Translated by Pete Ferreira
75
Because of this ontological radicalization of temporality, Heidegger ripens the reasons for his detachment from the traditional beliefs of time, which, the Aristotelian included, would remain tied to a naturalistic orientation that prevents them from understanding the temporal structure of existence.
As he explains in a significant step in the course of summer semester 1928 – where he adopts a position critical of the concept of time expounded by Husserl in his On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time, whose publication Heidegger attended to during those years73 – the things to note about the traditional understanding of time are as follows: "1) Time is itself something extant somewhere and somehow, and it is in motion, and it flows away; as we say, "it passes." 2) As transient (to a certain extent the paradigm of transience in general), time is something "in the soul," in the subject, inside consciousness; thus to have time requires an internal consciousness. Consequently, the possibilities of conceiving and interpreting time are essentially dependent on the particular conception of soul, subject, consciousness, Dasein. 3) Time is something passing, which transpires in the soul but does not yet really belong in the center of the soul. For time has long been seen in connection with space. In space, the spatial is what we experience with our senses. This is likewise true of time. Time belongs to our sensibility (...). 4) Since Plato, time is frequently distinguished by contrasting it with eternity, and the latter is itself conceived more or less theologically. The temporal then becomes the earthly vis-a-vis the heavenly."74
Within the horizon of this naturalistic understanding of time it is impossible, according to Heidegger, to arrive at an understanding of the ontological connection of being-there and temporality. But precisely because this understanding – as he tries to show in light of his interpretation of Aristotle – cannot completely hide the dynamics of the problem, it opens up to a radical problematization and "by its own phenomenological content common time points back to an original time, temporality."75 For Heidegger the point is precisely to seize the temporality of being-there in its originality, which means for him, no longer filtering it by objectifying the categories of θεωρία, but grasping it in relation to the specific nature of its eminently practical connotation.
73 E. Husserl, Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins, hg. von M. Heidegger, Niemeyer, Halle 1928, now with supplementary texts and critical appendices by R. Boehm: E. Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins (1893-1917) (Husserliana X), Nijhoff, Den Haag 1966 (trans. It. edited by A. Marini, Per la fenomenologia della coscienza interna del tempo (1893-1917), Angeli, Milano 1981) [E. Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), Springer, 2012].
74 GA 26, 254-255. [The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, 197.]
75 GA 24, 362. [The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, p. 257.]