about the now as if it were like a chair or table. When I say “now,” I’ll never find anything in the range of the merely-present that corresponds to what the now itself is. Likewise, in saying “now,” I am not talking about something “inner,” like an act of will or a state of mind or anything at all that occurs in the soul. [402] By the word “now” I neither name nor speak of anything at all that is just-there. Rather, with that “now” human existence expresses itself, not as something just-there but itself in its being unto the world, i.e., in the basic form of this being unto the world: the act of making-present.
Now we must try to bring out this connection between the now and the (now-)present in order to see:
* * *
What gets expressed in the now is the present [Gegenwart]. The present, which is a matter of letting-something-encounter-us, is not itself present [anwesend], it is not something just-there. The present is only a makingpresent [Gegenwart ist nur gegenwärtig], making-present as a comportment. Making-present primarily expresses the being of human existence as being-unto-the-world. This being unto the world is not a mode of being to which there can be added the property of making-present; rather, the present [Gegenwart] is primarily the condition of the possibility of a being-familiar-with-the-world [eines Seins bei der Welt]. Makingpresent is (primarily) a factical presenting [Gegenwart], which, in this active and transitive sense, is a concept that pertains to the very structure of human existence and in fact expresses the meaning of the being [of human existence] and primarily of its being in the world. We designate the ever-temporal [jeweilige], authentic ontological possibility of factical human existence (however that possibility be chosen and determined) as Existenz. All the structures and interpretations of the being of human existence take their orientation from Existenz. Likewise, all the specific structural concepts that express the being of human existence
148. [Here (Moser, p. 803) Heidegger ends his lecture of Thursday, 25 February 1926, to be followed by his final lecture, that of Friday, 26 February, which opened with a 35-word introduction that is omitted in GA 21. Soon after this date, Heidegger left Marburg for his cabin in Todtnauberg to finish the final draft of Sein und Zeit.]