independent of what it delimits. Time as number, as that which was portrayed by us as the counted-counting. does not itself belong to the entity that it counts. When Aristotle says that time is what is counted in connection with motion. what he wishes to stress is that. to be sure, we count and determine motion as transition in terms of the now, but that for this reason this counting counted, time. is bound neither to the intrinsic content nor the mode of being of the moving thing nor to the motion as such. Nevertheless, in our counting as we follow a motion we encounter time as something counted. With this a peculiar character of time is revealed, a character that was interpreted later by Kant in a special sense as form of intuition.
Time is number and not limit, but as number it is at the same time able to measure that with reference to which it is number. Not only is time counted, but as counted it can itself be something that counts in the sense of a measure. Only because time is number in the sense of the counted now can it become a mensural number. so that it itself can count in the sense of a measuring. This distinction between the now as number in general or what is counted and as the counting counted, along with the delimitation of time as number in contrast with limit, is the essential content of the difficult place in Aristotle's essay on time, into which we shall enter only briefly. Aristotle says: τὸ δὲ νῦν διὰ τὸ κινεῖσθαι τὸ φερόμενον αἰεὶ ἕτερον;32 because the now is what is counted in a transition. it always differs with that which is undergoing the transition. ὥσθ᾿ ὁ χρόνος ἀριθμὸς οὐχ ὡς τῆς αὐτῆς στιγμῆς;33 therefore, time is not number with reference to the same point as a point. that is, the now is not a point-element of continuous time, but as a transition, insofar as it is correlated with a point, with a place in the movement, it is already always beyond the point. As transition it looks backward and forward. It cannot be correlated with an isolated point as selfsame because it is beginning and end: ὅτι ἀρχὴ καὶ τελευτή, ἀλλ᾿ ὡς τὰ ἔσχατα τῆς γραμμῆς μᾶλλον.34 Time is number in a manner of speaking—
32. Physica, 5, 220a 14. [The single passage. 220a 14-20, to which notes 32-35 refer, is reproduced here as a whole. See also the remark and translation added to note 34, below.
"The 'now' on the other hand, since the body carried is moving. is always different.
"Hence time is not number in the sense in which there is 'number' of the same point because it is beginning and end, but rather as the extremities of a line form a number, and not as the parts of the line do so, both for the reason given (for we can use the middle point as two, so that on that analogy time might stand still), and further because obviously the 'now' is no part of time nor the section any part of the movement, any more than the points are parts of the line-for it is two lines that are parts of one line." Trans. Hardie and Gaye.]
33. Ibid. 220a 14f.
34. Ibid. 220a 15f. [The Grundprobleme's reference to the Ross edition of the Physics, which was published in 1936, runs into a specific problem here. The Ross text has the word "grammes" in this place, whereas other texts, such as that by Bekker, read "autes." Thus the Ross edition's translation (Hardie and Gaye) refers to the extremities of a line (gramme) whereas Heidegger speaks of the point's extremes--i.e. the translation Heidegger offers is contrary to the text quoted from Aristotle. But the question arises, further, as to the meaning of "autes" in "ta eschata tes autes." Wicksteed and Cornford (Cornford consulted Bekker, Prantl,·and other sources and commentaries; see vol. 1. pp. x-xi) read it as referring to a line. not a point: "but rather as the two extremities of the same line." See also their explanatory note regarding the meaning of the entire passage, p. 392, note a. Perhaps Heidegger's expression, "on both sides of the stretching." captures this linear implication.)