"Dasein" and the Nature of Time

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes Martin Heidegger's essay "The Concept of Time", which examines the nature of time and his concept of authentic being-in-the-world, or "Dasein". The paper takes a look at Heidegger's inquiry into prevalent notions of 'what time is' , his attempt to account for the continuity of existence experienced by human beings, and subsequently into the temporality of time. Ultimately, the paper addresses the idea that "Dasein", in its ability to interpret its own being, may run ahead to the indeterminate certainty of its own non-existence to expose the entirety of its own time, rendering it accessible in its authenticity as 'how', not simply 'what' or 'when'.

From the Paper:

"Heidegger observes that even the everyday is running ahead to the future, albeit in an inauthentic manner that loses its own past. "The future is now that to which care clings--not the authentic, futural being of the past, but the future that the present itself cultivates for itself as its own." The present constantly jumps ahead to the next present 'now' in a succession of events analogous to its facticity of objectively rendered significances. The 'fallenness' of Dasein into everydayness causes it to appropriate an irretrievability of the past through the everyday clinging to the present. Authentic history is lost in the material obsession with the now of the present as present: the past is inaccessible as material events that are no longer present. "Because this history and temporality of the present utterly fail to attain the past, they merely have another present." In the everyday experience of present as simultaneity of 'what'-points in space, the past is rendered as a present forever separate from the immediate present. The 'how' that opens from Dasein's being futural gives access to authentic past in the ability to repeat the experience in its interpretation instead of its transient materiality."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Eliot, T. S. "Burnt Norton". Four Quartets. London: Faber and Faber, 1952.
• Heidegger, Martin. The Concept of Time. Trans. William Alexander Carins McNeil. Cambridge, Mass.: B. Blackwell, 1992.

More papers on "Dasein" and the Nature of Time:

• Research Paper # 56758 : "A Heideggerian Assessment of Sartre's Etre-en-soi"
• Book Review # 112429 : "'The Nature of Leadership'"
• Book Review # 112874 : "The Nature of Leadership"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: