43
Seminar in Le Thor 1969 [76–77]

Being and Time to the Aristotelian investigation? No. Aristotle thinks time in departure from the Greek interpretation of being—which from the outset is founded upon a temporal determination (as presencing). Otherwise put, in regards to time Aristotle poses the question: what is time?—and in this way actually asks: what is extant [seiend] in time?—without regard for the circumstance that in this reduction, already from the start and surreptitiously, a temporal predetermination is operative.

All metaphysics up to Hegel persists in thinking time always in departure from the leading interpretation of the being of beings. So, for example, with Kant time is conceived in the horizon of ob-jectivity [Gegen-ständlichkeit] as that which holds itself steady in the constant flow of the changing now.

In metaphysics, and first of all in Aristotle, there is thus a genuine short-circuiting of the meditation upon time from which there developed what Being and Time called the covering over of the meaning of being. Thinking must consequently attempt to further a new—non-metaphysical—way of thinking time, a way that is not surreptitiously governed by the ontological presupposition of the beinghood of time. The effect of this upon the metaphysical concept of time results in its being entirely concentrated upon what presences (actually only what presences is; and along with what presences, having-been and futurity are conditioned by a lack of being, they are consequences of μὴ ὄντα).

How is a non-metaphysical thinking of time possible? It is possible by way of an analysis of the temporality of Dasein. The essential character of this temporality rests in ek-stasis, which means in the fundamental resolution [Erschlossenheit] of Dasein for ἀλήθεια. In fact, ek-stasis is nothing other than the relation of Dasein to ἀλήθεια, in which all temporality arises.

Viewed in this manner, time is no longer a series of now-moments, but instead itself the horizon for the understanding of being. The analytic of Dasein, in effect, provides the equipment that makes possible a delimitation of the sense of being in its non-metaphysical signification. With this, destruction achieves its goal. But it is now clear that the various coverings of the originary sense of being maintain an essential relation to what they cover over. The history of metaphysics thus receives, from the ground up, another meaning. From now on, its various basic positions can be understood positively as transformations of the original meaning. Each time new, they follow upon one another, belonging together in the unity of a single destiny—hence the name destiny of being [Seinsgeschick] to indicate the epochs of being.

In the history of this concealment of being, which the history of metaphysics presents, thinking can pursue the history of being itself and consequently make a beginning with the next step along its path: the taking-into-view of being as being.


Martin Heidegger (GA 15) Four Seminars