Being and Time pt. 8
“Being and Time is extraordinarily rich, difficult and systematic work of philosophy that repays careful reading and rereading.”
“Firstly, he is trying to criticise the idea of time as a uniform, linear and infinite series of “now-points”.”
“This is what Heidegger calls the “vulgar” or ordinary conception of time where priority is always given to the present. Heidegger thinks that this Aristotelian conception of time has dominated philosophical inquiries into time from the ancient Greeks to Hegel and even up to his near contemporary Bergson.”
“Secondly, he is trying to avoid any conception of time that begins with a distinction between time and eternity.”
“For Heidegger, the primary phenomenon of time is the future that is revealed to me in my being-towards-death. Heidegger makes play of the link between the future (Zukunft) and to come towards (zukommen). Insofar as Dasein anticipates, it comes towards itself. The human is not confined in the present, but always projects towards the future.”
“But what Dasein takes over in the future is its basic ontological indebtedness, its guilt, as discussed in the previous blog.”
“There is a tricky but compelling thought at work here: in anticipation, I project towards the future, but what comes out of the future is my past, my personal and cultural baggage, what Heidegger calls my “having-been-ness” (Gewesenheit).”
“But this does not mean that I am somehow condemned to my past. On the contrary, I can make a decision to take over the fact of who I am in a free action. This is what Heidegger calls “resoluteness”.”
“This brings us to the present. For Heidegger, the present is not some endless series of now points that I watch flowing by. Rather, the present is something that I can seize hold of and resolutely make my own.”
“What is opened in the anticipation of the future is the fact of our having-been which releases itself into the present moment of action.”
“This is what Heidegger calls “the moment of vision” (Augenblick, literally “glance of the eye”). This term, borrowed from Kierkegaard and Luther, can be approached as a translation of the Greek kairos, the right or opportune moment.”
“The key to Heidegger’s understanding of time is that it is neither simply reducible to the vulgar experience of time, nor does it originate in distinction from eternity. Time should be grasped in and of itself as the unity of the three dimensions – what Heidegger calls “ecstases” – of future, past and present.”
“This is what he calls “primordial” or “original” time and he insists that it is finite. It comes to an end in death.”
“For Heidegger, we are time. Temporality is a process with three dimensions which form a unity.”
“The task that Heidegger sets himself in Being and Time is a description of the movement of human finitude.”