2 - Originary Temporality

Summary

Care requires a special interpretation of the temporal structure of Dasein, indeed, one that “does violence” to our ordinary understanding of ourselves and our temporal structure, says Heidegger. Care is not a phenomenon that runs its course in time. Dasein is not, as Heidegger says, “intratemporal” (innerzeitig). The future, Present (Gegenwart), and past into which Heidegger analyzes originary temporality are not successive (S&Z, p. 350). If one did take originary temporality to be successive, “care would then be grasped as an entity that occurs and runs its course ‘in time,’” in which case “the being of an entity of the character of Dasein would then become something occurrent” (S&Z, p. 327). In other words, a proper understanding of care demands that we interpret Dasein as having a temporal structure that is quite unlike anything we might expect: a nonsuccessive manifold of future, Present, and past. Ultimately, the Unattainability and Nullity Theses from Chapter 1 force the temporal interpretation of Dasein's being to this unusual mode of time.

Needless to say, the suggestion of a nonsuccessive mode of time is puzzling. In this chapter I shall first explain the very idea of a temporal interpretation of Dasein's being. Given the strangeness of the result of this interpretation (viz., nonsuccessive time), I shall ask, What would it take for a temporal interpretation of Dasein to be in a position to argue for such a strange conclusion?