shall consider only one example here, one which especially interests us: Heidegger’s essay “Der Spruch des Anaximander” (1946). This essay rigorously dissociates concepts which signify presence and which in the text from Being and Time just cited were aligned as synonyms or at least were not differentiated by any pertinent trait. We shall cite a page from the essay, inserting the German words which create the difficulty: “What we first realize with the poetic word is that rà êovra is to be distinguished from τὰ ἐσσoµενα and from πϱὸ ἐόντα. According to this point of view, τα ἐόντα names beings in the sense of the present (das Seiende im Sinne des Gegenwärtigen). In speaking of ‘present’ (gegenwärtig), we moderns wish thus to designate either what is now (das Jetzige), representing this as something within time (etwas Innerzeitiges): a now appearing as a phase in the flow of time; or we put the ‘present’ (gegenwärtig) into relation with the ‘obstance of objects, (zum Gegenständigen). As the objective (das Objective), this obstance is related to a representing subject. But if we now utilize the ‘present’ (das gegenwärtig) to determine the ovra more precisely, we are forced to comprehend the ‘present’ (das ‘gegenwärtig’) on the basis of the essence (Wesen) of the ἐόντα, and not vice-versa. For ἐόντα is also the past and the future. Both are particular modes of the present (des Anwesenden) — i.e., of the non-present present (des ungegenwärtig Anwesenden). The Greeks also call it the presently present (das gegenwärtig Anwesende) by specifying τὰ παϱεnόντα; παϱὰ signifies nearby (bei), to wit: drawing near in ‘eclosion’ (Unverborgenheit). The gegen (‘against’) in gegenwärtig signifies not the oppositeness of a subject, but the region of eclosion (die offene Gegend der Unverborgenheit) toward which and in which the παϱεnόντα (das Beigekommene) comes to dwell (verweilt). Consequently, gegenwärtig (‘present’) signifies, as the chief character of the ἐόντα, something like: coming to dwell in the heart of the region of eclosion. Thus the ἐόντα, which as first stated is especially singled out and distinguished expressly from πϱoεόντα and from ἐσσόµενα, names for the Greeks the present (das Anwesende) insofar as it has come, in the sense explained above, to dwell in the heart of the region of the eclosion. Such an arrival is the veritable advent, the presence of the true present (Solche Angekommenheit ist die eigentliche Ankunft, ist das Anwesen des eigentlich Anwesenden). The past and the future are also presents (Anwesendes), but lie outside of the region of eclosion. The non-present present is the absent (Das ungegenwärtig Anwesende ist das Ab-wesende). As such, it remains essentially relative to the presently present (das gegenwärtig Anwesende), whether it prepares itself to appear in this region or goes away. The absent is also present (Auch das Ab-wesende ist Anwesendes) and, as an absence absent from the region, it is present (anwesend) in the eclosion. The past and the future are also ἐόντα. As a result ἐ1F79;ν signifies: present in the eclosion (anwesend in die Un-verborgenheit). The effect of this clarification of ἐόντα. is that, even for the Greeks, the present (das Anwesende) remains ambiguous, and necessarily so. Sometimes ἐόντα means the presently -present (das gegenwärtig Anwesende); sometimes it means all that is presence (alles A nwesende): the presently present and that which is in a sense not present (das gegenwärtig und das ungegenwärtig Wesende).” (This passage is from Holzwege [Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1950], pp. 319–20 — Trans.)
“... fällt die Entwicklung der Geschichte in die Zeit” — Hegel, “Die Vernunft in der Geschichte. Einleitung in die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte” [Sämtliche Werke, ed. G. Lasson [Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1923], vol. VIII, p. 133).
Being and Time, p. 457. We shall be forced to ask ourselves if this agreement on “results,” insofar as it is limited to the description of a “fallen” temporality, does not commit Heidegger beyond the limits that he wants to mark out here. In spite of the re-interpretation he gives to “fallenness” [Verfallen, e.g., at the end of section 82), one wonders if the very distinction — whatever its re-structuration and originality — between proper and “improper,” authentic and non-authentic, primordial and non-primordial temporality is not itself tributary from Hegelianism — from the idea of a “fall” into time and hence from the ordinary concept of time.
Being and Time, p. 500, n. xxx. Only slight alterations have been made in the English text. — Trans.
The French word “maintenance” here includes the secondary meaning of “now-ness” from the adverb “maintenant.” — Trans.
Heidegger underlines, though from another point of view, the historical dominance of the third person singular, present indicative of the verb “to be” in his Introduction to Metaphysics (See the English translation by Ralph Manheim. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959, p. 92. — Trans.).
Being and Time, p. 482.
Ibid.
Hegel considered his relation to the Aristotelian exoteric and to the Eleatic paradoxes in terms of a wholly different category from that of the “paraphrase” Heidegger speaks of. In his view, this past history was at once a scintillating anticipation of speculative dialectic and the teleological necessity of an “already-not-yet” precursing what his Logic develops. Thus one can read the following: “Infinitely more ingenious and profound than the Kantian antinomy with which we have just concerned ourselves are the dialectical examples of the ancient Eleatic school, especially with respect to movement .... The solutions given by Aristotle to these dialectical formations merit the highest praise; they are contained in his truly speculative notions of time, space, and movement .... Even a lively intelligence (which Aristotle himself possessed to an unrivalled degree) does not suffice to comprehend and judge these speculative notions and to see what is obtuse in Zeno’s argumentation ...” (Science of Logic, trans. W. H. Johnston and L. G. Struthers. London, Allen and Unwin, 1929. Vol. 1, pp. 212–13).
Being and Time, p. 480.
Here we can only cite and locate a text which is crucial for our interrogation: “The real (das Reelle) is certainly different from time, but also essentially identical with it. It is limited (beschränkt), and the other, from the standpoint of this negation, is outside it. Therefore, what is determined is exterior to it, and in this consists the contradiction of its being; the abstraction of the exteriority of its contradiction and its unrest (Unruhe) is time itself. This is why the finite is transient and temporal: because it is not, like the concept, in itself the total negativity .... But the concept, in its identity as existing freely for itself (-I = I-) is in itself and for itself absolute negativity and freedom. Hence time does not represent the power of the concept; and the concept is not in time as a temporal being (ein Zeitliches), but it is rather the power of time (die Macht der Zeit) insofar as time is this negativity-as-exteriority. Thus, only the natural, insofar as it is finite, is subjected to time; by contrast, the True, the Idea, Spirit are eternal. But the concept of eternity should not be grasped negatively as the abstraction of time, such that it would exist as it were outside it (time) ; and eternity should not be understood as coming after time, for this would be to make of eternity a future, a moment of time” (Encyclopedia, sect. 258).
The difference between the finite is proposed here as the difference between the now (jetzt) and the present (Gegenwart). Hence pure presence or infinite παϱoυσία would, in Hegel’s view, be commanded by the “now,” which for Heidegger limits and determines the notion of παϱoυσία from the Physics to the Encyclopedia. But since Heidegger shows here the privileged position of the Gegenwart, it becomes necessary to penetrate the differences between Jetzt, Gegenwart, and Anwesenheit. As a preliminary step, we should consider the following text of Hegel’s: “The dimensions of time, the present (Gegenwart), the future, and the past are the becoming of exteriority as such and its dissolution (Auflösung) in the differences of being, seen as a transition to nothingness, and of nothingness, viewed as a transition to being. The immediate disappearance of these differences in singularity constitutes the present as a now (die Gegenwart als Jetzt) which, as singularity, is exclusive and yet passes continually into the other moments — being itself merely the disappearance of its being into nothingness and of nothingness into its being. “The finite present (die endliche Gegenwart) is the now established as being — in distinction from the negative, the abstract moments of past and future — insofar as it is a concrete unity and thus affirmative; but this being is itself only abstract, disappearing into nothingness. Moreover, in nature, where time is now, the differences between these dimensions cannot amount to anything substantial; they are necessary only in subjective representation (Vorstellung), memory, fear, or hope. But the past and future of time, so far as they are in nature, are space, for space is time negated; thus, space which is suppressed and retained (aufgehobene) is first of all the point and, developed for itself, time.” (Encyclopedia, sect. 259). Such a text — and several others — seem both to confirm and contest the interpretation found in Being and Time. The confirmation is evident. The contestation complicates things at the point where the present is distinguished from the now; and the now in its purity belongs only to nature and is not yet time, etc. In brief, it would be too hasty and simplifying to say that the Hegelian concept of time is borrowed from a “physics” or from a “philosophy of nature,” and that it passes essentially unmodified into a “philosophy of spirit” or into a “philosophy of history.” A careful reading of Aristotle would raise analogous questions.
This constitutes the difference in Physics IV between the treatment of place and the treatment of time. Yet the former adds a critical development to an exoteric exposition, making its articulation explicit (cf. 210b).
J. Moreau, L’espace et le temps selon Aristote. Padua, Antenare 1965, p. 92.
I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. K. Smith. New York, Humanities Press, 1950, B 49, p. 76 — Trans.
Cf. also 223 a, b. Aristotle also conceives of time in relation to movement (ϰίνησις) and change (µεταβoλή), though he begins by showing that time is neither one nor the other. This also forms the first move in Kant’s transcendental exposition of time: “Here I may add that the concept of change (Veränderung), and with it the concept of movement (Bewegung) as change of place, is possible only through and in the representation of time; and that if this representation were not an a priori (inner) intuition, no concept, whatever it might be, could render intelligible the possibility of a change, that is, of a combination of contradictorily opposed predicates in one and the same object — for example, the being and not — being of one and the same object (Objekt) in one and the same place. Only in time can two contradictorily opposed predicates meet in one and the same object, namely, successively. Thus our concept of time explains the possibility of that body of a priori synthetic knowledge which is exhibited in the general doctrine of movement and which is by no means unfruitful.” (Critique of Pure Reason, B 48–9, p. 76).
“Time is nothing else than the form of inner sense, that is, of ourselves and our inner state. For time cannot be a determination of outer appearances; it belongs to no shape or position; yet it determines the relation of representations in our inner state. And precisely because this inner intuition yields no shape, we try to compensate for this lack by analogies. We represent the time-sequence by a line progressing to infinity (und stellen die Zeitfolge durch eine ins Unendliche fortgehende Linie vor), in which the manifold constitutes a series of one dimension only; and we reason from the properties of this line to all the properties of time, with the exception that while the parts of the line are simultaneous the parts of time are always successive. The result is that the representation of time itself is an intuition, since all its relations can be expressed in an outer intuition.” (Critique of Pure Reason, B 50, p. 77).
These German expressions may be rendered respectively as “presence-at-hand” and “presentness.” — Trans.
For example, in section 32 (“Transcendental Imagination and its Relation to Time”), which shows how the pure intuition of time, as described in Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic, is liberated from the predominance of the present and the now. One long passage in particular clarifies all the concepts of Being and Time which especially interest us: “We have presented the transcendental imagination as the origin of pure sensible intuition. In this way, it has been fundamentally recognized that time, like pure intuition, arises from the transcendental imagination. An appropriate analysis must still elucidate the modalities according to which time is founded in the transcendental imagination. “As the pure succession of the now-series (Nacheinander der Jetztfolge), time is ‘in constant flux.’ Pure intuition intuits this succession without making an object of it (ungegenständlich). To intuit means to receive what offers itself. Pure intuition gives to itself, in the receptive act, that which is capable of being received. “Reception of ... is usually understood as receiving something given (Vorhandenen) or something present (Anwesenden). But this narrow concept of reception, which is still considered in terms of empirical intuition, must be separated from pure intuition and its own character of receptivity. It is easy to see that the pure intuition of the pure succession of nows cannot be the reception of something present (Anwesenden). If it were, then it could at most ‘intuit’ only the now in its nowness (das jetzige Jetzt), but never the non-sequence as such and the horizon which it forms. Strictly speaking, the pure and simple reception of something ‘present’ (Gegenwärtigen) could not even intuit a single now (Jetzt), since each now has an essentially continuous extension in its immediate past and in its immediate future (in sein Soeben und Sogleich). The receptive act of pure intuition must in itself give the aspect of the now (den Anblick des Jetzt) in such a way that it looks ahead (vorblickt) to its immediate future and looks back (rückblickt) toward its immediate past. “We now see more concretely than ever why pure intuition, which is the subject of the Transcendental Aesthetic, cannot immediately be the reception of something present (Gegenwärtigen). Basically, the pure intuition which, as receptive, gives itself its object is not related to the mere presence of something (ein nur Anwesendes) and still less to a being given as present-at-hand (vorhandenes Seiendes).” (Cf. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, pp. 178–9.)
Aristotle, Physics IV, 217b-218a. — Trans.
I say “in act, if you like ...” because this translation poses problems. We cannot undertake these here, but we can refer to Heidegger’s essay “Der Spruch des Anaximander,” which indicates the difference between Aristotle’s concept of ἐνϱγεια and the actualitas and actus purus of medieval scholasticism [cf. Holzwege, p. 324 — Trans.] Reference may also be made to Pierre Aubenque, who says that “the modern translation of act does not obscure the original sense, but for once remains faithful to it” (Le problème de l’être chez Aristote, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1962, p. 441 n. 1).
For an elaboration of the notion of “metaphysical closure,” see the author’s essay “La phénoménologie et la clôture de la métaphysique” in EΠOXE∑ (February, 1966), as well as his book La voix et le phénomène. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1967, pp. 115 ff. — Trans.
Time represents the existence of the circle, and of the circle of circles discussed at the end of The Science of Logic. Time is circular, but it is also that which in the very movement of the circle conceals circularity ; it is the circle insofar as it hides its own totality from itself and loses in difference the unity of its beginning and its end: “But the method which thus becomes entwined in a circle cannot anticipate in a temporal development that the beginning as such is already derivative.” (Cf. Science of Logic, vol. II, p. 484.) Therefore, “the pure concept which concerns itself with itself” is time, and yet is realized as the elimination of time. This concept comprehends time, and is its meaning. And if time has a general meaning, it is difficult to see how it could be uprooted from an onto-theo-teleology — for example, one of the Hegelian variety. It is the very anticipation of the meaning of time — not a certain determination of this meaning — which belongs to this onto-theo-teleology. Time is already suppressed the moment the question of its meaning is posed by relating it (time) to appearance, truth, presence, or essence in general. The question then posed is that of its achievement. This is why there is perhaps no other possible response to the question of the meaning of the being of time than that of the end of The Phenomenology of Mind: time is the very thing which eliminates (tilgt) time. But this elimination is an inscription (écriture) which allows us time for interpretation, and gives us the now in the very act of its suppression. The Tilgen is also an Aufheben. Thus, for example: “Time is the very concept which is there (der da ist), presenting itself to consciousness as empty intuition. This is why the spirit necessarily manifests itself in time, and it manifests itself in time as long as it does not grasp its pure concept, that is, does not eliminate time (nicht die Zeit tilgt). Time is the pure exterior self; it is the concept as merely intuited, not grasped by the self. When this concept grasps itself, it suppresses its temporal form (hebt er seine Zeitform auf), conceives the intuition, and is the intuition as conceived and conceiving. Thus, time manifests itself as destiny (Schicksal) and as the necessity of spirit which is not yet attained within itself ...” (Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie, London, Allen and Unwin, 1931, p. 800). The German words are inserted to show the unity of Dasein and time, and of the Tilgen and Aufheben of time. Whatever its determinations may be, the Hegelian notion of Being no sooner falls into time as into its da-sein than it simply departs to fall into parousia We hardly need to recall that for Aristotle the circle is the model of movement, on the basis of which time and γϱαµµή (“line”) are thought. This is underlined with special precision in Physics IV: “Time appears as the movement of the sphere because other movements are measured by this one, as is time itself. This also explains the common saying that human affairs form a circle and that other things which have natural movement — e.g., generation and destruction — are also circular in character ... even time itself is thought to be a certain circle ... etc.” (223b). Cf. also Aubenque, op. cit., p. 426.
Cf. also Physics IV, 222a.
Physics IV, 218a. For the most part, here and elsewhere, I have followed the Oxford translation of the Physics by R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1930. — Trans.
Among many passages that we might cite here is the following: “It was thus that we were led before the idea of Time. There a surprise awaited us. We were in fact very struck at seeing how real time, which plays the primary role in every philosophy of evolution, escapes mathematics. Since its essence is to elapse, none of its parts is still there when another presents itself …. In the case of time, the idea of superimposition would imply an absurdity, for every effect of duration which would be superimposable on itself (and hence measurable) would have for its essence not to endure .... The line that is measured is immobile ; time is mobility. The line is something already made; time is that which makes itself, and is even that which is responsible for everything making itself.” Another remark would agree perfectly with Heidegger’s footnote if this note did not in fact indicate a limit of the Bergsonian revolution: “Throughout the history of philosophy, time and space are put at the same level and treated as things of the same type. This space is studied — its nature and function determined — and then the conclusions obtained are transferred to time. The theory of space and that of time dangle before each other. To pass from one to the other it suffices to change one word: ‘juxtaposition’ is replaced by ‘succession’.” (La pensée et le mouvant Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1946, pp. 2, 3, 5 f.).
Cf. also Physics Is, 223a.
Ibid., 219b.
Being and Time, p. 195, transl.
See above, footnote 14.
Although Bergson criticizes the concept of the possible as possible and does not make duration or tendency a movement of the possible — since everything is “actual” for him — it remains true that his concepts of duration, élan, and the ontological tension of life oriented by a telos retain traces of the Aristotelian ontology of time.
Only this kind of reading — provided it does not lead to a false sense of security and to a structural limitation of questions — appears to be able to undo what is presently in France a deep complicity: that which brings together — in terms of the same refusal to read, the same repetitiveness or blind silence, and the same abuse of the question, the text, and the question of the text — the devoted Heideggerians and the anti-Heideggerians. In this situation, political “resistance” to Heidegger often serves as a highly moral alibi for a “resistance” of another order: a philosophical resistence, though even those forms of resistance whose political implications seem nebulous cannot escape a certain political tinge.
Being and Time, p. 486. — Trans.
The primordial and authentic are determined as the proper (eigentlich) — i.e., as the near (prope, proprius), the present in the proximity of presence to self. It could be shown how this value of proximity and presence to self enters, at the beginning of Being and Time and elsewhere, into the decision to pose the question of the meaning of Being starting from the existential analytic of Dasein. The force of metaphysics in such a decision and in the credit accorded here to the value of presence to self could also be demonstrated.
Holzwege, pp. 319–21. — Trans.
Ibid., p. 336.
Thus Plotinus (though one wonders what his exact role in the history of metaphysics and the Platonic epoch is) calls presence — in his terms, µoϱφή — the trace of non-presence or the a-morphic (τὸ γὰϱ ἰχνoς τoά ἀµόϱφoυ µoϱφὴ). This trace is not a form of presence absence, or a compromise between them.
Holzwege, p. 336.
Ibid.
The author coins the term “différance” in order to capture the nuances both of “différence” (difference as such) and of “différer” (to defer, to delay). For elaboration, see J. Derrida, La voix et le phénomène, cit. supra, p. 98; and “La ‘Différance’“ in Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie, vol. 63, 1968, pp. 73–120. — Trans.
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Derrida, J. (1970). “Oυσíα and Γραµµή”: A Note to a Footnote in Being and Time . In: Smith, F.J. (eds) Phenomenology in Perspective. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4447-8_4
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