Heidegger, Tugendhat, Davidson - University of New Mexico

truth and the intimately related phenomena of “falsehood, synthesis, …statement,” and being itself are
essentially related to the constitution of time. Thus it is necessary to investigate the basic temporal
determinations of these interrelated phenomena. Temporality (Temporalität) in this sense is to be
distinguished from intratemporality (zeitlichkeit), or the mere fact of something’s running its course in
time; what is sought is rather an investigation of how these phenomena themselves are essentially
related to time; Heidegger calls this a “phenomenological chronology.”
With respect to the ongoing analysis begun with the reading of Aristotle, this means that “the analysis of
the proposition is now oriented toward time.” Its provisional thesis is that “truth, being, and
consequently falsehood, synthesis, and statement are, in some kind of (for the time being) obscure
sense, connected with the phenomenon of time…” (pp. 168-69) This investigation is, in particular,
explicitly directed toward an analysis of the underlying temporality of the basic “as-structure;” this
analysis will itself, Heidegger says, provide an analysis of the deepest underlying temporal conditions of
the possibility of propositions and of the mode of synthesis that they represent.
We need to work out an analysis of the conditions of the possibility of propositions and of
synthesis in terms of their ur-temporality. We led synthesis back to the as-structure, and that
means we now have to explain the ur-temporality of the as-structure. We have characterized
this as-structure as a basic hermeneutical structure of existence. We likewise showed how the
‘as’ of this basic hermeneutical structure gets leveled down to the ‘as’ which is used to
determine things that are merely there. …. (pp. 174-75).
In particular, since the possibility of explicit assertion is not primarily determined as the possibility of
synthesis, but rather from a “leveling-down” of the more basic as-structure, the investigation of
temporality must consider how the “leveled-down” temporality of propositional assertion is itself
constituted by the more basic temporality of the underlying “as”-structure. This involves a
consideration, in particular, of the underlying temporality of care, in terms of which any network of
comportments available to Dasein is constituted.
As so described, the underlying hermeneutic “as”-structure has several logically significant features,
which I now briefly adumbrate. First, as we have seen, although the structure underlies the possibility
of sentential predication, it is more general than the structure of predication itself. In particular, it is
means and (mostly implicity) is understood as presenting or presence, then the genuine and corresponding act of
relating to beings as beings is one that, qua relating, also has a pres-ential character. But an act of relating is presential
not insofar as it is merely present the way a mental event is, of which (it is commonly held) I am immediately
aware. …” (p. 162)
“Plato already characterizes being as presence-now. And the word ousia (which gets peddled around absurdly in
the history of philosophy as “substance”) means nothing other than “presence” in a sense that we still have to
specify. But in all this it is necessary to emphasize that, yes, the Greeks (Plato and Aristotle) do determine being as
ousia, but they were very far from understanding what is really entailed in defining being as presence and as
presence-now. Presence-now is a characteristic of time. To undertand being as presence on the basis of presencenow
means to understand being in terms of time.” (p. 163)
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