About time, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote:
«The time "in which" objectively present things move or are at rest is not "objective", if by this is meant the objective presence in itself of beings encountered in the world. But time is not subjectiv either, if we understand by that the objective presence and occurrence in a "subject". World time is more objective than any possible object, with the disclosedness of the world, it always already becomes ecstatically and horizonally "objectified" as the condition of the possibility of innerworldly beings. Thus, contrary to Kant´s opinion, world time is found just as directly in what is physical. Initially "time" shows itself in the sky, that is, precisely where one finds it in the natural orientation toward it, so that "time" is even identified with the sky.
«But world time is also "more subjective" than any possible since it first makes possible the being of the factical existing self, that being which, as is now well undrestood, is the meaning of care. "Time" is neither objectively present in the "subject" nor in the "object", neither "inside" nor "outside", and it is "prior" to every subjectivity and objectivity, because it presents the condition of the very possibility of this "prior". Does it then have any "being" at all? And if not, is it then a phantom or is it "more in being" than any possible being? Any investigation that goes further in the direction of these questions will bump into the same "limit" that already posed itself for our provisional discussion of the connection between truth and being.»(Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, pages 384-385, State University of New York Press; the bold is put by me).
Asserting that time is neither objective nor subjective, neither inside nor outside, Heidegger sinks in the sea of confusion: perhaps time can be anterior to subjectivity but cannot be anterior to objectivity, unless if we sostain an idealism as Kant, postulating that time was a creation of our sensibility, the internal sense. But in this last hypothesis, time is subsequent to subjectivity. A time neither objective nor subjective is impossible: it can be both qualities but outside of this holistic field of possbilities there is nothing.
Heidegger should sostain that there was no time before the world if he wanted to maintain coherence of a phenomenological position different from idealism. Time emanates from the world with its objects.
What is time? It is essentially the internal movement of all things and of the universe, - what the ancien Greeks called alloiósis, change in the same place or in the same body- which can be measured by an external movement as the one of planets and the Sun moving at the sky or by the movement of the clock hands, at every moment.
Time is not the number of the movement, as Aristoteles said, but the continuous change measured by numbers which are inserted in time itself. It is the internal movement of everything and, accidentaly, it is the external movement of many things, including Sun, planets and handsclock.
© (Direitos de autor para Francisco Limpo de Faria Queiroz)
Heidegger complains, without reason, the traditional ontology of confusing being with time:
"Time has long served as the ontological - or rayher ontic - criterion for naïvely distinguishing the different regions of beings. "Temporal" beings (natural processes and historical events) are separated from "atemporal" beings (spatial and numerical relationships). (...) Further, a gap between "temporal being "and " supratemporal "eternal" being is found, and the attempt made to bridge the gap. "Temporal" here means as much as being "in time," an obscure enough definition to be sure. The fact remains that time in the sense of "being in time" serves as criterion for separating the regions of Being "(Heidegger, Being and Time, page 16, State University of New York Press, translated by Joan Stambaugh).
The question is: can we study being disconnecting it from time? No. Being in the theory of Thales of Miletus, is water and the determination of these one as the being is due to its ubiquitous form (spatiality, materiality) and eternal permanence (in infinite succession of chaos and cosmos, composed of, time, time cycles, in which everything is water). Being in the theory of Hegel is the idea (God, the Spirit pre-existing the material universe) and only is possible to realize the idea as the being if we apprehend the march of history in time, i.e., the idea transformed in matter, alienated, during millions of years, and then the idea transformed in humanity with its creations (moral, right, state, art, religion, philosophy in different times).
Time is not the only ontological criterion but it is an indispensable ontological criterion.
www.filosofar.blogs.sapo.pt
© (Direitos de autor para Francisco Limpo de Faria Queiroz)
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