Modern Phenomenology IV

Abstract

This chapter argues that after Husserl, the elastic motion of time was taken one step further by Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). For Husserl, the ontological primacy of time emerges as an a priori condition of time consciousness and thus results in the radical multiplicity of the temporal field, initially discovered by Kant. Heidegger, however, discovers the pure elasticity of time itself as an ontological process. For Heidegger, primordial phenomenological time is not successive. Time does not exist, but this does not mean that it is an illusion and being is eternal. This chapter looks at this theme in the work of Heidegger and Derrida.