Ira D Bizzell III 26 April 2012

Heidegger on Time
The purpose of this paper is to explore Martin Heideggers philosophy of time. His thoughts concerning time along with being-in-the-world were first introduced in his standout 1920s1 book, Being and Time. Circumstance lead to this work being published before completion, actually before he wrote the section, Part One - Division Thre e, Time and Being, proposed to deal directly with time. Division Two does though introduce the time factor by exploring Daseins understanding of time in temporality. Moving on to more lofty matters, Heidegger never completed this book. His later works, published from lecture series add valuable insight toward his thinking as

Being and Time was written and further thoughts on the concept of time.
More so, they show the maturing of his thought into true philosophical thinking, a phenomenological seeing2; a transcendence very much akin to Eastern philosophys concept of No-mindedness. The illusive unity of being and time often spoken of in Western philosophy, though never quite

1 2

B. & T. was first published in 1927. Heidegger began composition much earlier. Husserl was teaching this step-by-step training in phenomenological seeing to advanced students at Freiburg in 1916. See Kaufman 1975, p238.

achieved3. So, I will also introduce some thoughts from others who have addressed the influence of Heideggers time and Zen in both directions. In his own preface to Being and Time, Heidegger lays out its twofold goal as to concretely work out the sense of being while provisionally aiming at an interpretation of time as the boundary for any possible understanding of being.4 Then moving to the introduction, Heidegger tells us that Dasein, a being capable of understanding being, does so from the standpoint of time 5. Thus we are always proximally and for the most part 6 a being in time. Temporality as a way of talking about how time is is generally considered in a linear progression of past, present and future. In this ordinary understanding, time is the self-evident criterion for discerning realms of being. This understanding has itself though arisen from temporality causing, among other things, confusing time with space. As the horizon for any understanding and interpretation of Being, time needs to be explicated and restored its rightfully autonomy7. The analytic of Dasein as a being for which being is itself an issue is the subject of Division One of Part One. Division Two takes on the temporal

3 4

Authors observation. See Heidegger 1927, Preface. 5 Ibid. Int. II, H18. 6 Authors favorite well turned Heidegger phrase. 7 See Heidegger 1927, Int. II, H18.

relationship of Dasein with time. It is not until we get to the final thirty pages of the book, Section VI of Division Two, that we square off and face temporality and within-time-ness as the source of our concept of time. This is first discussed in terms of historicality as a way of being that is part of existence which at its core is temporality. All previous interpreting of the temporal character of history has not addressed the fact that history runs its course in-time. Or that in average everydayness, Dasein understands history as happening within-time. Even more so than history, natural processes are sequenced by time and before any other concernful dealings, Dasein reckons with time and regulates itself according to time. This way of reckoning with its time comes before the use of equipment for measuring time. It is what makes possible the use of anything like clocks in the first place8. This exactly is the concern that leads Dasein to measure shadows, build sundials, and invent clocks as traveling pointers to measure time. Just as Dasein is a being concerned with being, Dasein temporalizes temporality by relating to time and taking it into account. Thus the concept of worldtime belongs wholly within temporality as does the time in which entities are encountered along with the within-time-ness of those entities. The Dasein which takes time and comes across time as proximal to the things
8

Ibid. II.6, H404.

encountered within the world as present-at-hand and ready-to-hand is the everyday Dasein. Closest to Dasein, experienced time is understood as somehow present-at-hand itself9. As the ordinary concept of time develops, its attributed character vacillates between a subjective being in itself or objectively in consciousness. In Hegel, Heidegger finds a connection between spirit and time where both subjective and objective possibilities cancel each other out and illuminate why spirit as history falls into time 10. It is here that we find the foundation of our concern with time. Dasein has projected itself, ahead of itself, upon its own potentiality-of-being before moving to any consideration of being. The nature of this projection is sobering 11: Dasein has been abandoned to the world, thrown in the midst of a world, and in abandonment, throwingly falls into it with concern expressed as care. Care as the unity of a fallingly thrown projection disclosed as a there! This being with others maintains itself by expression with language as being-in-theworld and being-in-the-midst of other entities also being-in-the-midst of being-in-the-world. Essential Dasein constantly expresses itself in the addressing of itself to the objects with which it is concerned and discussing
9

Ibid. II.6, H405. Ibid. II.6, H404. 11 Authors observation.

10

it in terms of temporality. This concern reckons up a mode of makingpresent which awaits and possibly retains. Concernfully planning always implies that something is to happen then. Concern expresses itself in awaiting this then, making present in the now, and retaining the former occasion12. Without any prior reckoning of time, Dasein concernfully assigns itself time to await, retain, and make present. In this way time dates itself according to ones current mode of allowing oneself time concernfully. That is; in terms of what Dasein does all day long. As Dasein is more awaitingly absorbed in concernful activity, even more does the time it allows itself vanish into the object of its concern in a continuously enduring sequence of pure nows. Thus Heideggers definition: Time is what shows itself in such a

making-present13. Ok then, tell us more of this time which is manifest within

the horizon of the circumspective concernful clock-using Dasein? For this I will type with the exact emphasis used by Heidegger as it defies any paraphrasing:

This time is that which is counted and which shows itself when one follows the traveling pointer, counting and making present in such a way that this making-present temporalizes itself in an ecstatical unity with the retaining and awaiting which are horizonally open according to the earlier and later.14
12 13

See Heidegger 1927, II.6, H406. Ibid. II.6, H409. 14 Ibid. II.6, H421.

It is here Heidegger makes the startling revelation that Aristotle had it right all along. This is Aristotles definition of time: For this is time: that which is counted in the movement which we encounter within the horizon of the earlier and later.15 Time is what is counted, what we have in view, when the traveling pointer is made present! Perhaps we can now understand why Heidegger did not see any need to finish Being in Time. Advancing twenty some years to 1949, Heidegger wrote an essay, The

Way Back into the Ground of Metaphysics. He attached the utmost

importance to this essay. In 1969, he personally selected it for inclusion in Walter Kaufmans existential textbook and assisted in the translation 16. Here Heidegger says that the question concerning existence must first lead through the metaphysical concept of human selfhood which is nothing less than the only question of thought. As yet to be unfolded, this question points to the truth of being as the concealed ground of all metaphysics. Commenting on Being and Time, he says: Being is not something other than Time: Time is called the first name of the truth of Being, and this truth is the presence of Being and thus Being itself. He goes on to explain that the Greeks experienced the Being of beings as the presence of the present,

15 16

Ibid. II.6, H421. Heideggers own footnote reads: Cf. Aristotle, Physica 11, 219b 1 ff. See Kaufman 1975, p233.

though we have come to experience present time as moving unrecognized and concealed in being present. Owing to Time, Being as such is unconcealed. Thus Time points to the truth of Being; unconcealedness 17. In Heideggers work, I see a person who did in fact experience transcendence through pure contemplation, and had to create his own language to even approximate an expression of what he saw there. Do you notice a verb-ness over noun-ness in all of the above that is characteristic of Eastern philosophy? Perhaps there is a connection, let us take a look. Zhihua Yao, a contemporary Chinese philosopher states that Heidegger is one of the few Western Philosophers who treats time seriously18. His essay, Four-Dimensional Time in Dzogchen and Heidegger specifically compares the Tantric Buddhist experience of time with that described by Heideggers phenomenology. Both avoid speculating on eternal life and direct their concern into the experience of the passage of time, the very phenomenon itself. A testament to bi-directional influence; Eastern philosopher writing on Buddhism, Heidegger, and time. Anything not-being is considered mere empty intellectual speculation, Buddhist philosophy is built upon practice and experience centered in the present. Here past, future,

17 18

Ibid. p273-274. See Zhihua 2007, p520.

and present are seen as no-longer, not-yet, and no-dwelling where immersion in the moment brings about a fourth dimension; its coming-to-presence revealing the very nature of reality as self-presentation 19. Of past, future, and present Heidegger would say; having been, being-ahead-of-oneself, and letting-something-be-encountered where each is presencing and revealing the others and Dasein is doing-the-presencing. Once again, Heideggers own words say it best: In the approaching of what is not yet present and in the having-been of what is no longer present and even in the present itself, there always plays a kind of approach and bringing about, that is, a kind of presencing. We cannot attribute the presencing to be thus thought to one of the three dimensions of time, to the present which would seem obvious. Rather, the unity of times three dimensions consists in the interplay of each toward each. This interplay proves to be the true extending, playing in the very heart of time, the fourth dimension, so to speaknot only so to speak, but in the nature of the matter. True time is four-dimensional.20

There is direct evidence that Heidegger concerned himself with Daoism. He translated several epigrams from the Dao De Jing himself for inclusion in published lectures. Xianglong, another Chinese philosopher wrote a well documented article concerning this. Xianglong notes that until recently, documented evidence of Heideggers interest in Daoism to the

19 20

Ibid. p520. Ibid. p520. Zhihuas own footnote reads: Heidegger, On Time and Being, p15.

product of his later thought, writings from the late 1950s. That changed in 2002, with the publication of Volume 75 of Heideggers Complete Works which included many essays referencing the Dao De Jing and its author Lao Zi. Specifically a 1943 article The Uniqueness of the Poet21. In that article, Heidegger renders his own translation of the Dao De Jing, verse eleven in its entirety as follows:

Thirty spokes converge in a hub, But the emptiness between them grants the Being of the cart. Out of the clay grow the utensils, But the emptiness in them grants the Being of the utensil. Walls, windows, and doors produce the house, But the emptiness between them grants the Being of the house. The being yields the utility. The Non-being grants the Being22
It is here that Heidegger links his disclosure of time in Being and Time with his understanding of verse eleven of Lao Zi. Lin Ma in her article, Deciphering Heideggers Connection with the

Daodejing makes similar claims in full support of Xianglong. Lin Ma further

states that in 1946, Heidegger engaged in a cooperative effort with Paul Shih-yi Hsiao where he obtained a kind of direct contact with Lao Zi in its original Chinese and translated a number of chapters. This story has been
21 22

Xianglong 2009, p71. Ibid. p75. I have also made reference to this verse in my Reading Journal.

taken as the most convincing basis for a claim that Heidegger has integrated Daoist themes into his central thought and thus he is a trans-cultural thinker23. Upon my own first reading of Being in Time, the similarity of this pinnacle of Western Phenomenology with Eastern philosophy lit up immediately. Speculation could envision an ancient Chinese connection to the ancient Greeks upon whom Heidegger built his thought. The pleasure of composing this paper was to see that observation born out by others. My own handbook of personally penned quotations contains this note: As a test of the quality of your observations, if others arrive at the same conclusion, they will fight some of those battles for you. So, Time is Being and we are the clock.

23

Lin Ma 2006, p149.

Bibliography:
Heidegger, M. Being and Time (1927). Translation by Macquarie J, Robinson E. from the German Sein und Zeit, Seventh edition. Harper & Row Publishers; Copyright 1962 Kaufman W. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Published by Plume, a member of the Penguin Group; Copyright 1956, 1975 Lin M. Deciphering Heidegger's Connection with the Daodejing. Asian Philosophy [serial online]. November 2006;16(3):149-171. Available from: Academic Search Complete, Ipswich, MA. Xianglong Z. The Coming Time "Between" Being and Daoist Emptiness: An Analysis of Heideggers Article Inquiring into the Uniqueness of the Poet via the Lao Zi. Philosophy East & West [serial online]. January 2009;59(1):71-87. Available from: Religion and Philosophy Collection, Ipswich, MA. Zhihua Y. Four-Dimensional Time in Dzogchen and Heidegger. Philosophy East & West [serial online]. October 2007;57(4):512-532. Available from: Academic Search Complete, Ipswich, MA.