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ground of the ontological difference. This gives us the design for the first chapter of Part Two, which is to deal with the problem of the ontological difference:
§19. Time and temporality
§20. temporality [Zeitlichkeit] and Temporality [Temporalität]
§21. Temporality [Temporalität] and being
§22. Being and beings
The aim now is to press forward through the common understanding of time toward temporality, in which the Dasein's ontological constitution is rooted and to which time as commonly understood belongs. The first step is to make certain of the common understanding of time. What do we mean by time in natural experience and understanding? Although we constantly reckon with time or take account of it without explicitly measuring it by the clock and are abandoned to it as to the most commonplace thing. whether we are lost in it or pressed by it—although time is as familiar to us as only something in our Dasein can be, nevertheless, it becomes strange and puzzling when we try to make it clear to ourselves even if only within the limits of everyday intelligibility. Augustine's remark about this fact is well known. Quid est enim "tempus"? Quis hoc facile breviterque explicaverit? Quis hoc ad verbum de illo proferendum vel cogitatione conprehenderit? Quid autem familiarius et notius in loquendo conmemoramus quam "tempus"? Et intellegimus utique, cum id loquimur, intellegimus etiam, cum alio loquente id audimus.—Quid est ergo "tempus"? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio; fidenter tamen dico scire me. quod, si nihil praeteriret, non esset praeteritum tempus, et si nihil adveniret, non esset futurum tempus, et si nihil esset, non esset praesens tempus.1 "What then is time; who can explain it easily and briefly? Who has comprehended it in thought so as to speak of it? But what is there that we mention in our discourse more familiar and better known than time? And we always understand it whenever we speak of it, and we understand it too when we hear someone else speak of it.—What then is time? If no one asks me about it, I know; if I am supposed to explain it to one who asks, I do not know; yet I say confidently that I know: if nothing were to pass away there would be no past time, and if nothing were coming there would be no time to come, and if nothing were to exist there would be no present time." Simplicius the Neoplatonist says: τί δὲ δήποτέ ἐστιν ὁ χρόνος, ἐρωτηθεὶς
1 Augustine, Confessiones, 11.14.