458 II. 6
Being and Time

[406] The question of whether and how time has any 'Being', and of why and in what sense we designate it as 'being', cannot be answered until we have shown to what extent temporality itself, in the totality of its temporalizing makes it possible for us somehow to have an understanding of Being and address ourselves to entities. Our chapter will be divided as follows: Dasein's temporality, and our concern with time (Section 79); the time with which we concern ourselves, and within-time-ness (Section 80); within-time-ness and the genesis of the ordinary conception of time (Section 81); a comparison of the existential-ontological connection of temporality, Dasein, and world-time, with Hegel's way of taking the relation between time and spirit (Section 82); the existential-temporal analytic of Dasein and the question of fundamental ontology as to the meaning of Being in general (Section 83).


79. Dasein's Temporality, and our Concern with Time

Dasein exists as an entity for which, in its Being, that Being is itself an issue. Essentially ahead of itself, it has projected itself upon its potentiality-for-Being before going on to any mere consideration of itself. In its projection it reveals itself as something which has been thrown. It has been thrownly abandoned to the 'world', and falls into it concernfully.1 As care—that is, as existing in the unity of the projection which has been fallingly thrown—this entity has been disclosed as a "there". As being with Others, it maintains itself in an average way of interpreting—a way which has been Articulated in discourse and expressed in language. Being-in-the-world has always expressed itself, and as Being alongside entities encountered within-the-world, it constantly expresses itself in addressing itself to the very object of its concern and discussing it, The concern of circumspective common sense is grounded in temporality—indeed in the mode of a making-present which retains and awaits. Such concern, as concernfully reckoning up, planning, preventing, or taking precautions, always says (whether audibly or not) that something is to happen 'then', that something else is to be attended to 'beforehand', that what has failed or eluded us 'on that former occasion' is something that we must 'now' make up for.2

In the 'then', concern expresses itself as awaiting; in the 'on that former occasion', as retaining; in the 'now', as making present. In the 'then'—but mostly unexpressed—lies the 'now-not-yet'; that is to say, this is


1 'Geworfen der "Welt" überlassen, verfällt es besorgend an sie.'

2 '... "dann"—soll das geschehen, "zuvor"—jenes seine Erledigung finden, "jezt"—das nachgeholt werden, was "damals" misslang und entging.' Notice that the German 'dann', unlike its English cognate 'then', is here thought of as having primarily a future reference.


Being and Time (M&R) by Martin Heidegger