2. What is the positive characterization of time and of the now that we should take from the figurative time-determinations? First of all, it must be made clear that the way the now has been characterized heretofore—as something between the not-yet and the no-longer—in no way touches the decisive aspect. But in the modes of synthesis, a feature of time is highlighted that was never seen in the usual characterization of time but that nonetheless was constantly made use of: The now is a “now-something.” The now speaks, as it were, “away from itself”; it points toward . . . “now that this-or-that . . . ,” or simply, “now that . . .” Insofar as one says “now,” no matter how undetermined and empty it might be, the now is, in its essence, a “now that this . . . ,” a “now that this or that is encountered,” or “now that this or that happens,” or “now that I behave in this or that way.” “Now” is essentially “now that this . . .” Even a completely isolated “Now!” that one might shout to start a footrace is a “now that . . . ,” and in fact this case shows the phenomenally primary feature of the now: “from this point on.” We look at a certain point on the clock, and when the secondhand gets there we shout “Now!” or “Go!”—meaning, “Now that this [second has been reached]!” And it need not be a chronometer: any event at all that the group has agreed on can serve this function.

So when we speak, as we usually do, of an individual “now” in the sense of a now-point in a series of nows, we don’t really talk about a “now” but rather use some other expression, like “this thing now” which stands within a sequence and about which we have to say: “it’s moving, it’s flowing.” At most, one still has a now-fragment to which no phenomenological sense pertains. The phenomenon of the now has already been deprived of its essential structure. And out of a multiplicity of such cut-up nows, we construct for ourselves the idea of time. Time, then, is something that is somehow “just there”—something which is given, but whose being we do not determine because we cannot. Every question about the being of time has [399] already misunderstood time. The difficulties that Augustine landed in when he asked this question (Confessions, book XI) are classic.

This character of “toward something” or “pointing to something” belongs to the essence of the now. Only by bringing out this character of the now can we make sense of the synthesis speciosa temporis. To this end, we have understood the basic structure of the synthesis temporis—the thesis that this synthesis is about self-referral (in the broadest sense) to a now; we have understood it as the highlighting of the now in such a way that the synthesis follows the now-phenomenon. Or better, it follows its indication, its “direction-toward.” More precisely yet, the synthesis follows the now’s “that-toward-which”: its “something,” its “this.” The primary and genuine highlighting of the now is unthematic: it pursues the now in terms of what the now is in itself,