as the ecstatic—timeliness—temporality [Temporalität]; yet, “horizon”! Beyng [Seyn] has “roofed” [überdacht] beyngs [Seyendes]. However, transcendence from the truth of beyng: the event [Ereignis]. (SZ, 440n38a/BT, 36n; tr. mod.)
Already in Being and Time, the “transcendentality” of being thus designates its temporal referentiality and contextuality, i.e., unique singularity. As the marginal note indicates, the basic metaphysical connotation inherent in this use of the word “transcendence” is the notion of being as a “horizon” that “lies beyond” beings and “comprehends” or “covers” them. We will come back in detail (in Chapter 3) to the way in which Heidegger later pries himself loose of this potential traditionalism. It is precisely in its situated, situational, and instantaneous character that Dasein is apt to function as the “place” or the “there” (Da) for the situated and situational instantiation of meaningful presence.33 In Being and Time, this situatedness is addressed first and foremost in temporal terms—taking “temporal” in the very wide sense of ecstatic self-excess, from which Heidegger, in § 70, attempts to derive even spatial situatedness, supposedly in order to avert any “spatial” visualization of time as linear succession. He later admitted this derivation to be untenable (ZSD, 24/OTB, 23); we will see that in Heidegger’s later work, complicated presence in the sense of “proximity” (Nähe) is equiprimordially temporal as well as spatial presence.
Significantly for Heidegger’s later thinking, the singular “letting-encounter” of a situation, accomplished by the instant, is also characterized as a “clearing” or “lighting” (Lichtung) in the double sense of “illumination” and “space of light and visibility.” The “natural light” (lumen naturale) in human beings is their temporal being-structure, which “illuminates” (erleuchtet) and “clears” (lichtet) the “there” (Da) of Dasein, i.e., structures it in such a way that it can constitute a context of making-sense and meaningfulness, making Dasein itself a “clearing” for the accessibility of things (SZ, 133/BT, 129). What ultimately “clears” Dasein in this way, making any perceiving or grasping of meaningfulness possible, is precisely the ecstatic unity of timeliness (SZ, 350–51/BT, 334). The ecstatic unity of timeliness is the singular clearing in which meaningfulness can take place, become present (anwesen) in the place, the Da furnished by Dasein. For this reason, Heidegger famously proposed at the end of his career to replace the title “being and time,” more precisely, its reversed form “time and being,” with the title “clearing and presence” (Lichtung und Anwesenheit; ZSD, 80/OTB, 73).