| In Being and Time, Heidegger invokes a non-sequential concept of time called 'originary temporality' in order to interpret what it means to be a human being. I argue for a new reading of this temporal interpretation, on the grounds that the three most prevalent readings do not fully account for Heidegger's text or his philosophical view. Drawing upon his inheritance of key concepts in Aristotle's metaphysics, I argue that the explanatory target of originary temporality should be understood as a distinctively human activity of commitment. In particular, our agency, identity and understanding are possible only because we can commit ourselves to an interpretive stance on how things can and cannot possibly make sense and matter to us, and what it could and could not be to embody this stance in our actions here and now. But since our capacity for such commitment is threatened by the kinds of existential breakdown Heidegger calls 'anxiety' and 'death,' we face an ongoing task of not only embodying the commitment in the present, but moreover, maintaining our capacity for such commitment in the future and vindicating our questionable claim to have been so committed all along, in the past. In this sense, the activity of being human has a non-sequential temporal structure and unity, and we can best understand the core issue of Heidegger's philosophical project in Being and Time: the very possibility of caring about and making sense of our selves, our lives and our world. |
