an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 16, Summer 2019, ISSN 1552-5112
Time and Implication
Quid
est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare
velim, nescio.[1]
Today,
questions about time continue to be posed: What is it? Please don’t ask. I
know. How can I explain it to another? Don’t know. Why not? Could it be that
the explanation is neither a matter of knowing nor of not knowing? Then might
there be another way—triton ti, tertium datur, ein Drittes—one which neither
explains time nor simply abandons it as inexplicable?
In
fact, for Aristotle, there is an explanation of time—and it begins with
becoming, with motion, movement: time is not the cause of generation and
corruption, coming to presence and going out into absence, the becoming of being as a whole. Rather, bodies decay, change happens,
things move (more or less), physis becomes—and time counts the ways.[2]
As Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it: “How do I love thee? Let me count the
ways”—that is time, not the loving, but the counting of how so.[3]
So, how does time measure motion? Aristotle is
quite clear: in terms of duration-succession-simultaneity.[4]
Time orders change in relations of before-and-after—and so constitutes the
discontinuous-now (which continually changes), and the continuous-now (which
remains the same, now) that lies between the past (that is past) and the future
(that is future) which are both present, and the present (that is
discontinuously or continuously) present (after the future and before the
past).
But this does not mean that motion or change,
or becoming as a whole, happens in time. For time is not a container; it is not a space in which
objects exist, and nothing like an ocean full of fish (nor like Plato’s khōra, which
is supposedly separable—if not separate—from changing things).[5] As
Aristotle argues: if movement happens in time, then we would need to posit
another time—for temporal movement happens—and then a time for that time and the
temporal, ad infinitum.[6] And
time itself does not begin—for then there would be a time before time, which is
obviously impossible; rather, things begin because of time.[7]
Thus, the use of the phrase “in time” is misleading—and motion is not in time;
time counts motion.
But this counting does not mean that time is
simply subjective; on the contrary,
time is objective insofar as counting
is counting of the counted. If there was nothing to be counted, there would be
no counting; if there was nothing moving, no becoming, there would be no
numbering of motion. In other words, time is always the time of the
temporal—they are inseparable (unlike the divine). Thus, insofar as it is the
measure of the duration-succession-simultaneity-velocity of that which moves, quicker
or slower, changes its speed or not, continues or discontinues, the counting of
what happens separately or together, time is objective.
And yet, time is always the time of the temporal. On the one hand, time
itself is nothing temporal—time is eternal, uncreated,
infinite; it does not move, although without movement, there would be nothing
to measure, and so, no time. On the other hand, time is inseparable from the
temporal, from motion and change and becoming. In other words, without time,
there would be no measuring—for time measures motion—but without measuring,
there would be no time. Thus, time and the temporal are inseparable, but not
identical; they are held together (syn-echēs), being with one another in a (differential)
relation, but they are irreducible to each other.
The relation then, the difference, the
belonging-together of time and the temporal—which we could call the
“chronological difference”—is their unity. But the ground of this unity, for
Aristotle, is the motion of things, the becoming of beings. Thus, time (and its
determinations of duration-succession-simultaneity, before-and-after, its
counting and measuring) and the temporal (what is counted and measured and
determined) are different from one another, but inseparable—and this inseparability
is due to the change of nature, the becoming of physis.
For
Kant’s “Copernican revolution in thought,” however, it is the reverse: things
can change because time is already present, is always already there as the form
of change. Time is the a priori
schema of becoming; it is that which allows things to be in motion or come to
rest. Thus, motion is not the ground of time; rather time is the ground of
motion.[8]
But this does not mean that time is simply subjective, like some form of inner and
outer sense which I could adopt or relinquish. Nor is it merely optional, as if I could get out of time
and somehow experience an object as supratemporal,
like some infinite god. Nor could objects just become atemporal, move and change, and
remain untimed or uncounted (if they are to be objects at all, one or many).
Nor might I live without having my years numbered, nor love and not count the
ways, as if living and loving could be non-temporal.
On the contrary: although why I schematize objects in accordance with time is a secret of the
human soul, whose truth nature is
unlikely ever to reveal; that I do so
is necessary. Indeed, I do not love thee and then count the ways; rather, if I
may love thee, it is because I can count. So, only a being that can count, like
me, can love—a stone cannot love. But if I can count (and so love), it is
because of time, because time is the (objectively valid) condition of the
possibility of any (subjective) experience whatsoever.[9]
And time is not only the form
(duration-succession-simultaneity) of experience, of sensation, but also of
imagination, and even of knowledge—for “Alles hat seine Zeit.”[10] We
sense something now as one and then
as many, or simultaneously this and
that; we represent something in imagination as being or not-being now real or true, potentially or
actually, or as simultaneously both
in different ways; we know that causes produce after-effects now, or that different attributes simultaneously belong to the same substance.
This is why judgments and categories are a
priori temporal: an object is present as one (quantity) substance
(relation), and comes to presence (fills time) as being or not-being (quality),
actually or potentially (modality).[11]
Thus, time is not merely the form of sensible intuition, imagination, knowledge
and judgment; it is the form of anything whatsoever, subjects and objects
alike; it is as subjective as it is objective—for time is universal, allgemein (which
is why transcendental philosophy is not philosophical anthropology or
psychology or biology, but pure reason’s critique of pure time) and time is a
“third thing [ein Drittes]”; it
is the universal a priori rule by
which subject and object relate because time is the transcendental schema which
mediates the subsumption of appearances under
categories (and the coming-to-presence of objects in accordance with time, that
is, not just before-after, but in a time-series and time-order, with a
time-content and within a scope-of-time).[12]
It is then, the universality of time that
drives Kant to the (metaphysical) deduction of its necessary a priori validity—for time is neither
grounded on language nor consciousness, nor on the forms of human discursive
thought, operations of the subjective mind, or “mental activities,” nor is it
merely “irrational knowledge of the rational.”[13]
Rather, time is the universal ground of everything that is, of motion and rest,
of everything that changes (like the growing things of nature) and does not
change (like the laws of mathematics and logic), of being and becoming,
subjective experience and objective knowledge—for time does not move; rather,
everything moves in time. In other words, a
priori synthetic judgments with regard to the temporality of objects (like
those which rest on concepts such as causality, or categories such as
substance)—and so (the language and logic of) the measure of motion or the
becoming of beings—is only possible on the ground of time’s universality. And
if Kant does not provide an additional deduction of (the transcendental schema
of) time; it is not because he could not, but because he need not—it had
already been done (by the history of philosophy as metaphysics from Aristotle
to Wolff). Thus, the existence of time’s universality—as well as the universality
of metaphysical categories/judgments that have already come to presence, and
continue to be represented to this day—merely need to be exposed qua ground.[14]
If
time, however, is the ground of motion and counting, of experience and
knowledge—and their connection, the correspondence of object and concept, that
is, truth—it is perhaps ironic that the history of philosophy continues to
think of time as a space or container in which change happens. Hegel, for
example, thinks time as the place in
which spirit realizes or concretizes itself: “History, which is essentially
the history of spirit, runs its course ‘in time’…[Thus] the development of
history falls into time.”[15] But,
as Heidegger argues:
“Spirit”
does not first fall into time, but exists as the primordial temporalizing of
temporality. Temporality temporalizes world-time, in whose horizon “history”
can “appear” as an occurrence within time. “Spirit” does not fall into time,
but factical existence “falls,” in falling prey, out
of primordial, authentic temporality.[16]
Or,
when McTaggert denies the “reality of time,” he
repeats (what he claims to be Hegel’s denial of) the reality of becoming: time
retains its traditional definition (as the counting of change, the measuring of
motion)—but as nothing changes in reality, as being does not become, there is
nothing to count.[17]
As McTaggert argues:
Hegel regarded the order of the time-series as a reflexion, though a distorted reflexion,
of something in the real nature of the timeless reality, while Kant does not
seem to have contemplated the possibility that anything in the nature of the
noumenon should correspond to the time order which appears in the phenomenon.[18]
In
other words (even leaving aside the somehow motivated analysis of Kant and
Hegel), distinctions—whether relations
or qualities of events—are never true of reality. And McTaggert’s claim that “time is unreal” simply means
“change is unreal.” This amounts to claiming that being is (unchanging) and
becoming (as change) is not. But the problem is two-fold: (1) presupposing that
time is a separable (inessential) quality or relation of events (while failing
to understand that it is the inseparable and essential way in which events
happen, become, that is, how movement and rest come to presence and go out into
absence); and (2) reducing being to that which does not change, the permanent
and continuous (while failing to understand that the impermanent and
discontinuous, that which changes, also is or has being). For McTaggert argues that, in
appearance, events happen: A-series determinations are (permanently)
related to the C-series (permanent and objective ordering of events), while
B-series determinations are an (impermanent, and non-successive) interpretation
thereof. But, in
reality, nothing happens:
I am endeavoring to base the unreality of time, not
on the fact that the A-series is more fundamental than the B-series, but on the
fact that it is as essential as the B-series—that the distinctions of past,
present and future are essential to time and that, if the distinctions are
never true of reality, then no reality is in time.[19]
In other words, time is the ordering of events
(objective C-series) in the past-present-future (A-series), from whence the
before-after (B-series, Aristotle) is derived. But (1) while events seem
temporal (change), time (as the counting of change) seems intemporal; and (2)
events cannot be both present and past (or present and future)—which would be
contradictory qualities or characteristics (predicates).[20] Thus, for McTaggert,
time is unreal because being is unchanging, unmoving, unbecoming, permanent
presence.
And yet, what if being is not just unchanging?
What if becoming also is? If reality is both in motion and at rest? How is it
then possible for both becoming and being to be temporal? Or for motion to be
the ground of time and time to be the ground of motion? So that time is both
subjective and objective? In other words, if time is neither merely real nor
unreal, nor just a container, nor simply a form in which change occurs, nor by
which it is measured—well then, what is it?
Heidegger
answers: time is not a what; it is a how—or more
precisely, time is how anything whatsoever
is; it is the universal how.[21] And
so, temporality is determinative for every being (even for being itself)
because of its universality, which is
why everything has its time: being and becoming, the real and the unreal, the
moving and the unmoved, the changed and the unchanged. And both objects (the
counting of the motion of things) and
subjects (the schematization of receptivity and spontaneity, experience and knowledge) are temporal because time’s universality is “absolute.”[22] Thus,
permanent being and impermanent becoming (nothing, non-being, unreality) are
merely how the “ambiguity of being” itself comes to presence (remains continuously or not) and goes out into absence (non-presence); and being
present and being absent (non-present), now
and then (not-now), are simply ways
in which the “ambiguity of time” lets objects be in motion or at rest.
Time then, according to Heidegger, does not
constitute beings, objects, things (as Husserl might have it). Rather, “time temporalizes” everything and anything
that is qua present/non-present; and
temporalizing constitutes the temporality of time—for time is the principium individuationis of being;
which reveals (opens up) the ontological difference (of being and beings) and
the ontic difference (between beings, subjects and objects, how they are
“given” temporally).[23] Thus,
it is the original unity of time, “original time” which is “originally one,”
that—as the “self-giving of that which gives itself”—gives itself to things
(beings), so that they can be given.[24]
A clue, again, from Augustine: “at no time was
there no time.”[25]
In other words, before God made heaven and earth, he was not preparing hell;
rather, there was no “before” or “then,” as there was no time—for the eternal
God, “the Selfsame, and the Selfsame, and the Selfsame,” created time. Indeed,
God is not temporally-prior to time; on the contrary, he is essentially-prior
insofar as he is “an ever present eternity,” out-of-time, atemporal,
permanent presence: Augustine thinks “God’s being as timeless. Otherwise, he
could not say that there was no time when God did not create anything.”[26]
Prior to any interval of time whatsoever, God precedes “by eternity”—not “by
time,” as the flower precedes the fruit—everything temporal. And if our years
pass, if our time is distended into past-present-future, whereby the present
becomes absent—this does nothing to God’s years, which are all just one day,
“before” all time and times. Thus, as there is no time before time, God’s being
is non-temporal, non-successive, immutable, endless, timeless all-at-onceness, ever stable, continual being without becoming,
without difference or extension, lacking otherness and change, infinite
presence of an infinite present.[27]
But the negative is also positive, as Heidegger
insists: if at no time was there was no time, it is because the temporal and
the extratemporal, “the ‘atemporal’ and the
‘supratemporal’ are also ‘temporal’ with respect to their being.”[28]
In other words, there is nothing “outside” (or “inside”) of time; rather, even
eternal beings (permanent substrata, immortal divinities, God or the gods) or
infinitely becoming objects (geometric forms, mathematical formula, logical
formulations) imply temporality. And non-temporal does not mean “at no time,”
but semprieternas,
all-times, always being or forever becoming, in all time. Augustine must
confess, therefore, that he cannot think time as the unity of God’s infinite
temporality and our finite temporality—for as Goethe reminds us: omnipotent and
all-powerful time, allmächtige Zeit (along with eternal fate) is not just the master and creator of humans, but
also of the gods, of Prometheus and even Zeus.[29]
And this is why, for Being and Time,
time—as the how of finite and infinite beings, the temporal and eternal, the
mutable and the immutable—is the “horizon for any understanding whatsoever of
being.”[30] And
this is why, for “Time and Being”: “every thing has
its time.”[31] Thus,
time is implied by the temporal and the intemporal, what passes and becomes and
what remains and stays, just as motion and rest, the finite and the infinite
imply time—for with respect to their being, how they are (now and/or then, ever
and/or always), both mortals and immortals are temporally, which is why time is
the most implicative enigma, implicatissimum aenigma.[32]
And yet, if time is the how of being, that is,
how objects and subjects, intuitions and concepts, are given, are present
and/or absent, come-to-presence and/or go-out-into-absence—well then, what
about time? In other words, what is the origin and ground, archē, of the unity of the
being of time?
Heidegger answers: time is not just the how of
being, but being is just as much the how of time. In other words, time
temporalizes by being (and becoming) what it is, that is, by coming to presence
and going out into absence, being present and/or absent (in motion or rest,
changing or remaining the same, eternally or not, infinitely or finitely). And
being lets beings be by being (and becoming) what it is, that is, by being how
beings become, present (and represent) themselves as now and/or then, that is,
absent. For being and time, time and being, imply one another—insofar as they
are both ‘how’s’ - they are the same, one, although not identical, as they
differ in how so (which is why the consideration of being and time is not just
a matter for ontology and chronology, but also for henology,
the study of unity). Thus, on the one hand, time
is how being is (and so, the way that beings are and happen, which is the
origin of ontological knowledge thereby; and we too, human beings, are
“characterized by time”); and on the other hand, being is how time is, how time can temporalize beings and itself,
its being in any time whatsoever.[33]
It
seems then, that Augustine asks the wrong question—he should not ask what time is, but how so—for being is temporal, and time is. But is that it? Have we
gone as far as we can with regard to our investigation
into time, or being and time, or time and being? Or have we maybe missed
something—even something that has been missing for centuries, perhaps because
it was, like Poe’s purloined letter, hiding in plain sight?
A clue from Benjamin, who writes (20 years
before Heidegger): “Language speaks.”[34]
So how does language speak (or speak of) time? In fact, as the how of being, time speaks as tense.
Then, if all verbs are tensed (past, present, future)—which is why German calls
verbs Zeit-wörte,
time-words—we should probably not be surprised to find that being (sein) too always has a tense. Thus,
being’s temporality, its temporal character or way of being, show’s itself as
tensed—for time is determinative for being’s way of being, and time’s, and that
of any being whatsoever (whether it comes to presence successively or
simultaneously, or goes out into absence, whether it is now and/or then,
whether it changes or changed or will change, or remains or remained or will
remain at rest, whether it becomes or became or will become, whether it’s
becoming is or was or will be real or unreal, whether in truth and/or untruth).
However, as the linguists remind us: all verbs
have both time and aspect, which is the way things are (and happen, or how
events, Ereignisse,
occur) at any time whatsoever.[35] So
while verbs are temporally characterized by the present or non-present (past
and future), they are always also aspectually
determined as complete or incomplete, perfective or imperfective, discontinuous
or continuous: I fell or I was falling (like the French passé composé or imparfait). Then, in (one and the
same) past tense, I can say both that I worked yesterday (in Russian, Я
поработал
вчера,
whether called perfective or perfect or complete or discontinuous aspect) or
I was working yesterday (Я
работал
вчера,
imperfective, imperfect, incomplete, continuous).
Or in future time, I can say either, I will read that novel tomorrow (Завтра я
прочитаю
этот роман)
or, I will be reading that novel tomorrow (Завтра
я буду читать
этот роман). Thus, anything that
is, stone or unicorn, horse or human, word or deed, object or concept, has both
temporality and aspectuality—for aspect is
irreducible to tense/time, just as time/tense is insufficient for
characterizing how everything is, was, and will be, whether in motion or at
rest, changing or unchangeable, becoming or not, finite or infinite; and not
only is time the other of aspect—aspect is also the other of time, and both are
how being is.
But unfortunately or not, Heidegger (like
Bergson, and perhaps somehow the history of metaphysics) reduces aspectuality to temporality, fails to grasp the
“primordial” difference between time and aspect, interprets the aspectual as a
function of the temporal: the duration or span of awaiting and retaining and
allowing (like climbing) is understood as “stretched along in historical
temporality”—but the stretching, Erstrecktheit, is a modification of aspect, which is the
only way its difference from being-stretched at one-and-the-same-time (in this
example, the temporality of the present/now) can be illuminated.[36] In
other words, Heidegger seeks to solve the problem of the gaps in being (even in
the present) by resorting to the usual subterfuge, that is, by remaining
uncritically loyal to a “mode of temporality”—but time cannot explain
continuity or constancy, Ständigkeit,
just as the (aspectually incomplete) streaming of nows is not just temporal; it is aspectual, and aspect is
that which allows the stream to stream and be streaming. And either “one seeks
the problem of the continuity of time”—and responds with aspect—or “one lets
the aporia here stand.”[37]
Irreducible to one another then, time and
aspect imply each another—and are implied by being, and by any thinking of
being. They are the how’s of being
and beings, characteristic of how
anything is (real or unreal, true or false, living or dead, including human
beings like us), how each thing is
now or then, once or always, and how
anything occurs (comes to presence and goes out into absence, continuously or
not).[38] And
if the study of being is ontology, and the study of time is chronology, and if
we name the study of aspect (which is not a question of side or face,
perspective or point-of-view) “phenomenology” (in honor of Husserl’s call to go
to things themselves, not just being, but all things)—that is, the study of the
other how of being—then what we have been doing is onto-chrono-phenomenology.
Thus, if being and time are universal, we should probably not be surprised at
the universality of aspect as well.
So,
recalling Augustine: if no one asks me what time is, I know; if I want to
explain it to an enquirer, I do not know, but at least I know that I must also
explain what being is, and what aspect is.[39]
And presumably, I would also have to explain the relation of time to aspect and
being—especially if this would then allow me to explain the relation of time
and times, that is, between time and its determinations, the temporality of
time, between the unity of time and the multiple ways in which it comes to
presence and goes out into absence; or how time appears as now or then, before
and after, an infinite series of nows or a streaming
line of points, a measure of motion or a form of intuition or the
transcendental schema of anything whatsoever, including time itself, and aspect
and being. In other words, I would have to explain how time temporalizes, so
that I can explain how time is and is one—especially if this would allow me to
explain how beings are, and so how being is and is one; and how aspect aspectualizes everything that is, and so is and is one.
But where am I to begin responding to the
question of how time relates to aspect and being, to what it temporalizes, even
to time itself?
A clue from Aristotle: “if, now, being and
unity are the same and of one nature in the sense that they are implied by one
another as principle and cause...there must be exactly as many kinds of being
as of unity.”[40]
In other words, everything that is said of being must be said of unity—for
“unity is nothing apart from being,”[41]
and being is inseparable from unity (even if they can be separated in thought
or language); as being and unity necessarily and universally imply each other;
or, if being is actually implied, unity is actually implied as well. And this
is why, in the Metaphysics, the
entire ontology, the study of being, is repeated as henology.[42] If
“being is spoken in many ways,” then so too, as Aristotle insists, nearly
word-for-word, “unity is spoken in many ways.”[43] If
there are, for instance, four fundamental ways of speaking being (accidental,
true, potential-actual, categorical), then they correspond or correlate to the
four fundamental ways of speaking unity.[44] If
being is a universal, then so is unity. And if being is the being of beings,
then unity is the unity of units. If being is and is one, then unity too, is
and is one. If beings (and being) imply being (and unity), then units (and
beings) imply unity (and being). For metaphysics qua onto-henology means that being and unity
are the same, that they imply one another, and there is no being without unity
or unity without being, so that they are spoken in exactly
the same ways.
But the sameness of being and unity is not
simply their identity. On the contrary, although they are both implied, the
difference between being and unity lies in how they are implied (by each other
and themselves) and in everything that is and is one—for while being implicates
itself in the presence and/or absence of things, unity implicates itself in
their indivisibility and/or divisibility.[45]
Thus, being and unity are the same insofar as they are implied (universal
implications); but different with regard to how they are implicated in things,
and one another.
Metaphysics is not then, merely onto-chrono-phenomenology,
not simply the study of the being and time and aspect of anything that exists
temporally and aspectually—for it is also an attempt
at illuminating their unity, how they are one and imply one another, how they
are implied by anything whatsoever. In other words, metaphysics is the study of
implications, of the ‘how is’ of everything that is: being and unity, time and
aspect. Thus, we should perhaps abandon the use of names such as “principles”
and “causes,” “genera” and “predicates,” “universals” and “transcendentals”—at
least insofar as they belong to the traditional subterfuges of the philosophy
of presence and/or absence that stretches from the Greeks to us—and just call
them “implications.”[46]
But then, if you ask me what time is, you are asking
me how it is implied in the temporal, as well as how temporal things imply
time. And this implies that you are also asking how it implies being and unity
and aspect. So if I want to explain time to an
enquirer, I will also have to explain implication.
Once
again, a clue from Aristotle, from the Metaphysics—or
more precisely, from the language of the Greeks, from a peculiarity (which
isn’t so peculiar) which Greek shares with many other languages, such as Hebrew
and Russian, and even sometimes English: “malista d’ epistēta ta prōta
kai ta aitia.”[47] Normally
this is translated as something like: “first principles and causes are most knowable.”[48] But
the word “are” is not there. The verb “being” is not in the Greek; the “to be”
is not present. And yet, the translation is not simply wrong, and it cannot
just be corrected—for “being” is also not not-there; the “to be” is not absent.
Rather, the translation conceals being’s way of being, covers over how being is implied in the Greek as neither
present nor absent. Aristotle need not speak of being because he can imply it,
and thereby illuminate (or at least seek to illuminate) how being is (and so,
should be spoken and thought). For being belongs neither to the philosophy of
presence nor to the philosophy of absence (nor to some combination or
permutation thereof), but is implicated in the suspension of both, which is
probably why it is so suspenseful. Thus, triton
ti or tertium
datur, which is why Aristotle merely says, “first
principles and causes most knowable”—for being is implied, implying, an
implication, and to be is to imply; which is just a Greek way of attempting to
respond to “the enigma of being,” to
how being is “in everything,” drives everything, haunts everything.[49]
And this is precisely how (insofar as being and
time imply one another) time is implied in temporal things—it is, thereby, an
implication; and how the temporal implies time; and how time implies aspect
(and being and unity). In other words, being’s way of being, of being implied,
neither present nor absent (but the suspension of both), is also time’s; and
time’s way of temporalizing is being’s (and unity’s and aspect’s). And the
difference between time’s way of being and being’s (and unity’s and aspect’s)
lies in how each is implied: (1) implied time is neither simply now nor then,
neither before nor after; (2) implied being neither comes to presence nor goes
out into absence, neither is present nor absent; (3) implied unity is neither
indivisible nor divisible, nor just wholes with parts, nor singular and/or
multiple; (4) implied aspect is neither continuous nor discontinuous,
incomplete nor complete, imperfect nor perfect. But suspending the traditional
determinations of time (and being, unity, aspect)—at least those dictated by
the history of the philosophy of presence (and/or absence)—does not simply
excuse or exonerate it; on the contrary, it far more suggests how time is
implicated thereby, even in the very history of its suspension.[50]
Time
then, like being, is implied—and implication is not just being’s way of being,
but also time’s way of temporalizing. But what does it mean to say that time is
implied? To think implication as how time temporalizes?
As Heidegger argues: “all the modes of behavior
of Dasein are to be interpreted in terms of its being, that is, in terms of
temporality.”[51]
In other words, time is implied in how we are—for behaving is acting, and verbs
expressing action are tensed, that is, temporalized. Indeed, particular kinds
of being imply particular times; and these modes of givenness (ways of being
given, moments or determinations, exstasies) imply the primordial wholeness of our
temporality—which is why, for Heidegger, we are temporally three-fold: factically already having-been
(forgetting-and-retrieving-itself), being-there (falling prey, being-thrown),
not-yet-being (existing, being-ahead-of-itself, anticipation, awaiting).[52] So
my way of being is having forgotten and remembering what I was (past); and
being (present) now as falling prey to what they say and how they are, although
I am thrown (like Hamlet, upon the stage, into the world); and not yet being
what I am (whether I am I, or another), so waiting and anticipating what I will
be (future). For as Heidegger insists: “temporality temporalizes itself
completely in every ecstasy.”[53]
And each mode is implied (intentionally “stretched out stretching itself along”[54])
in the others: the past (attunement) implies an anticipated future that comes
to presence now; present (falling prey) is implied in a future ruled by what has
been; and future (understanding) exists now thanks to what has been, an implied
past. Thus, with respect to us: co-implied temporal differences (and our ways
of being, the totality of which Heidegger names “care”) are grounded in the “one temporality,” the ecstatic unity of
temporality that characterizes how we are—for time is the how of our being.[55]
But why is temporality irreducible to the
history of the philosophy of presence (and absence)? How are the exstasies of time not merely present in one another, so
that my past or future is present now, or I am present in my future and my
past? In other words, can presence not take account of the truth of how time
temporalizes?
On the contrary, if being is implied, then the
being of time is implied as well. Presence cannot take account of being because
it is unable to account for the difference between presence and absence, just
as it cannot account for the difference between now and then (the not-now,
before and after), the present and the non-present (the past and the
future)—for the unity of presence and absence is neither presence nor absence,
and the unity of time is neither the present nor the non-present. Rather,
presence and absence are modifications or translations of implication, of being
qua implied; just as the present and
the non-present are translations or modifications of another time, time qua implied. Thus, implication is the how of being and time, but while being
is determinative for what is, time
determines when it is.
For example, time is implied in mood, in our
way of being-mooded, in “the temporality of moods.”[56] As
Heidegger argues: while fear attunes us to the threat of “‘something futural’ in the sense of what first arrives ‘in time,’” Angst attunes us to “the nothingness of
the world”—and nothing is precisely that which cannot come to presence in the
present (if it is to be nothing), although nor can it simply remain absent (and
not even nothing).[57] And
yet, Angst must also be “understood
temporally”—for “the future and the present of Angst temporalize themselves out of a primordial [past]
having-been.”[58] In
other words, both fear and Angst
attune, be-stimmen;
and attuning—being a verb (like determining, bestimmen, and being, sein, and
temporalizing, zeitigen)—is
tensed, that is, has time (and aspect). And the particularity of Angst lies in its way of revealing how
time is implied as neither present nor non-present: in the face of nothingness,
we are “suspended” by that “strangeness” which can neither be brought to
presence nor left in absence—for as we have known since Parmenides, if the
nothing is, then it is not; and if it is not, it is; and the truth is that the
nothing (like being) neither is nor is not, but their suspension, that is,
implication as that out of which both are and/or are not, now and/or then,
which it is why it is so suspenseful and so strange (which is how it can be
implied in the unfolding of being, implicated in the possibility, Ermöglichung, of the
coming to presence and going out into absence of the being of beings).[59] And
Angst is the attunement to nothing’s
suspension, to its neither/nor, both that it neither comes to presence nor
remains in absence, that it is neither now nothing nor then—for even “the
nothing itself nothings,” in a way
that is tensed, temporalized.[60]
Or, time is implied in how we are suspended, even (perhaps especially) when “it
was nothing.”
But not just mood—for time is also implied
by language. As Heidegger insists: temporality is “articulated in discourse and
expressed in language”; although for the most part “unexpressed,” it
“constantly expresses itself in addressing and talking over what is taken care
of.”[61]
Saying something like, “that will happen,” implies a “then” in which its
temporal future lies. Past time (of a “before”) is implied in saying, “the will
got settled.” Saying, “I am making up for a slight,” implies both a past/then
time at which I failed or injured someone somehow, and a present/now in which I
make it right. Or saying, “The celebration took
place in the presence of many
guests,” implies both with many guests being
present, and that it took place at a past time.
And simply saying, “today,” or “about today,” implies an earlier/yesterday and
a later/tomorrow. For “even in the most trivial, offhand kind of everyday
talk,” even in saying, “it is cold” (Heidegger’s example), implies—in addition
to its sense or meaning, whether implied or not (which may very well be what is
at stake in literature)—the temporality of the present, that is, “it is cold
now” (like “the door slams” or “my book is missing” now, present time/tense).
In other words, time temporalizes how each word is; and every tense implies the
others: now is implied by not-now/then, past and future imply the present and
vice versa. And the multiple implications of time come out of the unity of
time—for the being of time is one. Thus, even if we have not “explicitly taken
it over” in speech and writing, even if it is “not always in verbal
expression,” even if it remains linguistically “unknown and unconceived,” even
if it is neither thematized nor recognized as such, time is implied thereby—or,
time is implied by how we speak and write, when we say what we mean and mean
what we say, when we do not, and (perhaps even most acutely) when we seem to
say nothing, but merely imply.[62]
And not just mood and language—but also death.
For as Heidegger notes: “death is connected to ‘time.’”[63]
Indeed, “being-toward-death belongs to the being of Dasein” only insofar as its
not-yet (future) can “come-toward-itself” (present) in “the way that it always already was” (past);
and insofar as its (solus ipse, ownmost nonrelational indefinite) death implies the (“eminent imminence” not-to-be-bypassed)
“possible impossibility” of no-longer-being, that is, “being-held-out-into the
nothing”—for our way of ending, enden, of “being
toward the end,” being-finite (closed future), “is a characteristic of
temporalizing itself.”[64] In
other words, although I will die in the future (being-there as not-yet what I
will be, namely, dead); and when I have died, it was in the past (being-there
as no-longer); my death is primarily connected to present time, insofar as I am
dying now (being-there as coming-to-an-end). In this way, death is a deed done,
which is why it is verbalized qua
dying (and not just an abstract concept or fixed state or hypostatized
noun)—and all verbs (all kinds of motion and rest, finite and infinite, active
and passive, actions and non-actions, living and dying, being-there and
transitioning to no-longer-being-there, all ways of becoming and being) have
tense, that is, time.[65] But
this neither means that death is simply present in my life now (for I am not
dead; and if death came to presence, it would no longer be), nor that it is
absent (for death is coming for me, and me for death, as a possible or
impossible possibility, approaching, coming near, “the nearest nearness”).[66] For
death is waiting, that is, not just something that must or can come to
presence, nor merely what remains in absence; but rather, that which
(suspending presence and absence) is implicated in my life, in my way of dying;
it is neither here-now nor there-then—for death’s way of being is irreducible
to an actuality or a possibility (or even to an impossible possibility). Thus,
Heidegger cannot explain death as possible without making it actual (actually
possible), nor can he determine its impossibility without transforming it into
a possible impossibility (and so an actually possible impossibility)—for death is
a third thing, triton ti,
tertium datur;
and the only way for death to be (and to be one, temporally and aspectually), without reducing it to what presents (or
represents) itself as an actuality or a possibility, is by implication.
Time
then, is implied, like being. It is implied by mood, by language, by death. And
being too, like time: “being and time determine each other reciprocally”—which
is how, after 35-years, “Time and Being” can switch the order of Being and Time.[67]
But what is the meaning and ground of this reciprocity?
For Heidegger, the answer lies in the event, Ereignis, which
lets being and time be temporally, opens up and allows them to come to presence
and go out into absence, be present now and/or absent then; although neither is
being a being, nor is time temporal. In other words, being and time are the
same and are one thing, insofar as they are implied by everything that is,
including each other—but they are not identical insofar as their way of
implying differs: being determines how everything comes to presence and/or goes
out into absence; time determines how everything is present and/or absent. The
sameness of being and time, of time and being, is the unity of their relation, Verhältnis, Wechselbezug beider, their own
belonging-together which gives them the chance to be (and reveal themselves as)
what they are—which is why Heidegger names them with the idiom, es gibt, that
is, both “there is” and “it gives.”[68] In
this way, being and time are gifts and givers. On the one hand, they are given
insofar as they come to presence and/or go out into absence; on the other hand,
they give of themselves, extend themselves, share themselves with everything
(like Platonic participation, methexis or metalēpsis, as well as koinōnia), which is how they
lose nothing thereby, but remain undiminished by (the happening of the event
of) the giving.[69] Thus,
the gift of time and being is being and time themselves, which is how they can
determine things ontologically and temporally.
But if time and being (and unity and aspect)
are implications, if they are merely implied, then they can neither be given as
gifts. Nor can they be taken or received, whether as an object, such as memento
or souvenir or remembrance of time past, or as the time itself, the giving of
oneself, attention or concern, space or shared experience. Nor can they be
presented as presents; nor represented, regifted or returned. And so, there can
be no (justifiable or just, adequate or real or true, correlative or corresponding)
thanks or acknowledgement, no giver or giving, no receiver or counter-giving.
For insofar as implications are neither present nor come to presence, they
neither happen nor occur—and what is implied cannot be given. In this way,
implications are neither events nor happenings, neither openings nor clearings,
neither appropriations and/or expropriations (nor some combination or
permutation thereof). On the contrary, suspending presence and absence, neither
present nor absent, neither here nor there, being is implied in beings, time by
the temporal (just as unity is implied in units, and aspect by the
aspectual)—for implication is their how, the way in which anything whatsoever
is and is one, temporally and aspectually (whether
they are then translated into the language and logic of gifts given and
presents presented or represented, whether they are transformed into actual or
possible, or even impossible, givers and receivers, or not). For being and
unity, time and aspect, are implied in one another, which is how the event of
their coming to presence and going out into absence can happen, and how they
can be given now and then, or ever and always, or never—for implication is
being’s way of being and time’s way of temporalizing, as well as how unity unites
and aspect aspectualizes.
If
I want then, to explain time to an enquirer, I can perhaps, at least, provide a
clue: time is implied, and so implicated in how everything is or comes to be
now and/or then, how words and deeds, thoughts and things, are present and/or
absent—for time implies the way in which things were, are, or will be, or
always have been or never will be, temporalized. And if you ask me how time is
what it is, how it can be such a how, the way in which it could be temporal; I
can maybe merely explain that it is because time is neither present nor absent,
neither here nor there, but an implication. And if you ask me how time itself
is, then I can perhaps only explain that it is present and/or absent, comes to
presence and goes out into absence, because of being, because of the being of
time; which is implied as well, albeit in its own way. But then, I might also
have to try to explain how it is continuous and/or discontinuous, incomplete
and/or complete, because of aspect, which is also implied. And so, I may also
have to somehow explain how time is one, the one and only, because of unity;
which is just as implied, even if it presents itself as divisible and/or
indivisible, so it can be divided and/or remain undivided. Or, if you ask me
how time is implicated in “any understanding whatsoever of being,” then I can
perhaps only seek to explain that time is implied in how being is continuously
one, or divided and discontinuous—so that unity and aspect are just as
implicated thereby. And if you ask me what this implies for me, and you, for
our words and deeds, our moods and languages, our lives and deaths; then I
might simply suggest that time is implied therein as well, and being and unity
and aspect, which has implications for how we can be implied in each other, as
ourselves and to ourselves or not, even if we are not simply present to
ourselves or another, nor absent therefrom—for not only have our pasts and
presents and futures been implicated in each other, they are and will be
implicated thereby.
So what then is time? If
no one asks me, I know: it is implied. But then, if I
want to explain time to an enquirer, I cannot simply resort to the usual
subterfuges of the present, the past and the future, nor to presence and
absence, to actuality and possibility and impossibility. So
I do not know how, except perhaps by implication, which presumably implicates
me as well.
an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 16, Summer
2019, ISSN 1552-5112
Notes