Os três modos de experiência com os quais o tempo está relacionado são a compreensão, a disposição e o discurso. Estes três modos põem em causa a distinção filosófica tradicional entre a razão e os sentidos. Relacioná-los com a contagem e a medição simplesmente não faz sentido. Assim, dada a sua concepção dos modos da experiência humana e dado o tempo como a estrutura dessa experiência, Heidegger já está fora da concepção tradicional do homem e do tempo.
A compreensão (Verstehen), que não é idêntica à razão, está primordialmente relacionada com o futuro, com o nosso “projeto” existencial fundamental, com todas as suas potencialidades concretas, e dá-nos a nossa dimensão de transcendência. Nas palavras de Sartre, somos sempre mais do que aquilo que somos. Não posso ser simplesmente equiparado ao meu estado atual; posso tornar-me algo muito mais e muito melhor do que esse estado. Claro que há sempre a possibilidade de me tornar algo muito menos e muito pior.
A disposição (Befindlichkeit: literalmente, como me encontro em mim mesmo) está principalmente relacionada com o passado, com nosso “ser-jogado”, com o fato de termos sido jogados para o mundo, e impõe-nos a restrição da facticidade. Há certos elementos na minha existência que toda a liberdade do mundo não pode alterar. O tempo e o lugar em que nasci, certas coisas que fiz ou deixei por fazer, tudo isto são fatores inexoráveis com os quais tenho de me confrontar e que não posso alterar. É verdadeiramente inovador o fato de Heidegger colocar a disposição e os estados de espírito no centro da sua análise existencial; durante dois mil anos, os filósofos agiram como se os estados de espírito não existissem.
Por fim, o discurso (Rede) está principalmente relacionado com o presente. Por discurso, Heidegger entende não apenas a fala e o falar como tal, mas também e principalmente o diálogo interior que temos conosco mesmo, a articulação interior dos nossos pensamentos.
Agora, temos de nos distanciar da concepção aristotélica do tempo em que o passado é aquilo que já não existe, o futuro é aquilo que ainda não existe, e o presente é uma espécie de agora “em fio da navalha” que nem sequer faz parte do tempo. Aqui, Heidegger recorre ao significado literal das palavras alemãs para os seus objetivos. O futuro (die Zukunft) é literalmente o que vem em minha direção e já é/está comigo. O passado (die Gewesenheit) é o que já foi e ainda é. O presente (die Gegenwart) é o que emerge do encontro do futuro e do ter sido nos sentidos das palavras discutidas. Projeto-me em direção às minhas potencialidades existenciais e, ao fazê-lo, regresso à facticidade do meu ter-sido, do que fiz e fui até agora. Assim se engendra o presente. O tempo não é concebido como uma sequência linear de “agoras” não relacionados; o futuro, o ter-sido e o presente estão sempre inseparavelmente juntos. O futuro não é “mais tarde” do que o passado; o passado não é “mais cedo” do que o presente.
To most of us, time means what Heidegger would call “clock time.” When we speak of time, we mean time measurement or, at best, some vague psychological sense of “keeping track” of time which is again a form of time measurement, albeit less precise. Heidegger does not dispute the fact that clock time is a valid and necessary element in our lives; we could not function without it. But this is not existential time. Existential time is the time that belongs to existence, and that means for both Kierkegaard and Heidegger human existence. For Heidegger, human existence has two possible fundamental ways of constituting itself: it can constitute itself either inauthentically or authentically. This “either-or” is not Kierkegaard’s either-or, which is strictly exclusive: either he passed the exam or he did not. One possibility excludes the other. There are two expressions in Latin for either-or. The exclusive either-or is aut-aut but the Latin has a non-exclusive expression for either-or: vel-vel. An example of this kind of either-or might be: either I can take a walk or I can go to the movies. If I have enough time, I could do both. The two do not necessarily exclude each other.
(47) Human existence for Heidegger potentially involves both inauthenticity and authenticity. In this essay I only want to deal with this intriguing issue insofar as it is bound up with temporality. Inauthentic existence and authentic existence temporalize themselves in fundamentally different ways. I want to focus on the temporality of authentic existence as that which gives access to human being as a whole.
In contrast to the traditional understanding of time going back to the Aristotelian conception, Heidegger develops a conception that is specifically existential. For Aristotle, time was basically a natural phenomenon that included the human being as “the numbering soul.” If there is no numbering soul to measure and keep track of the time of nature, then we are talking, not about time, but about motion. What Heidegger called “clock time” is then a further development, becoming more and more sophisticated, of the Aristotelian conception of time as time measurement.
For Aristotle, time is what is counted. For Heidegger, time is the very structure of human experience itself. Here Heidegger takes a radical step beyond Kant who had already brought time very close to human experience by saying that time was the form of inner experience, and thus indirectly of all outer experience as well. Kant showed that all of our experience of the outer world must take place in space; space is the necessary form of outer sensibility (Anschauung). And any experience whatsoever must take place in time; time is the necessary form of inner, and thus of all, sensibility. Even my spatial experience of, say, a landscape, takes time.
Heidegger dispenses with the “in time” aspect of Kant’s conception which was still caught in the Newtonian conception of absolute time as a kind of static container. For Heidegger, we are not in time; we are time. Our sense of time is not limited to counting and measuring, which is derivative of the kind of thinking that Heidegger later calls calculative thinking. Rather, time is fundamentally related to the three modes of human experience which Heidegger calls “existentials.” Existentials are categories of human being. The ten categories that Aristotle formulated for things, and which basically outline the structure of our Western grammar, are not adequate to express human and existential reality.
(48) The three modes of experience to which time is related are understanding, attunement and discourse. These three modes undercut the traditional philosophical distinction of reason and the senses. Relating them to counting and measurement simply makes no sense. Thus, given his conception of the modes of human experience and given time as the structure of that experience, Heidegger is already outside of the traditional conception of man and time.
Understanding (Verstehen), which is not identical with reason, is primarily related to the future, to our fundamental existential “project” with all of its concrete potentialities, and affords us our dimension of transcendence. In Sartre’s words, we are always more than what we are. I cannot simply be equated with my present state; I might become something much more and much better than that state. Of course, there is always the possibility that I might become something much less and much worse.
Attunement (Befindlichkeit: literally, how I find myself) is primarily related to the past, to our “thrownness,” our having been thrown into the world, and imposes on us the stricture of facticity. There are certain elements in my existence that all the freedom in the world cannot alter. The time and place in which I was born, certain things I have done or left undone, all of these are inexorable factors with which I must come to terms and which I cannot alter. It is truly innovative that Heidegger places attunement and moods squarely in the center of his existential analysis; for two thousand years philosophers have acted as if moods did not exist.
Finally, discourse (Rede) is primarily related to the present. By discourse, Heidegger means not only speech and speaking as such, but also and primarily the inner dialogue that we have with ourselves, the inner articulation of our thoughts.
Now, we must distance ourselves from the Aristotelian conception of time in which the past is that which is no more, the future is that which is not yet, and the present is a sort of “knife-edged” now that is not even a part of time. Here Heidegger draws on the literal meaning of the German words for his purposes. The future (die Zukunft) is literally what is coming toward me and is already with me. The past (die Gewesenheit) is what has been and still is. The present (die Gegenwart) is what emerges from the meeting of future and having-been in the senses of those words (49) discussed. I project myself toward my existential potentialities and, in so doing, come back to the facticity of my having-been, what I have done and been thus far. Thus the present is engendered. Time is not conceived as a linear string of unrelated “nows;” future, having-been and present are always inseparably together. The future is not “later” than the past; the past is not “earlier” than the present. This is what is most difficult to understand. We need to take a closer look at what Heidegger says here.
What is projected in the primordial existential project of existence reveals itself as anticipative resoluteness. What makes possible this authentic being-a-whole of Da-sein with regard to the unity of its articulated structural whole? Expressed formally and existentially, without constantly naming the complete structural content, anticipative resoluteness is the being toward one’s inmost, distinctive potentiality-of-being. Something like this is possible only in such a way that Da-sein can indeed come toward itself in its inmost possibility and perdure the possibility as possibility in this letting-it-self-come-toward- itself, i.e., that it exists. Letting-come-toward-itself that perdures the distinctive possibility is the primordial phenomenon of the future…. Here ’future’ does not mean a now that has not yet become ‘actual’ and that sometime will be for the first time, but the coming in which Da-sein comes toward itself in its inmost potentiality of being. Anticipation makes Da-sein authentically futural in such a way that anticipation itself is possible only in that Da-sein, as existing, always already comes toward itself, i.e. is futural in its being in general.
One could say that in Heidegger’s conception time is not what is counted, but rather what does the “counting.” Time is not a linear series of now-points already there waiting to be counted; nor is it an inert container-framework.
The literal meaning of the German words for past and future that Heidegger extracts is that of coming toward for the future and of having-been for the past. Thus the future enters into the present; it is not conceived as a not-yet-now. The word that Heidegger uses for the past is not the usual one, which would be Vergangenheit. In its place he coins a noun from the past participle, “to be,” gewesen, having been. Thus the past also enters the present; it is still going on. If I say that I have been ill all week, this means that I am still ill now.
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