up and discard it. In this everyday experience, there is both appropriation and expropriation, nearness and distance. Time is part of the clearing that allows the trash to be present to me.
In notes from 1947, Heidegger sketches a derivation of Dasein’s temporality from the event of beyng itself. The clearing arrives like a “lightning bolt,” creating futurity (GA82: 250) – presumably because it opens possibilities. This event involves a differentiation or “bearing apart” (Austrag) of being and beings, so that entities appear in a space of meaning; in turn, we are charged with bearing or withstanding this openness. This is the origin of Dasein’s “ecstasis” (GA82: 256). But beyng also withdraws: the event of opening fades away, yielding to the presence of present beings. This is the “epochal” character of beyng, which we will consider in Section 5. It, too, must be withstood ecstatically (GA82: 252).
In sum, Heidegger’s late thoughts on time set his earlier temporal analysis of being as presence in the context of clearing and appropriation, but he does not abandon this analysis. “The present that holds sway in presence is a characteristic of time” (GA7, 1952: 142).
But what becomes of the earlier critique of presence? “Does being exclusively . . . amount to presence, so that its other characteristics can be ignored? The priority of presence . . . is a question and a task for thinking, namely, to consider whether and whence and to what extent the priority of presence subsists” (GA14, 1962: 42/34).
Some texts sound confident that this question has been settled: As Juan Pablo Hernández puts it, “being is identical with the act of presencing” (2011: 234). “Being itself – this means: the presence of what is present” (GA12, 1953–54: 116/30). Even the various ways of being described in Being and Time are all modes of presence (GA82, ca. 1967: 401). “But where do we get the right to characterize being as presence? The question comes too late. For this formation of being has long been decided without our contribution, let alone our merit. Since then, we are bound to the characterization of being as presence” (GA14, 1962: 10/6). “Have we invented being (as presence)? Or has it long been found for us, although the find has not been appropriated in the way that befits it?” (GA73.2: 1319).
But other late texts affirm that a different sense of being is possible: “in no way [does being] necessarily appear only as the presentness of what presences” (GA5, 1950: 155/116). “Being itself does not exhaust its essence in essencing as the presence of the present” (GA80.2, 1950: 973). “We would fall prey to an error if we wanted to believe that the being of what is means only, and for all times, the presence of what is present” (GA8, 1952: 239/235). In particular, “ek-sistence can never be determined by ‘being’ qua presence” (GA100, 1952–57: 174). “Presence