Temporality - Heidegger

The second most important feature of Being and Time, apart from Being is, Time. Heidegger calls it “temporality.” Dasein is time, we are embodied time. We go from being-in-the-world to care to temporality.

Temporality is the ultimate meaning of being-in-the-world and care. The anticipation of death is the ultimate source of meaning of temporality.

Heidegger describes time as openness or unclosedness, it is being present to things not passively, but actively making sense of them.

One of the features of inauthenticity is failing to actualise one’s Being. Heidegger stresses a form of being that is “ecstatically”, rather than passively, oriented toward its own possibilities.

With the concept of historicity Heidegger indicates that Dasein always “temporalises” or acts in time, as part of a larger social and historical collectivity, as part of a people.

Dasein possesses a heritage on which it must act. Historicity means making a decision about how to actualise important elements of a collective past. In other words, history is not a passive force devoid of intentionality – but rather a project that humans consciously and authentically undertake in order to respond to their collective past for the sake of their future.

Being needs to be understood as fundamentally a timebound, historical process. Thus, we are not just temporal beings, but authentically historical beings, belonging not only to ourselves but also to our ancestors, community, and species.

Greatest Philosophers in History | Martin Heidegger

This video explores Heidegger’s key terms as an introduction to his philosophy. Most importantly: Being-in-the-world, ready to hand and present-at hand, facticity, thrownness, existentiality, fallenness, Das Man, temporality, being-toward-death and the fourfold.

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