05/29/2021
o be, and the present reach out toward each ocher.
Time is not. There is, It gives time. The giving that gives time is
determined by denying and withholding nearness. It grants the
openness of time-space and preserves what remains denied in what
has-been, what is withheld in approach. We call the giving which
gives true time an extending which opens and conceals. As extending is itself a giving, the giving of a giving is concealed in true time.
But where is there time and time-space, where are they given? As
urgent as this question may be at tirst sight, we may no longer ask
in this manner for a where, for the place for time. For true time itself,
the realm ofits threefold extending determined by nearing nearness,
is the prespatial region which tirst gives any possible where.
True, from its beginning, whenever it thought about time, philosophy also asked where time belongs. What philosophy primarily had
in view was time calculate.d as a sequence of the succession of consecutive nows. It was explained that there could be no numerically
measured time with which we calculate without the Psyche, without
the animus, without the soul, without consciousness, without spirit.
There is no time without man. But what does this not without
mean? Is man the giver or the receiver of time? Is man tirst of all
man, and then after that occasionally-that is, at some time or other
-receives time and relates himself to it? True time is the nearness'
of presencing out of present, past and future-the nearness that
unities time's threefold opening extending. It has already reached
man as such so that he can be man only by standing within the
threefold extending, perduring the denying, and withholding nearness which determines that extending. Time is not the product of
man, man is nOt the product of time. There is no production here.
There is only giving in the sense of extending which opens up time-space.