But if we are to characterize time in terms of the present, we understand the present as the now as distinct from the no-longer-now of the past and the not-yet-now of the future. But the present speaks at the same time of presence {Anwesenheit}. However, we are not accustomed to defining the peculiar character of time with regard to the present in the sense of presence. Rather, we represent time—the unity of present, past and future—in terms of the now. Even Aristotle says that that of rime which is, that is, presences, is the actual now. Past and future are a μὴ ὄν τι: something which is not, though not an absolute nullity, but rather something present which lacks something. This lack is named with the "no longer now" and the "not yet now." Viewed in this way, time appears as the succession of nows, each of which, barely named, already disappears into the "ago" and is already being pursued by the "soon." Kant says of time thus represented: "It has only one dimension" (Critique of Pure Reason, A31, B47). Time familiar to us as the succession in the sequence-of nows is what we mean when measuring and calculating time. It seems that we have calculated time immediately and palpably before us when we pick up a watch or chronometer, look at the hands, and say: "Now it is eight-fifty (o'clock)." We say "now" and mean time. But time cannot be found anywhere in the watch that indicates time, neither on the dial nor in the mechanism, nor can it be found in modern technological chronometers. The assertion forces itself upon us: the more technological—the more exact and informative—the chronometer, the less occasion to give thought first of all to time's peculiar character.
But where is time? Is time at all and does it have a place? {GA 14: 16} Obviously, time is not nothing. Accordingly, we maintain caution and say: there is time. We become still more cautious, and look carefully at that which shows itself to us as time, by looking ahead to Being in the sense of presence {Anwesenheit}, the present. However, the present in the sense of presence differs so vastly from the present in the sense of the now that the present as presence can in no way be determined in terms of the present as the now. The reverse would rather seem possible. (Cf. Being and Time, section 81.) If such were the case, the present