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Of Space and Time

being met by a counter-move. This counter-turning marks the originary unity of time and space: it is the movement that brings them together in holding them apart, that separates them by referring them to one another.

How does this take place? The counter-turning takes place within each ‘dimension’: rapture is first and foremost a tendency towards dispersion. Yet it is also gathering (in the moment). This is its counter-move or counter-turning. Similarly, captivation is essentially a tendency towards estrangement. Yet it is also enclosure. As such, enclosure is its counter-turning. But, in each case, the counter-turning could not occur were it not for the fact that time and space are not heterogeneous, were it not for the fact that, from the start, they are turned towards one another. Thus, gathering is the spatializing of time, the becomingspace of time, or space-in-time. Likewise, enclosure is the temporalizing of space, the becoming-time of space, or time-in-space. Such is the reason why, in the end, Heidegger can claim that ‘time spatialises’ and that ‘space temporalises’. Each has always already begun to become its other, is always already caught up in its becoming other. Each becomes itself only in becoming other. Every movement of owning is a movement of othering, every propriation an expropriation. The unity, or intimacy (Einigkeit, Innigkeit) of time and space lies in this counter-turning, in the becoming other of each: "This counter-turning is indeed what is essential and indicates the originary referral of both to each other, on the basis of separatedness [Geschiednis]." [P. 269] And so, it is on the basis of their being two counter-tendencies, one oriented toward dispersal, the other one towards estrangement, that each one comes into its own. It is in their very separateness, their very counter-orientation, that each is brought into its own essence and proper unfolding. But at no stage is this opposition dialectical, for both unfold, as counter-tendencies, from the structure of Ereignis itself, torn between--and this being-torn-apart, this quartering is not the result of some indecision, some temporary state of hesitation, but designates Ereignis in its essence--belongingness and call. This primal and irreducible 'event' is the forever-renewed origin of time-space, the very source of the spatializing and the temporalizing that is world configuring.

But in the end, what matters most is that this temporalizing and this spacing be that of Ereignis, understood as the unity of belongingness and call, as this singular and unique event on which the fate of the human hinges. Ereignis, as the event of time-space, is thus the unity and co-originarity of this movement of ecstasy and captivation, dissemination and alienation, in and through which time is from the start brought back into the hold of space, and space itself from the start carried away in the breaking out of time. History is nothing other than the state of equilibrium reached at any given time by this spatio-temporal economy. History is of time-space. It is the mark or the inscription of a particular configuration of the tension opposing time and space.

Being and Time set out to reveal time as the ultimate horizon on the basis of which the world opens up for us, and so as the ‘meaning’ of being. Yet the project of fundamental ontology remained incomplete. The reason for that was