Such a non-“temporal” meaning of “time” in Heidegger’s work is the chief reason why his early use of “temporal” language can easily mislead the reader. I am referring to such words as:
Zeit: the “time” of the title Sein und Zeit;
Temporalität: the “time-character” of the clearing. (It is equivalent to Zeit in the title Sein und Zeit.)
Zeitlichkeit: the so-called “temporality” of ex-sistence.
In Heidegger’s texts these three terms have nothing specifically or directly to do with time in our usual sense of the word or with what Aristotle called χρόνος.135 Rather, Heidegger used those terms as only provisional names either for (1) ἀλήϑεια-1 as the clearing (= Zeit and Temporalität) or for (2) the opening-up or holding-open of the clearing (= Zeitlichkeit). In other words, these so-called “temporal” terms actually refer to the openness that makes intelligibility possible. For that reason I will always put “time,” “temporality,” and “temporal” within scare quotes.
In that same vein, the terms Zeitigung and Sich-zeitigung should never be translated by such barbaric neologisms as “temporalization” (Macquarrie-Robinson) or “temporalizing” (Stambaugh) but rather always in terms of “opening-up.” If one were to follow the usual way of translating Heidegger, the phrase “Zeitigung als Sich-zeitigen” would come out as “temporalization as self-temporalizing,” which says absolutely nothing, not even in Heidegger-speak. According to Heidegger’s own gloss on this phrase, it means “unfolding, going forth, appearing,”136 and thus it might be interpreted (without the faux reflexive of “self-unfolding”) as “an opening-up as an intrinsic unfolding.” In any case, in his later writings Heidegger was finally clear: these so-called “time” words were only preliminary attempts to name the thrown-open or dis-closed clearing, ἀλήϑεια-1.
“Time” is a preliminary name for the openness of the clearing.137
135. See Schellings Abhandlung, 228.28–229.6 = 188.24–40 for notions of time that Heidegger excludes (numbers 1–3), and for the one he accepts (number 4).
136. Zollikoner Seminare, 203.7–8 = 158.10–11: “Zeitigung als Sich-zeitigen ist Sich-entfalten, aufgehen und so erscheinen.”
137. GA 9: 376.11 = 285.26–27: “die ‘Zeit’ als der Vorname für die Wahrheit des Seins.” GA 49: 57.2–3: “Der Name ‘Zeit’ is hier der Vorname für die Wahrheit des Seins.” GA 65: 331.23–24 = 263.1–3: “ἀλήϑεια—Offenheit und Lichtung des Sichverbergenden . . . verschiedene Namen für dasselbe.” GA 14: 36.11–12 = 28.20–21. GA 65: 74.10–11 = 59.20–23: “‘Zeit’ ist . . . Wahrheit der Wesung des Seins.” GA 66: 145.25 = 124.6: “Lichtung (Zeit).” GA 73, 1: 758.2: “‘Zeit’ hier als Zeit-Raum im Sinne der Gegend.”