time more originally, it is time conceived in this way—“world-time”—that guides all further explanations. In this way, we either do not see time at all or we see time only as a mode of what is just out-there, namely, the world or nature.

Because this understanding of time is close at hand and dominant, from the very beginning all the essential modes of time—present, past, future—get their temporal meanings fixed in terms of this understanding of time. As a result, these modes, in their everyday meaning, are not only unusable but also misleading. Thus “future” means: the time that is coming, the nows that are not yet here on hand but that are on their way. Let us consider those [future] nows in whose still-coming time something “is.” When it comes to an entity that “is” at that time which is still to come, we say, “It will be.” But this future—a now that is not yet present—is simply not the authentic future in terms of which time is properly temporal, any more than the isolated and delimited now that is present here is the real presenting in the sense of making-present, as we explicated it above. [In the dominant understanding,] the now is the present moment, and [412] from Aristotle to Hegel the now was understood as that which is directly present in a privileged way.

Correspondingly, “future” means: the coming presence [Anwesenheit] of the now, a possible present moment in the sense just indicated. In this view, the now is understood as something within time, consequently something that the temporality of time cannot explain. But in fact, the future is not a determination of the possible presence {Anwesenheit} of the now. Presence {Anwesenheit} is possible only in and through the making-present of something that is first articulable through a presenting. And in the same way, the future, understood as something present-qua-coming, is possible only in an expecting [Gewärtigen]. Such expecting, understood as “letting something come toward oneself,” first makes possible something arriving—a possible now that is arriving.¹⁵⁴

Expecting, like making-present, is a mode of the being of human existence. And every form of expecting understands whatever it (quaexpectation) relates to as something that possibly can be present. It understands its expecting as the expecting of a [future] making-present of

154. [Moser (p. 816.25–817.6) records Heidegger saying here, and in place of the next paragraph: “Only in expecting is something futural [Zukünftiges]—or to be more precise, is the future of the futural—possible. Expecting, like making-present, is a mode of the being of human existence. All expecting relates itself at the same time to . . . , or more precisely, is understood as an expecting that intends a making-present. Expecting qua ‘letting something come toward oneself’ means letting it come toward oneself as a possible making-present of something. To expect something that is coming means to understand the coming something as something that can be present. And so expecting includes an intrinsic relation to a possible making-something-present.”]