in: Gatherings, Volume 13, 2023
Wonderful article by T. Keiling (Warwick University, UK) in the current issue of Gatherings (Vol. 13). The title of the article is: “Being before Time? Heidegger on Original Time, Ontological Independence, and Beingless Entities” and I’ll share the abstract here (the articles in Gatherings are open access and free to download on their website).
Now, for me personally, the first two sections didn’t spark my interest at all. Disclaimer: I never understood the (taken for granted) necessity to engage with the current debates, in this case, with Meillassoux and Boghossian. Later in this article, Keiling engages with two prominent Heidegger-scholars, Wrathall and Haugeland. One could generally say, it is helpful to contextualize one’s approach, “Verortung” is a wonderful German word for that. And of course, this is what “science” is all about. A continuous back and forth, an open dialogue, and exchange of ideas. But let’s see, if, in this case, engaging with any of these authors is “really worth it” and if it contributes anything to the questions that are discussed.
It becomes much more interesting when Keiling is dealing with Heidegger himself and Heidegger’s understanding of time. Here, on p. 208, we’ll find a very keen observation by Keiling in terms of Heidegger’s distinction of Zeitlichkeit and Temporalität (translated as “timeishness” and “temporality”). Keiling writes:
“Arguably, the project of Being and Time to answer the question of being in view of time fails for just this reason: it cannot make plausible the transition from timeishness as the meaning of the being of Dasein to temporality as the meaning of being itself.”
Keiling is referring to both Being and Time and to GA 24 which entails an (also unfinished) attempt to complete a section called “Time and Being,” which was planned for the 3 part of divison 1 of Being and Time. Keiling adds in the beginning of the next chapter: Heidegger “had accepted that the early discussion of time cannot make plausible the transition from the temporal constitution of Dasein to that of all entities” ~ marking the failure of Heidegger’s “temporal ontology” (208). Keiling draws attention to the gap in Being and Time, overlooked by many, namely that in the second part of the first division, towards the end of Being and Time, there’s a tension between, on the one side, the attempt for clarifying “Temporality”, including the schematism of the temporal meaning of different (ways of) beings — and on the other side, the “timeishness” or “historicality” of Dasein (which would then (1927-1930) ultimately lead away from “temporality”).
I’ve always tried to show that Heidegger’s fixation on “temporality” leads to a deadend. Friedrich Wilhelm von Herrmann, in all his reverence for his teacher Heidegger, also pointed that out in his important books on Being and Time and GA 24. But I really like how Keiling is describing the gap here. It is not his task in this article to explain the issue in more detail, so we must take his description only as an indication for problems that reach far deeper, but nevertheless – very helpful and conscise. Really great!
What Keiling wants to discuss is the “independence” of things, how we can make sense of entities-in-themselves, epistemologically and ontologically.
Heidegger’s Concept of Time,
from the Phenomenology of Dasein’s Zeitlichkeit to Time-Space
Keiling now discusses how Heidegger’s understanding of time undergoes a transformation. We already heard that Heidegger gives up on his “temporal ontology” (temporality as the “key” for understanding the differentiation of being into different beings). How does this affect his concept of time?
Keiling suggests that there is now a primacy of being (as Ereignis) as the one “structuring” the manifestation of time. Importantly, this concept of “time” is not anchored in Dasein’s timeishness anymore, but makes space for a new understanding of time as the time-space that allows “ordinary time” and, therein, entities to exist. Ultimately, as Keiling quotes Heidegger, it is the event (das Ereignis) granting time-space – independently, we must add, from Dasein’s intentionality (but still depending on Dasein’s transcendentality). Why do we have to add this?Because this is the issue being discussed by Keiling and Heidegger: How can we make sense of things that happened before Dasein?
(I must admit, I do not quite understand this problem, but I am interested in what Keiling says about this transformation of time and the relationship between time and being!)
In “Time and Being”, Heidegger would attribute primacy to the Ereignis (over Dasein’s “temporalization” of time), explaining that the Ereignis lets both time and being(!) “relate and belong to each other”. Keiling concludes that this means that the “phenomenology of time” is not the explanatory ground for being anymore. Suggesting that it functioned as this ground before. I’m not so sure about that. There’s a tendency, of course, in Heidegger’s earlier philosophy, to identify the “temporal understanding of Being” with “Being as such,” as Heidegger himself noticed and criticized (for example, in GA 82), however this point needs more details and more clarity, because the phenomenology of time (Dasein’s “timeishness”) still functions as an explanatory ground. Perhaps as one that needs further clarification.
Keiling also adds that both being and time should not be understood as “overarching structures” but as “forms of relationality”. I do not quite get this point, but I assume Keiling means that Heidegger refrains from thinking of “being as such” as the one and only ultimate ground and instead thinks of the relation between time, being (and Dasein) (granted or appropriated by the Ereignis) as the ground for the constitution of phenomena. But then again, this relational form must be undestood as an overarching structure, mustn’t it? As some kind of “condition of possibility”? What exactly is the distinction here? Why does it matter? Keiling does not elaborate.
The main point is that it is not Dasein and its “timeishness” granting “time” but that there is a new thing in Heidegger’s philosophy called “time-space” that can be made sense of in terms of the condition of possibility of “time” (ordinary time, world-time, measured time, as we know it).
Keiling concludes (210):
Heidegger now identifies a different condition of possibility: “time-space” is “granted” not by the timeishness of Dasein but by whatever is related by the co-ordinating power of Ereignis. Because Ereignis is a second-order phenomenon of the interaction between different forms of relationality, the different dimensions of time do not form an explanatory hierarchy. Rather than assuming that the future has priority over the other dimensions of time, the past, present, and future are conceived of as reciprocally determinative forms of presence that, while necessarily related, remain irreducibly plural. In “Time and Being,” Heidegger describes this reciprocal determination of past, present, and future as the “interplay of each for each” (ga 14: 19/14 tm), identifying it as a fourth, coordinating dimension of time. “Genuine time is four-dimensional” (GA 14: 20/15 tm).
Keiling is addressing the often discussed “primacy of the future” that Heidegger frequently talked about in the 1920s, and Keiling describes this point as an “explanatory hierarchy.” But I do not quite understand how this relates to the previous discussion about “over-arching structures vs forms of relationality.” Keiling writes: “Ereignis is a second-order phenomenon of the interaction…” – is that the point that Keiling wants to emphasize? That Heidegger is not thinking of the Ereignis as the ultimate ground but only as something following from an interaction of different things relating to each other? Which means there is no linear hierarchy of transcendental conditions but only the “interdependency of relational forms”? But still these relational forms would be the “highest point” in the hiearchy, the explanatory basis for everything else? So, I fail to see the importance of this point, or… let’s simply say: I do not get it.
The (Misunderstood) Primacy of the Future
I also disagree with Keiling’s description when he says: “Rather than assuming that the future has priority of other dimensions of time…. [they] are conceived of as reciprocally determinative forms of presence” (210). Keiling is describing this as a contrast or even as a contradiction within Heidegger’s philosophy. I’d argue that this contrast does not exist in Heidegger’s understanding of “time”, neither for the early nor the later Heidegger.
Why is Keiling using the word “rather” here, contrasting two different viewpoints? As if the early Heidegger didn’t think of the three dimensions of time also and just as much as “reciprocally determinative forms of presence that, while necessarily related, remain irreducibly plural”. I think this is a mistake many interpretators make: They would take what Heidegger says about the primacy of the future and ignore everything he says about the interdependency of the time dimensions. But so much of Being and Time is devoted to the clarification of how future, present, and past cannot be separated and are in reciprocal relations. It is as if many readers of Heidegger forget about all of that, simply because Heidegger then says something about a primacy of the future.
While I’d argue that the challenge is to understand what Heidegger could have meant when he says “primacy of the future” and when he, at the same time, stresses the interdependency of all time dimensions. “Primacy of the future”, then, cannot mean: “Hey! There is only the future that is important and the other dimensions do not matter at all.” This primacy must be understood as a primacy within the interdependency (not instead of).
And why is there this primacy of the future? This again refers to the “timeishness” of Dasein (I’d rather use the word “historicality”), namely, that our existence is determined by “Seinkönnen” (potentiality-to-be). With other words: Heidegger’s point about the primacy of the future is not a quasi-ontological assumption about the independence of future or its separation from the other time dimensions but follows (with necessity) from the analysis of Dasein’s existence. It’s about Dasein’s timeishness, and not about “time as such”.
In short: There is no “contrast” here between the early Heidegger and the late Heidegger. Heidegger always knew that the three dimensions of time are “reciprocally determinative forms of presence that, while necessarily related, remain irreducibly plural” (210).
There are distinctions to be made, of course, between Being and Time and the much later talk “Time and Being,” as Keiling rightly points out. For example, that this interplay of the dimensions is then understood as a fourth dimension. But I wish people would stop strawmanning Heidegger’s understanding of time like this: “Hey! He said ‘primacy of future’ but actually all dimensions are important.” Heidegger was well aware of that. He wrote at least 50 pages about that in the book you’re referring to (and you’ll find many more in the lectures).
In the rest of this section, Keiling hammers down the point of why getting our understanding of time right matters (for example, for understanding the independency of entities), and I’ll only quote the conclusion — because, again, I do not quite get the urgency or relevance of this debate.
“The point is that, given the proper attention and understanding of ontological knowing, entity independence is a constitutive feature of their manifestation that is misrepresented as their distance in time from “us.” Positioning an entity in a time before any possible cognitive contact with humans may ascribe a kind of ontic independence, but it obscures rather than reveals that independence’s genuine ontological form. ” (213)
For me, engaging with a totally misled debate has only limited value. So much time is spent discussing the errors of the presuppositions. Just getting the “problem” right, takes so much time and effort.
And if I may say so, I suspect Keiling is just engaging with these debates to find a way to express his genuine philosophical thoughts about Heidegger’s understanding of time. It is unfortunately the case, nowadays, that academics must adhere to the reigning principles (dictated by journals, indexes, universities, economy, and so on). What I mean, is… In order to have thoughts on Heidegger’s understanding of time to be heard or published, academics must disguise those thoughts as an (analytical) engagement with popular figures and “hot topics”. But let’s come back to that point.
5. Dependence Ontologies (213ff)
This is the fifth section of Keiling’s article where Keiling is exposing the naievety of “ordinary ontologies.” Keiling motivates his discussion of “entities-in-themselves” (here called: “ancestral facts”) by saying that they allow us to see something. Keiling writes:
Ancestral facts are interesting for Heidegger because they allow us to see at work in the metaphysics of time a deeper, general ontological, or meta-ontological point: the contrast between asserting the independence of entities on an ontic and an ontological level. To distinguish between an ontic misrepresentation as beings-in-themselves and a proper representation of entities within forms of second-order relationality, as AAN (argument against need) ultimately proposes, exceeds the problematic of time by contrasting different ways of understanding the independence of entities.
By talking about ancestral facts, Keiling can show us how Heidegger’s ontology (described as “forms of second-order relationality”) is better than other approaches. For example, better than the “naive ontology of linear time” or Kantian “objectivity” as independency from subjectivity (cf. 214).
Keiling wants to engange with the popular realism vs. idealism debate, and with Wrathall’s take on it. And I cannot see the merit of this discussion. Perhaps someone could explain to me the problem here and why it matters.
As I see it, there is an important distinction between “ontical independence” and “ontological independence”: Things that existed already prior to human existence are obviously ontically independent of us. But so are things that exist nowadays?!
Our knowledge of these things does not create them. There is no “naive idealist” dependency of things. Knowledge of things, ancestral or not, establishes a reference to things, directly OR indirectly, via the evidence we have in front of us. There mustn’t be any timely simultaneity between us and the things for this knowledge to exist or this knowledge to be justified. … Again, please explain to me the problem. I can only see problems arising from wrong basic assumptions of what knowledge is, of what objectivity means, etc. etc.
6. “Beingless” Entities
Keiling now draws our attention to a different point, the independency of entities from being (Sein). The question is now: Can there be beings without being? Also translated as: beingless or “bare of being” (217).
Keiling’s insight, based on the previous sections where he described the transformation of Heidegger’s understanding of time, goes as follows (my emphasis):
Entities “individuated by relational structures that don’t require being or us humans” are ruled out by the ontology of time envisaged by the early Heidegger but are allowed by the later comments on time.
If the basic temporal categories for all there is were those of Dasein’s timeishness, any entity would have to be individuated in reference to the temporal structures in which Dasein makes sense of it;
This helped me to understand Keiling’s previous points much better. The claim is that Dasein’s “timeishness” (Zeitlichkeit) is allegedly, for the early Heidegger, the condition of possibility for the actuality of all beings. This is new to me. I thought Heidegger (in the 1920s) only makes claims about the temporality of our understanding of being. But then again, Keiling might be right, because Heidegger, in Being and Time, also (based on this understanding) wants to make the jump to “Being as such.”
With other words, IF Heidegger identifies our (temporal) understanding of Being with “Being as such,” THEN what follows is that all things (even things that are obviously prior to human existence) are somehow DEPENDENT on this “temporalizing” within Dasein.
Thinking about the independence of entities-in-themselves then helps to see the issue with this identification, potentiality leading to the “turning”, to the transformation of H’s understanding of time, etc. etc.
Keiling is “putting the saddle on the horse from the back,” pushing the idea that it was “thinking about entities-in-themselves” that helped Heidegger realize that there are problems with his strict transcendental approach (and his understanding of time).
But of course, there are many other reasons and many other problems leading to this “turning”; and you could say that Heidegger was well aware (at all times) that there are entities that are not constituted by Dasein which nonetheless “exist” (in the ordinary meaning of the word) (Keiling does not argue otherwise but he overly stresses this “independence”).
For example, you could also make the claim that already in Being and Time, with the concept of “thrown projection” (geworfener Entwurf), Heidegger had conceptualized the possibility of a not-purely-subjective constitution of things. The constitution of things is not fully dependent on the subject alone, but on the subject’s thrownness, its facticity and historicality. Already then, there is no “linear transcendental model,” but the attempt to think (circularily) the relationship between Dasein’s facticity and its transcendentality. In this case, “Being as such” is not bound to Dasein’s transcendentality but already encompasses “more” than this transcendentality. There is no justification for identifying Being as such and Dasein’s understanding of it.
Heidegger himself would later (already in the 1930s and 1940s) describe the “turning” and the “development” of his philosophy not as in any way motivated by thinking entities-in-themselves but by thinking about the inadequacies of the ontological difference and Dasein’s transcendence.
But this later section helps me to understand the “design” of this article and why Keiling stresses this question about entitites-in-themselves. I still do not get why he started with talking about other figures, and only much later addressed this central issue; but that’s perhaps just my personal preference.
Anyways, Keiling continues by showing how the later Heidegger fixes these problems:
by contrast, the later notion of original time would provide an example of relational structures that, although Dasein lives them in a specific way (i.e., privileging the future, in Gelassenheit or otherwise), do not depend on “us humans.” The interaction of the relational structures characteristic of time (present, past, future) defines the form of coordinated presence and absence (“nearing nearness” in the words of “Time and Being”) anything could have, hence individuating something as something even without the participation of an observer. It is for this reason that Heidegger can say that this individuation occurs “previously,” prior to such participation of the observer.
Interestingly, already the early Heidegger in GA 64 uses this concept of “individuation” with reference to the time (and not resolute Dasein). And it seems to me that Heidegger in GA 29/30 returns to this idea of “individuation” at the “highest peak” of time. But Keiling is right that there Heidegger is only talking about things that appear to us, not about things that existed before us that have no “simultaneous” relation to an observer. It’s not the case that Heidegger denied the existence of these things. I’d say that this existence was never a real issue for Heidegger because he did not share this naive assumption that in order to know (of) something there needs to be simultaneity in time, both knower and that which is known must exist “in the same time.”
Instead of focussing on this “non-problem”, we must instead try to keep track of the genuine philosophical problem that Keiling also addresses, namely the question if being is more than our understanding of it, and if time is more than temporality. What are the distinctions between “time”, “timeishness”, “temporality”, “Time-space”?