"Time" has long served as the ontological—or rather ontic—criterion for naïvely distinguishing the different regions of beings. "Temporal" beings (natural processes and historical events) are separated from "atemporal" beings (spatial and numerical relationships). We are accustomed to distinguishing the "timeless" meaning of propositions from the "temporal" course of propositional statements. Further, a "gap" between "temporal" being and "supratemporal" eternal being is found, and the attempt is made to bridge the gap. "Temporal" here means as much as being [seiend] "in time," an obscure enough definition to be sure. The fact remains that time in the sense of ''being in time" serves as a criterion for separating the regions of being. How time comes to have this distinctive ontological function, and even with what right precisely something like time serves as such a criterion, and most of all whether in this naïve ontological application of time its genuinely possible ontological relevance is expressed, has neither been asked nor investigated up to now. "Time," especially on the horizon of the common understanding of it, has chanced to acquire this "obvious" ontological function "of itself," as it were, and has held onto it until today.
In contrast we must show, on the basis of the question of the meaning of being which shall have been worked out, that—and in what way—the central range of problems of all ontology is rooted in the phenomenon of time correctly viewed and correctly explained.
If being is to be conceived in terms of time, and if the various modes and derivatives of being in their modifications and derivations are in fact to become intelligible through a consideration of time, then being itself—and not only beings that are "in time"—is made visible in its "temporal" ["zeitlich"] character. But then "temporal" can no longer mean only ''being in time ["in der Zeit seiend"]." The "atemporal" and the "supratemporal" are also "temporal" with respect to their being; this not only by way of privation when compared to "temporal" beings, 19 which are "in time," but in a positive way which, of course, must first be clarified. Because the expression "temporal" belongs to both pre-philosophical and philosophical usage, and because that expression will be used in a different sense in the following investigations, we shall call the original determination of the meaning of being and its characters and modes which devolve from time its temporal [temporale] determination. The fundamental ontological task of the interpretation of being as such thus includes the elaboration of the temporality of being [Temporalität des Seins]. In the exposition of the problem of temporality the concrete answer to the question of the meaning of being is first given.
Because being is in each instance comprehensible only in regard to time, the answer to the question of being cannot lie in an isolated and blind proposition. The answer is not grasped by repeating what