464 II. 6
Being and Time

which any Dasein has currently interpreted and expressed has as such already been given a public character on the basis of that Dasein's ecstatical Being-in-the-world. In so far, then, as everyday concern understands itself in terms of the 'world' of its concern and takes its 'time', it does not know this 'time' as its own, but concernfully utilizes the time which 'there is' ["es gibt"]-the time with which "they" reckon. Indeed the publicness of 'time' is all the more compelling, the more explicitly factical Dasein concerns itself with time in specifically taking it into its reckoning.


80. The Time with which we Concern Ourselves, and Within-time-ness

So far we have only had to understand provisionally how Dasein, as grounded in temporality, is, in its very existing, concerned with times and how, in such interpretative concern, time makes itself public for Being-in-the-world. But the sense in which time 'is' if it is of the kind which is public and has been expressed, remains completely undefined, if indeed such time can be considered as being at all. Before we can make any decision as to whether public time is 'merely subjective' or 'Objectively actual', or neither of these, its phenomenal character must first be determined more precisely.

When time is made public, this does not happen just occasionally and subsequently. On the contrary, because Dasein, as something ecstatico-temporal, is already disclosed, and because understanding and interpretation both belong to existence, time has already made itself public in concern. One directs oneself according to it, so that it must somehow be the sort of thing which Everyman can come across.

Although one can concern oneself with time in the manner which we have characterized-namely, by dating in terms of environmental events -this always happens basically within the horizon of that kind of concern with time which we know as astronomical and calendrical time-reckoning. Such reckoning does not occur by accident, but has its existential-ontological necessity in the basic state of Dasein as care. Because it is essential to Dasein that it exists fallingly as something thrown, it interprets its time concernfully by way of time-reckoning. In this, the 'real' making-public [412] of time gets temporalized, so that we must say that Dasein's thrownness is the reason why 'there is' time publicly.1 If we are to demonstrate that public time has its source in factical temporality, and if we are to assure ourselves that this demonstration is as intelligible as possible, the time which has been interpreted in the temporality of concern must first be characterized,


1 'In ihr zeitigt sich die "eigentliche" Veröffentlichung der Zeit, sodass gesagt werden muss: die Geworfenheit des Daseins ist der Grund dafür, dass es öffentlich Zeit "gibt".' Heidegger's quotation marks around 'gibt' suggest an intentional pun which would permit the alternative translation: ' . . . the reason why Dasein "gives" time publicly.'


Being and Time (M&R) by Martin Heidegger