28
ON TIME AND BEING

Talking about something more original can easily be misunderstood here. But even if we leave open for the time being the question of how what is more original is to be understood, and that means how it is not to be understood, the fact remains that this thinking-indeed in the lecture itself as well as in the whole of Heidegger's course of thought-has the character of return. That is the step back. One should note the ambiguity of the phrase. In talking about "back," it is necessary to discuss where we go back, and how.

The question can then be asked, however, whether and how this return constituting the manner of movement of this thinking is related to the fact that Appropriation is not only sending, but as sending is actually withdrawal.

Is the character of withdrawal already evident in the problems of Being and Time? In order to see this, we must enter the simple intention of this work, that is, the meaning which time has in the question about the meaning of Being. Time, which is addressed as the meaning of Being in Being and Time, is itself not an answer, not a last prop for questioning, but rather itself the naming of a question. The name "time" is a preliminary word for what was later called "the truth of Being."

The interpretation of time aims primarily at the character of temporalization of Dasein's temporality, at the ecstatic element which in itself already contains a reference to truth, to opening up, to the unconcealment of Being qua Being, even though this is not explicitly named in the part of Being and Time which was published (see Being and Time, section 28). Thus already in Being and Time time is from the very beginning removed from the common conception by the; reference to ἀλήθεια and presencing, and receives a new meaning, although the interpretation of time is limited here to the temporality of Dasein, and there is no mention of the temporal character of Being. (In contrast, the role of human being for the opening out of Being is purposely left out in the lecture "Time and Being.")

Thus it is a matter of avoiding the limitation which might, indeed at first does, lie in the word "time," both in "Time and Being" where this is explicitly done and also in Being and Time where it occurs more in the general tenor and unspoken intention.


Summary of a Seminar on the Lecture "Time and Being" (GA 14) by Martin Heidegger