any statement concerning “world.” We understand “statement” as a comportment of human existence unto the world. It150 conceals within itself the fundamental question: the question about the ur-temporality of human existence itself as being unto the world.
We have characterized being unto the world as concern [Besorgen]; and the essential structure of concern is care [Sorge]. We established that care is the being-structure of human existence as such, and in turn we explained this structure of care as being-already-ahead-of-oneselfas-being-already-familiar-with-the-world [Sich-selbst-vorweg-schon-seinbei-der-Welt]. We have previously discussed the character of “ahead” and of “already” with regard to their possible time-sense; the result was simply negative. These time-features cannot mean anything like being-intime—a determinate form of the mere thereness of something that is merely-there: (1) because they themselves are features of a structure that has nothing to do with the mere-thereness that characterizes the world and nature; and in addition (2) because this structure is the ontological structure of that entity the meaning of whose being has absolutely nothing to do with something merely-present. And yet, on the other hand, the features of human existence that are in question here—the “ahead” and the “already”—obviously do have time-features.
In what sense is the being-structure of human existence—care—characterized by time? It is not the case that these structures—over and above what they are in themselves—are “also” in time and in some kind of relation to time. Rather, care is determined “by” time in such a way that care itself is time. Care is the very facticity of time. [410]
Temporality is the ground of the possibility of these structures of care itself. The “ahead-of-itself” is a mode of time, but not in the sense of mere presence within time. Thus time is not the kind of being that befits some entity that is merely-present.151 It simply “is” not; its being is not a determinate kind of being, it is not the being of some entity. Rather, it is the condition of possibility of the fact that there is being (not entities).Time does not have the kind of being of any other thing; rather, time [constantly] unfolds [zeitigt].152 And this unfolding constitutes the temporality of time. The “ahead-of-itself” is a mode in which time unfolds.
When we make statements such as “Time is that or that” and “Time is temporal,” the word “is” has the sense of a specifically phenomenological-categorial positing which, insofar as it states anything, must
150. [The word “it” (sie) could refer to any of three elements of the previous sentence—namely, “the fundamental question about the time-character,” or any “statement about ‘world’,” or “world” itself. Moser (p. 812.23–24) shows that “it” refers to “a comportment of human existence toward the world.”]
151. [Moser, p. 813.26–28.]152. [For Heidegger the verb zeitigen connotes unfolding from out of itself (φύσις).]