Being and Time Being and Subjectivity Given that
Being and Time
Being and Subjectivity • Given that we ask about Being by first interrogating the Being of the being who can inquire into and understand Being, one might think that Being for Heidegger is always Being forus. • On this interpretation Heidegger is an Idealist. We never get to Being in-itself, rather we get to the meaning of Being by way of understanding of Dasein’s Being, which in understanding things makes is possible for beings or entities to be. Being is always being for a subject.
Time as the Horizon of Being • But Heidegger is not just interested in Being for-us. • For when, through Being and Time, we make explicit Dasein’s Being and its implicit understanding of Being, what we find is that the meaning of Being transcends what it can mean for Dasein. • It does so because “time” is “the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being” (BT, 1)
Time and Presence • Heidegger argues that the dominant Western understanding of time is in terms of presence. To be in time is to be present, whether now, in the past, or in the future. • In other words, present, past, and future moments of time are intrinsically the same, its just that past moments of presence happen prior to present moments of presence, which are prior to future moments of presence.
The Three-fold Nature of Time • Heidegger argues that each present moment of time also involves what has been (the past) and what can be (the future). • For something to be in time is not for it to be merely present, because it has a shadowy background (the past) and an undetermined possible future. This background and future are not to be understood as earlier and later presences. Rather time is not equivalent with what is present but is what recedes into the background and presses into undeveloped possibilities. • Any object that is given in time is always both present and absent, partly being disclosed and partially being covered-over. • While this temporal structure applies to Dasein’s Being and its understanding of beings, Heidegger’s goal is to show that the meaning of Being is time.
Heidegger’s Argument, Step 1 Heidegger’s argument has two steps: 1. The Being of the being who understands Being, Dasein, is temporal. “Dasein is in such a way as to be something which understands something like Being. . . We shall show that whenever Dasein tacitly understands and interprets something like Being, it does so with time as its standpoint. Time must be brought to light— and genuinely conceived—as the horizon for all understanding of Being and for any way of interpreting it. In order for us to discern this, time needs to be explicated primordially as the horizon for the understanding of Being, and in terms of temporality as the being of Dasein, which understands Being” (39)
Heidegger’s Argument, Step 2 • In grasping that any understanding of Being depends on a being whose being is temporal, “Being itself (and not merely entities, let us say, as entities in time) is thus made visible in its temporal character” (40).
Heidegger’s Unfinished Argument • Being and Time as written was part of a larger project that had two parts, each with three divisions (see page 64). Being and Time as written is unfinished, it comprises only the first two divisions of part one: 1. The Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein 2. Dasein and Temporality 3. Time and Being • So Heidegger lays out how temporality is the horizon through which we must understand Dasein’s Being, but he never finished the argument that time is the Being of Being-itself. But that was Heidegger’s goal.
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