Every ‘then’, however, is, as such, a ‘then, when …’; every ‘on that former occasion’ is an ‘on that former occasion, when …’; every ‘now’ is a ‘now that …’. The ‘now’, the ‘then’, and the ‘on that former occasion’ thus have a seemingly obvious relational structure which we call “DATABILITY” [Datierbarkeit]. Whether this dating is factically done with respect to a ‘date’ on the calendar, must still be completely disregarded. Evenwithout ‘dates’ of this sort, the ‘now’, the ‘then’, and the ‘on that former occasion’ have been dated more or less definitely. And even if the dating is not made more definite, this does not mean that the structure of DATABILITY is missing or that it is just a matter of chance. BTMR §79
Wherein is such DATABILITY grounded, and to what does it essentially belong? Can any more superfluous question indeed be raised? It is ‘well known’ that what we have in mind with the ‘now that …’ is a ‘point of time’. The ‘now’ is time. Incontestably, the ‘now that …’, the ‘then, when …’, and the ‘on that former occasion’ are things that we understand. And we also understand in a certain way that these are all connected with ‘time’. But that with this sort of thing one has ‘time’ itself in mind, and how this is possible, and what ‘time’ signifies – these are matters of which we have no conception in our ‘natural’ understanding of the ‘now’ and so forth. Is it indeed obvious, then, that something like the ‘then’, the ‘now’, and the ‘on that former occasion’, is something we ‘understand without further ado’, and ‘quite naturally’ bring to expression? Where do we get this ‘now that …’? Have we found this sort of thing among entities within-the-world – among those that are present-at-hand? Manifestly not. Then have we found it at all? Have we ever set ourselves to search for this and establish its character? We avail ourselves of it ‘at any time’ without having taken it over explicitly, and we constantly make use of it even though we do not always make utterances about it. Even in the most trivial, offhand kind of everyday talk (‘It’s cold’, for instance) we also have in mind a ‘now that …’. Why is it that when Dasein addresses itself to the objects of its concern, it also expresses a ‘now that …’, a ‘then, when…’, or an ‘on that former occasion, when…’, even though it does so mostly without uttering it? First, because in addressing itself to something interpretatively, it expresses itself too; that is to say, it expresses its Being alongside the ready-to-hand – a Being which understands circumspectively and which uncovers the ready-to-hand and lets it be encountered. And secondly, because this very addressing and discussing – which interprets itself also – is based upon a making-present and is possible only as such. BTMR §79
The fact that the structure of DATABILITY belongs essentially to what has been interpreted with the ‘now’, the ‘then’, and the ‘on that former occasion’, becomes the most elemental proof that what has thus been interpreted has originated in the temporality which interprets itself. When we say ‘now’, we always understand a ‘now that so and so …’ though we do not say all this. Why? Because the “now” interprets a making-present of entities. In the ‘now that …’ lies the ecstatical character of the Present. The DATABILITY of the ‘now’, the ‘then’, and the ‘on that former occasion’, reflects the ecstatical constitution of temporality, and is therefore essential for the time itself that has been expressed. The structure of the DATABILITY of the ‘now’, the ‘then’, and the ‘on that former occasion’, is evidence that these, stemming from temporality, are themselves time. The interpretative expressing of the ‘now’, the ‘then’, and the ‘on that former occasion’, is the most primordial way of assigning a time. In the ecstatical unity of temporality – which gets understood along with DATABILITY, but unthematically and without being recognizable as such – Dasein has already been disclosed to itself as Being-in-the-world, and entities within-the-world have been discovered along with it; because of this, interpreted time has’ already been given a dating in terms of those entities which are encountered in the disclosedness of the “there”: “now that – the door slams”; “now that – my book is missing”, and so forth. BTMR §79
The horizons which belong to the ‘now’, the ‘then’, and the ‘on that former occasion’, all have their source in ecstatical temporality; by reason of this, these horizons too have the character of DATABILITY as ‘today, when …’, ‘later on, when …’, and ‘earlier, when …’ BTMR §79
[SZ:409] If awaiting understands itself in the ‘then’ and interprets itself, and thereby, as making present, understands that which it awaits, and understands this in terms of its ‘now’, then the ‘and-now-not-yet’ is already implied when we ‘assign’ a ‘then’. The awaiting which makes present understands the ‘until-then’. This ‘until-then’ is Articulated by interpretation: it ‘has its time’ as the “in-between”, which likewise has a relationship of DATABILITY. This relationship gets expressed in the ‘during-this’ or ‘meanwhile’ [“während dessen …”]. The ‘during’ can itself be Articulated awaitingly by concern, by assigning some more ‘thens’. The ‘untilthen’ gets divided up by a number of ‘from-then-till-thens’, which, however, have been ‘embraced’ beforehand in awaitingly projecting the primary ‘then’. ‘Enduring’ gets Articulated in the understanding one has of the ‘during’ when one awaits and makes present. This lasting [Dauern], in turn, is the time which is manifest in temporality’s interpretation of itself; in our concern this time thus gets currently, but unthematically, understood as a ‘span’ [“Spanne”]. The making-present which awaits and retains, lays ‘out’ a ‘during’ with a span, only because it has thereby disclosed itself as the way in which its historical temporality has been ecstatically stretched along, even though it does not know itself as this. But here a further peculiarity of the time which has been ‘assigned’ shows itself. Not only does the ‘during’ have a span; but every ‘now’, ‘then’, and ‘on that former occasion’ has, with its datability-structure, its own spanned character, with the width of the span varying: ‘now’ – in the intermission, while one is eating, in the evening, in summer; ‘then’ – at breakfast, when one is taking a climb, and so forth. BTMR §79What does “reading off the time” signify? ‘Looking at the clock’ does indeed amount to more than observing the changes in some item of equipment which is ready-to-hand, and following the positions of a pointer. When we use a clock in ascertaining what o’clock it is, we say – whether explicitly or not – “It is now such and such an hour and so many minutes; now is the time for or “there is still time enough now until …”. Looking at the clock is based on taking our time, and is guided by it. What has already shown itself in the most elementary time-reckoning here becomes plainer: when we look at the clock and regulate ourselves according to the time, we are essentially saying “now”. Here the. “now” has in each case already been understood and interpreted in its full structural content of DATABILITY, spannedness, publicness, and worldhood. This is so ‘obvious’ that we take no note of it whatsoever; still less do we know anything about it explicitly. BTMR §80
The temporality of factical Being-in-the-world is what primordially makes the disclosure of space possible; and in each case spatial Dasein has – out of a “yonder” which has been discovered – allotted itself a “here” which is of the character of Dasein. Because of all this the time with which Dasein concerns itself in its temporality is, as regards its DATABILITY, always bound up with some location of that Dasein. Time itself does not get linked to a location; but temporality is the condition for the possibility that dating may be bound up with the spatially-local in such a way that this may be binding for everyone as a measure. Time does not first get coupled with space; but the ‘space’ which one might suppose to be coupled with it, is encountered only on the basis of the temporality which concerns itself with time. Inasmuch as both time-reckoning and the clock are founded upon the temporality of Dasein, which is constitutive for this entity as historical, it may be shown to what extent, ontologically, the use of clocks is itself historical, and to what extent every clock as such ‘has a history’. BTMR §80
We get the answer if we go back to the full essential structure of worldtime and compare this with that with which the ordinary understanding of time is acquainted. We have exhibited DATABILITY as the first essential item in the time with which we concern ourselves. This is grounded in the ecstatical constitution of temporality. The ‘now’ is essentially a “now that …”. The datable “now”, which is understood in concern even if we cannot grasp it as such, is in each case one which is either appropriate or inappropriate. Significance belongs to the structure of the “now”. We have accordingly called the time with which we concern ourselves “world-time”. In the ordinary interpretations of time as a sequence of “nows”, both DATABILITY and significance are missing. These two structures are not permitted to ‘come to the fore’ when time is characterized as a pure succession. The ordinary interpretation of time covers them up. When these are covered up, the ecstatico-horizonal constitution of temporality, in which the DATABILITY and the significance of the “now” are grounded, gets levelled off. The “nows” get shorn of these relations, as it were; and, as thus shorn, they simply range themselves along after one another so as to make up the succession. BTMR §81
It is no accident that world-time thus gets levelled off and covered up by the way time is ordinarily understood. But just because the everyday interpretation of time maintains itself by looking solely in the direction of concernful common sense, and understands only what ‘shows’ itself within the common-sense horizon, these structures must escape it. That which gets counted when one measures time concernfully, the “now”, gets co-understood in one’s concern with the present-at-hand and the ready-to-hand. Now so far as this concern with time comes back to the time itself which has been co-understood, and in so far as it ‘considers’ that time, it sees the “nows” (which indeed are also somehow ‘there’) within the horizon of that understanding-of-Being by which this concern is itself constantly guided. Thus the “nows” are in a certain manner co-present-at-hand: that is, entities are encountered, and so too is the “now”. Although it is not said explicitly that the “nows” are present-at-hand in the same way as Things, they still get ‘seen’ ontologically within the horizon of the idea of presence-at-hand. The “nows” pass away, and those which have passed away make up the past. The “nows” come along, and those which are coming along define the ‘future’. The ordinary interpretation of world-time as now-time never avails itself of the horizon by which such things as world, significance, and DATABILITY can be made accessible. These structures necessarily remain covered up, all the more so because this covering-up is reinforced by the way in which the ordinary interpretation develops its characterization of time conceptually. [SZ:423] BTMR §81
The sequence of “nows” is uninterrupted and has no gaps. No matter how ‘far’ we proceed in ‘dividing up’ the “now”, it is always now. The continuity of time is seen within the horizon of something which is indissolubly present-at-hand. When one takes one’s ontological orientation from something that is constantly present-at-hand, one either looks for the problem of the Continuity of time or one leaves this impasse alone. In either case the specific structure of world-time must remain covered up. Together with DATABILITY (which has an ecstatical foundation) it has been spanned. The spannedness of time is not to be understood in terms of the horizonal stretching-along of the ecstatical unity of that temporality which has made itself public in one’s concern with time. The fact that in every “now”, no matter how momentary, it is in each case already now, must be conceived in terms of something which is ‘earlier’ still and from which every “now” stems: that is to say, it must be conceived in terms of the ecstatical stretching-along of that temporality which is alien to any Continuity of something present-at-hand but which, for its part, presents the condition for the possibility of access to anything continuous that is present-at-hand. BTMR §81
[SZ:424] The principal thesis of the ordinary way of interpreting time – namely, that time is ‘infinite’ – makes manifest most impressively the way in which world-time and accordingly temporality in general have been levelled off and covered up by such an interpretation. It is held that time presents itself proximally as an uninterrupted sequence of “nows”. Every “now”, moreover, is already either a “just-now” or a “forthwith”. If in characterizing time we stick primarily and exclusively to such a sequence, then in principle neither beginning nor end can be found in it. Every last “now”, as “now”, is always already a “forthwith” that is no longer [ein Sofort-nicht-mehr]; thus it is time in the sense of the “no-longer-now” – in the sense of the past. Every first “now” is a “just-now” that is not yet [ein Soeben-noch-nicht]; thus it is time in the sense of the “not-yetnow” – in the sense of the ‘future’. Hence time is endless ‘on both sides’. This thesis becomes possible only on the basis of an orientation towards a free-floating “in-itself” of a course of “nows” which is present-at-hand – an orientation in which the full phenomenon of the “now” has been covered up with regard to its DATABILITY, its worldhood, its spannedness, and its character of having a location of the same kind as Dasein’s, so that it has dwindled to an unrecognizable fragment. If one directs one’s glance towards Being-present-at-hand and not-Being-present-at-hand, and thus ‘thinks’ the sequence of “nows” through ‘to the end’, then an end can never be found. In this way of thinking time through to the end, one must always think more time; from this one infers that time is infinite. BTMR §81