Falling out of the Box

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Falling out of the Box

What do we lose if we stop thinking in terms of things?
On one level this question is the most hackneyed in all philosophy. I mean since Kant at least one has always thought out of the Box surely? What else does it mean to reduce the world to categories and their schemata? There are no Box’s now as there are no Thing in themselves. The Box is merely the illusion of the reason, and the fixation of the idea.
Now Kant is certainly onto something, and certainly has challenged boxes on the profoundest of level. There are no Boxes only concepts which are in us, and ideas which are the product of reason which is busy constituting us – but which in exactly the same sense that they give us give also the world and God- so self world and God arise together. Kant feels at al these level convincing. Surely this is going beyond the box?
And yet in spite of all these moves Kant remains caught in the box in three absolutely critical ways.
Firstly there is the problems of moments and things in themselves. Right at the heart of perception there lies apprehension where moments in immediately ran through and held together. Kant is very clear this running through an holding together is necessary because moments in themselves cannot provide a manifold that can be gathered together in a single conscious thought. It is only if via the agency of transcendental imagination breaks open the moment that perception can be gathered into a single experience. Kant point is these that the moment, that the present by itself is never enough, and that one needs to move to the future in order to create a single experience. The Lie is obvious. The justification is simply that after all the moment is a thing – a separate and discrete object that somehow defies consciousness. It is not by chance then that Kant hat thinks of the THING in itself – it is the idea of things that will provide the concept of difference that can drive time forward – that, as it were demands this movement. At the most basic level therefore Kant simply imports boxes into time.
Secondly, And more classically there is the I THINK. Kant cannot let the mind off into disperate parts that merely communicate with each other – but must homogenize and hold it all together. Apperception then simply re-asserts the mind as a things, and says oh yes it is necessary after all that the mind really was a thing – the Thing of an I beyond any possible redemption within the world- a lonely I beyond all things. It is the I Think (and not God) that performs for Kant the role of transitional object – that is it is his security blanket. Every thing might be rotten – or rather simply non-existent and yet he still has this I Think- the fact beyond which one cannot go or at least for decencies sake one must not go. The point is obvious. As Nietzsche said the I think is utterly problematic, a ‘daring hypothesis’ which cannot be fully grasped or justified- a simple re-inenvtion of the box.
Thirdly and much more problematically – it is Kan who invents perhaps the supreme Box making tool – the Box of time. Now this is problematic – but right at the heart of time (and here I guess I am drawing on Derrida in Note of a note) is the idea that time is where we are. I mean here right at the heart of time is the contrast with boxes. Time is where Boxes are not. This has of course of ever (or at least the outrageous myth runs until Kant) the way time was bashed. What Plato held against time was did not do boxes –that it somehow defied the box. And this is very true. Time is what makes all boxes unpack themselves spontaneously, and constantly. One can of course go much further, and following Deleuze see time as the realm in which all boxes become abstract events, which constantly re-give their nature, and brings them into constant relation with all other varieties of the same box. And we clearly have still not escaped the Kantian trap. The trap of Box. Time might create a multiverse of boxes – and yet it still only gives the box – the unique event,
Here I think one needs to distinguish two aspects of this temporal boxing. On the one hand it is clear that time itself is operating as a box. This box might be complex- might not really contain anything at all – as every that is held within such a container is immediately challenged and moved elsewhere- and yet time, and that whose reality is becoming, is being different remains that which can keep everything within itself through its very difference. Time them operates as a box of sorts – and does so because it is time that contains – that holds things it – even if it holds them in challenging. It is time (and nothing else) that is revealed within the crystal image – time that creates the difference. So it is not just that time was initially defined in relation to box – that is to a certain kind of consciousness (one Spinoza certainly thinks of in terms of Good and Evil, and therefore be-based), but also that time binds things within it, and to it as a container – even if a container that challenges, and drags one elsewhere. Time is a place in which one can be internal to – it is the non-box that somehow reboxes ourselves.
On the other hand, and coming out of the last point – time will by its very inception operate across boxes. Time and boxes run together. Time is the field in which boxes are given – or what is given by the box. One cannot simply jump beyond the box by jumping into time, and will only loose ones way immediately one tries to.

Now none of this is original. Whitehead for one knew all this. The point of the move beyond things, beyond time, and into a difference within continuity which creates time is the attempt to move beyond the box – to create thoughts that cannot be typified by the box. This is of course precisely why he contrasts this move this the event. Events for him occur within time (where they constantly re-negotiate themselves) and are derivative on actual occasions. And yet this move catches Whitehead in two ways. Firstly inspite of his clear attempt to move beyond things and into the world of process he remains clearly caught within a world of things. Actual occasion are just that – occasions, are differences particular and vital in the moment. And therefore effectively are equivalent to things- to something. They might create difference- and move the universe on is some vital manner at this point, and no other, and yet they remains caught up in the world of being there, and the demands of thingdom (that is a singular point of change, a moment the universe changes within). Time is sacrificed, and yet one cannot move beyond things. Whitehead makes this more or less explicit when he claims that what differentiates process philosophy for Spinoza is things. Spinioza would no doubt agree – and would see this as his strength and Whitehead’s weakness. Secondly this move to things beyond all things drives Whitehead to the sole kingdom for such things – namely the transcendental. Where else can one find such things but in the kingdom of the transcendental? Here there thingdom can be allowed justified. Whitehead tries to persuade us that it is okay to have things in this sphere if nowhere else – and here at least there can operate differently be a thin that is capable of the kind of creation he desires. The entire theory is then allowed to jack-knife and turn back to things and thingdom.

Okay so perhaps difference esacpes the box? Surely D(i/e)fferance must escape the box- or at least being? It operates after all as a theory that will explain where the box comes from – that accounts for why we need them- and how we think with them. And yet – like time it reflects it catches us here. To be d(i/e)fferAnt is to be caught the indecency of box construction, caught with glue and nails – and yet one can only catch people covertly building nice little boxes If ones enquiry is perversely looking for boxes, and one already thinks that boxes are what we think they are, and are how we suppose that we must be thinking all along. That is on is still within the dead embrace of Kant- and all one is doing is attempting to supply what Kant did not – namely the building materials of the box – the glue and nails – upon which one endlessly dwells.

Okay so what might the world look like outside the box? Is such a thought possible? Are we stuck in a relationship with God? With an unboxable infinite? Maybe. What is certain sit that what is real must shift. Boxes are not really – and what matters is the very process the means of being caught up within. What on earth does this mean? Well thinking beyond boxed depends on one move and one move only. That is the reverse of cause and effect in thinking. I mean when we think we are accustomed to the idea e have the thought first and then we do things with it. This is at least the official position we adopt. Images then uses. It is clear that the boxless thought must reverse this move. It is not the single thought that is real and certainly not the object part of the eternal object- but rather the eternity itself . That is the being within the many and multiple implication of an idea 0 within its effect. It is there effects that are what is real – and the cause of those effects I merely the occasion – the specific moment that we have these thoughts.
Now this move by itself is not at all original. It is in a real sense all Kant meant when he said I Think I Think I think, but Kant made a mistake- the think is fine- the problem is the I – that is the need to draw the thought into an I process as somehow critical and thereby to catch thought within a box, when no box is needed. What is real is then the constituion the being multiple- being caught up within the middle of difference- and being different, Of all philosophers Spinoza clearly made this move most explicit. The mind for him is not the idea of the body pure and simply. On the contrary God forms an idea of a thing itself, in itself, be can and must run across many other ideas, and very many thoughts – the mind is rather the idea of the affection of the body – that is the idea of how the mind is being many- is caught up in thinking pure and simple. Or again the conscious is not the supreme product of the one beyond all many, but rather the liberation of the many from the one – the bubbling up within the one of the many- as idea or idea – as that which has an idea of the mind not as an object but as it already is re-constituting its nature across this idea – and across its affects. That is, that it has an idea of how the mind is being affecting itself even as it is giving the affection of the body. Oneness – the box still exists and yet it utterly external to what matters in thought – that is to the many. It is little more than the occasion that must accompany thought – and that certain kinds of thought must involve. Spinoza is very clearly on this point. There is no real priority between essences and things- and yet the two are distinct. Essence represent the challenge to others to create a single thing – and yet it not singular itself – merely that which when given the thing is given, and when taken away then thing is taken away. If one has an essence, somewhere else one has a one, but that ones mean the essence itself is a single thing – or the same as being a thing (if it were then everything must be eternal). It is merely that being within many- within thought that as it is given will create a singular reality. All of ethics needs then to be read as a complex series of inquiries and experience into the nature of this being many without one, and one through many.

So to be out of the box is to be in the world of many – a many that can neinte3r be thought of as the simple sum of very thing else- nor that must allowed to exist in a simple grasp (it were then it would as Bergson says merely be the product of duration, and (and this he does not add would be theorectically dead). It is rather a many that reveals itself as just that a being many of constitution pure and simple – a many that may well v a one somewhere else, as for Spinoza our essence involves existence in the conatus – and yet which of itself remains distinct and to itself.

Unsuprisingly a myriad of complex and conflicting question erupt at this point – as all the demons of the multiple escape the soggy box of reality – and endless profilerate elsewhere.

The first causalty as is clear from the above must be time. That is the idea that things exist within a single set of differences – a single duration. Such an idea pushed even to the brink of the abyss as Deleuze with genius does still remains the idea of the box- albeit more infinitely problematic and complex box. But what if anything could replace it? After all here we all are in time aren’t we? Maybe.
What we actually are caught in is not time but tense – tense that time claims for its own. Now this claiming can be easy or complex- but its always then same. Whether that claim is understood in terms of the great before or after which meet in tension – or possiblity and having been that meet in the Augenblick – or the first point of the past- the moment one is within the past for the first time – that is within the now, or even that which defies and eludes the past – that future which cannot be caught – no matter how one categorises it – the point is always the same – time is thought through tense and not the other way around. Or to put it another way – time is the amalgum these tenses – one has time because one has the Augenblick- or time is the complexification of tense- one has time because tenses do not form neat little unions – time is what one gets when one tense eludes the other. Well maybe… But either way around the problem in not that one has time put rather than somehow we hope to reduce or deduce time from tense – and somehow make the latter turn of the former. Once one falls through the soggy bottom of the box one is left wondering why? Why can be not detach tense from the comfy necessity of being within time – and caught within time – and send it of into the world. Are we after all sure that all past are same past? Or that one can have a single axis to capture the past in? A single plane of past in which everything is caught is some great shot gun wedding. Or even that there is ever a straight forward relationship between two tenses. Deleuze is certainly right – tenses are caught in an asymmetric relation with other tenses – and yet maybe this is not the product of time, which is always ideal, but rather tense itself. Tenses perhaps automatically involve asymmetric relations with other tenses – an that rather that being a single crystal of time one is looking at a mine of different and epervescent crystals.

If one goes back to Kant this seems no bad idea. After all in his infamous three synthesis of the first critique do not simply run from future to past to present, but rather at each and every point involve a double tense: Namely present that demands a future, a future that gives a past, and a past that will then create a present. At each point it is not that there is such one tense up two. Kants genius lies in realising this (although perhaps he got it from Liebniz, and he could have got for Spinoza or even Hume ). The problem then being with Kant is that he does not fully realize the implications of the two presents he has uncovered. He is certainly aware that the presents that one has constituted as real are distinct from the presents of the thing in themselves but he puts this down merely to the difference of phenomology and ontology. Only the arragent Ontologist could expect the two to be the same – or behave as it they are. The presents are different – but it is across that difference that the world becomes possible as my idea. An yet - as I have already mentioned Kant can only make this move - and create a space for his phenomenology if he has allowed reality to give him that space – if moments are already the kind of things that a phenomolgy to be gathered together – then one could and would not have one. What is more the present of phenomology – the so called living present clearly has a being of its won – clearly is product, and creative – in the sense that Spinoza uses the terms – and needs to be thought of in terms of its own being . In terms of Ontology then one might say that what Kant has uncovered here is that all presents are not equal – and that as one runs across the gamut of tenses, different presents are formed. And yet this is certainly Not what Kant wants to find. He wants to find time – to find a space to live in, not a sequence of uncomfortable and complex tenses. His answer is then radical as it is problematic – and involves suggesting that the second present is simply the present of appearences, and phenomology. If this is the case then one can hide the fact that the presents are not reconicillable with the comfortable difference between on reality and its copy. Okay it might be the case that the copy, the world of appearance is not seen as what us real to me at least, and the real in itself is places utterly beyond what I am or could be – but this is a small price to pay for saving time. That is Kant’s problem is now the ensure that tenses do not elude times hard grasp. His answer is that they are only be caught if as one moves across tense from present to present, one has left reality anyway – and that the two different realties of the present testify not to different kinds of tense – but rather to the slip into time itself. It is not presents that are irreconcilable in themselves, but time which has as our inner world made then so. Time comes to place itself within the gap between presents: This is where in will be ant the space it can inhabit. Perhaps Kant’s containing Genuis lies here – in this move which by lodging time within the disjunction of different presents, populates that gap, and even to a degree at least finds a box for it.
It is then in a totally sense Deleuze repeats. Deleuze will set up two totally difference tenses – the present-past and the present future – and will claim that one sees in their asymmetry the great gap between the present and the past the working of time. My argument is simply that this move is not necessary. Maybe one does not need a time capable to explaining the gap between tenses – maybe that gap is what tenses simply are. It is what makes a tense be what it is in any one relation- and one needs not to move beyond this fact, and into another relation of containment or even strictly speaking generation. Maybe this reality this disjunction of past and present is all he have got or aspire to, and one must rid oneself of the desperate desire to lodge a becoming or a being beyond this reality.

But what would Kant look like if his thought is not caught in Times hard gras?

Can we liberate the tense in Kant- and if we did what might they sound like? Deleuze wonderfully suggests that many synthesis need to be understood in terms of different repetitions. Deleuze will suggest that there are connective series which run if…then…then…then, conjuctive series that run And…and…and and disjunctive series that run either…or…or…. And yet it appears tha none of these series quite fits the three synthesis of Kant. Nor can Kant be reduced to a single O Head that mutter I Think I Think =- rather one needs do read – or perhaps tp hear him properly a whole variety of apparently conflicting series . Aprehension needs top be thought as the great series of ‘But also’ –that is the series of incompletion – whose cry is also, also, also. In contrast this this also and at time drowened out by it, one has the series of recollection, whose series must surely be ‘There is Here’ – the series of perment place: Its cry is therefore here we are, here we are. While cognition, the series on the present must surely come down of location,. It is the great synthesis of This. This No this, This No this no this no this’, and it moves from =x to =x. This series however needs to be inaudible to apprehension, and only faintly perceivable in recollection. Between between recollection and it run the great wispers of the catergoies. Fristly the category of Quantity, which also says more, More, More – and quality which surely must mutter move one, move one, while inderhence mutter here or there here or there, and modality is it?
But what is the point of this sound sculpture?
The point is that each of these series represent a tense relation, seen as seprate and for itself. Now his is of course following Deleuze – in a sense. Classically he will argue that there are three synthesis of time the synthesis that gives us the present, that which gives us the pure past – and that which breaks us open forces us to confront the absolute future. However the argument being persuade in this section different from Deleuze in that I am attempting to see no hierarchy here – one tense is not being revealed and being based on or it or really having anything to do with the other – that is not the point. It is rather that each tense simply represent a way I a gathered into change, and rediscover myself already changed. Each series represents a different catching into a tense. And yet each series I more complex that this. These series are not simply there I one tense frozen in all time
But surely tensesare caught in relations of implication with other tenses?
Yes of course they are. The point about each of Kant three synthesis is that are pitched between two esnes. It is not that one tense is one series pure and simply – but rather that these series are created in relation to a double tense relation – a relation that pitches ne into a certain synthesis. To go through then again.
Aprrehension is a synthesis which agthers the present- the moement into the future. The present might off a manifold but not one that can be gather ed together and placed in time. It is only run through an held togther, as apprehension constantly moves beyond every one present- and takes up each sensation, gathering them into a future- into being of the future. Aprrehension is then the synthesis that takes the present- the manifold of the moement and squirt into the future – and thereby opens time. Its series is therefore fundamentally binary. Not just Alo Also Also. But ‘ But Aslo’ – each present forms its but- a but that one as one considers it provokes or creates an also. Apprehension is no a synthesis of a single tense- but already of two- which are caught in a perpetually assymetric relation within its repeated moves.
Likewise Recollection the ‘There is Here is there is here… – moves one from the realm of the future – seen as the always there – the already moved into the there – ad into the HERE – the past that is immeindiately untied this it. The drive to the future in whch individuals are recorded is therefore caught immediately in the past- it involves the past – and the Here where all these perceptions are caught. Where else could they be but in such a past? A past where the future is Here.
Finally this hers, these pasts are taken up in recognition and transformed. Here becomes a real issue – a being here or not – a sense hat one can be here. When is one here- when not? What is the past telling us? Cognitions asks? And how does it relate to the future? Where is the past future breaking on the future of the apprehension/ How are they related? Understanding will move the past back to the present. The being past it holds in thereby turned into a being present- into a being caught up in the present – in being already a present. That is in the This No this no This, which is at once this on this or no this no, or event this…this…this… or no…no…no…

Okay again but more seriously…
The point being made here is that Kant discovers two things in the first critique. On the one hand he presents a smooth transition of dual tense relations. One starts with Apprehension herew (and Contra Heidegger) the problem is not that the the manifold of perceptions need to be gathered into present, but rather that each perception of its ‘ in so far as in is contained within a single moment can never be anything but absolute unity’. Transcendental imagination wil ltherefoe give itself the task of taking these unities, and running them through an making them hold together – so that the abolute uinities of the moement can be given in a sinlge intuition. And so apprehension takes one from the immediate moment – into time (Kant repeatedly makes this fat expilct) – the time it is taking one into howver is not a netural – simply being within time so much as a future. Aprrehension in running through and holding togther moements ensures that each passing moement is drawn up as a real;tion to the future – and is always being gathered elsewhere.
So far therefore Kant has defined a future in relation to an impossible present. What then of this future? How does it operate in itself? Kant answer is of courtse tat this future must immediatelky create a past. One cannot have an idea of being caught within the futre unless one already had an idea of the past. There must therefore be a past which is inseperably bound to th futre – in which all its movements are held and known as past. This opf course ios then the p[oint of Kant’s prime example of a straqight line. To think a straight line two things are necessary – one needs a gathering in the future, but a gathering that can reveal itself in a unified past, where all these gathering can be held within one perception.
Si gain this same basic move is being made here. One has run from a future that is created in the present, to that past this future itself directly involves. This far one has not talked of time so much as complex and mobile dual tense relations. However this will change with the final synthesis that of the concept. Here again one needs to be clear. Kant’s basic move in thios final synthesis is that recollection implies something else- namely a self consciousness. One needs not only to remember a thought buit also to be self conscious that one it remembmering it. It is this self cosciousness that will demand understanding. ~And yet there is an immediate and all to obvious problem here. If opne satys in the axis of dual tenses – this move is claelry not needed. I mean the past can certainly create an idea of self-consciuousness – and can give that idea of fluid and constantly re-invented, and do so from within its own resources. I mean it doeas not matter to the past as such whether the idea that all these memories is being held in a single self- consciousness which is constant across all of time- or whether at each and every moement the world- including ones self consciousness of it is recreated – or even if at each and every meoement self-consciousness was shifting and develioping – chaning across its past into something quite new. This is of course Bergson’s move – a move hat I one stays within binary tense is valid enough. Howver It I clear that kantdoes not want to make this move for a simply reason. His expectation is not that one is lost in the past- and in the subjectivity of the past, but rather that one can speak about, and form concepts of what it in the present. That is he want the concept not simply to be in relation o the past- as the past’s actual product – but rather to realte directly to the present which started the entire process roling the =x the object that apprehension immediately grasped. The Unity of self-consciousness therefore is directly related to the =x of the transcendental object- and demands that all objects are unified in concepts.
Kant’s move is therefore that the present that was the apparent product of the past – self-consciousness, must be reflected back into the present that started the entire proicess moving – namely the present that moved one into the future in the future place. Now of course kant is aware that any directl relation between these two is impossible. Indeed this is precisely his point. Although there will be someklind of link – that link can only be given within understanding. The role of understanding is by operating or apprehension and recollection directly and immediately – to force them into relation whith the present- anf give / create the sense of that relationship. Appercrption is then that which is capapble of occupying an apparently paradoxical place- the unity of the the manifold (A117). It is that which makes the end product already present- already being made by the former.
That is- it is the role of appercpetion to reverse time. Rather than there being a final product the ‘oresent’ created by the past, this present it itself understood of also being acie trough out both the other two synthesis. It is no longer simply the product made (and the recollection which made it is devalued in contrast to apprehenension – A 118) – although it quality can change (A 103). It is rather the principle of unity- the principle of being in a present that was already within apprehension- and already informing apprehensions grasp of the present ( A 118) – the necessary apriori which makes that engagement possible. Or to put the above argument another way, Kant’s argument for understanding – and the need for apriori princip0le arises therefore out of a desire to reverse tense relations. As long as one moves ffrom the present to the future to the past to a different present, then one can reamin without apriori oncpets – but as soon as this final p
Postgate resent is seen to be in somekind of relation with – the first present every thing changes. To bridge this apparent irreconcilable gap one needs principle- principles that are capable of acting immediately within apprehension, and forcing it to creates realties that open up the possibility of reconcillatio, between two apparently incompatible pesents – that which the apprehension grsps at – and that which recollection produces.
Time is therefore for Kant almost the name for the temporal inversion of tense. Under the mystery of time then ‘correction relation is reversed – the past in no longer the creator of the present – but rather is created it its turn by a prociess whose sole aim through out is the forge this present. Likewise apprehension no longer simply forges the past- it does no int the knowledge of the present that will be made (by understanding), and present which it thereby drawn into direct accord with the present- the manifold, that apprehension is grasping at: Through times Tyranny the past and the future are forced to cohere with a present which operates across them and invents them for its own purposes. Time is therefore in a sense the miirpor of tesne. It is wah t allows one to go beyond tesne – and to tiurn tense realtinps around – making what appeared to be product in fact cause.

However there is problem here for Kant- a problem that opens out the differnce between the first and second versions of the first critique. The basic problem is that there in Kant’s logic which ensures the first present- the present of perceptio as it is immediately grasped in the manifold in anyway reflects the final perception f understanding. Now of course stated as a bald fact that need not matter much to Kant – afterall he never claimed the second present- that created by understanding was anything more than appearance. And yet there is a more profound problkem at work hewre. There is absolutely nothing in the first ptresent which would ensure the unity of the second. The is no reason why it should create a world that can be characterized by understanding- and held togther as a unity. It could be the case that the present of the percveptions copold be errptive and jarring – it could elude capture, and force the second present into juxtapostion, and up against irrationalities : That us a real paradox is possible. Each understaning might be absolutely certain – and give a unity- and yet that unity might still not old together as a fixed identity – it might rather represn a myriad of different consciousness – which are only locally reconcilable.
Now I the first version of the critique this possibility is effectively ruled out by what mst surely amount to a slight of hand. In this critique sensation – the present apprehension grasps and takes elsewhere and into time – in imagined to be an appearance of the moement. Trhat is it is imagined to inolve a sequence of mutalutally excluisive ‘presents’ – across whgich the mind runs Kabnt will therefore clim that each perception wil occur in the mind sperately and singly, and must be combined by the action of apprehension (A 120). The basic unti of time thereofee remains a moment- and cannot therefore create ontological problems for understanbding., Tha is the basic unit of time is essentially uniform and empty, an so cannot force any breaking of understnaing.
The Oly danger to the mind will come not from perception, but imagination. It is imagination which left by itself wil lproduce an anarchy of assiocation, and possibilities- and anarchy that would defy any reasons.( A 122). It is therefore imagination that understanding operates of to ensure a unity – that is an affininty between differening perception ( ibid). And yet this is no solution to the problem. Tit is clear that whatever else they are the perception of the moement cannot simply be assumed to be the same as the eventual presents created in understanding – that was the the entire point of the ciritque after all. Likewise it is clear that one cannot important the ;angauge of exclusion, or of number to castrate the present – and it is This problem is effetcuvely double headed. The lesser problem concerns the reconicallbity of the different presents. If one sinly cannot gurantee differing presents are given in the ame way just such a language that the first critique was meant to be legitimating!

This problem is effectively double headed. One the one hand hee is the lesser problem of the divdied consciousness. How does one allow for the consciousness to split across time – and for differing times not to be simply reconcilable with each other? The second oproblem though is ndeeper. If one cannot think of the presentm and the immediately perceived that can be reconciled with inconsciousness ( A 120) then hpw are you gpoing to reformualte this manifold? Wjhat are you going to put in the name of the represent – given that one cannot simply saryt the process with one- and gurantee knowledge at the end.
Kant’s answer first problem very directly. He directly juxtaposes hoe sense perceptions but consciousness. The problem he says that understanding faces is of a multiplex and divided consciousness (B134), rather than of random asiocatiions. The problem is then how does one cope with this possiublity? His answe ris of course famous. This possibility only matters if on attempt to hold that the empirical consciousness is unified – and he simply accepts that it is not. On the contrary the empirical consciousness is free to divide and redivide across and through time – as often as it wants ( B 140), and is even conterminus with time- that is inner sense itself (Ibid). The empirical process s therefore free to splt at each moement- and to inhabit a wor;d of divided an communicating selve – or differing presents. What is not free to change is the principle of joining itself (B133) – and the principle that all perceptions must be conjoined. It is this the that now forms an utter bedroick for truth. Empirical consciosness can vary, but what cannot is the fact that every conciousness implies a unity somewhere- even if that unity is beyond every perception, and only thinbkable as a transcendental self, whose deduction is analytic (B 138). Understaning is effectively merely a principle across which uinities are created. That is the point about the categories is that they are how sensation (which is orngianlly manifold) is given in a unity – it does not matter whether every one unity is reconcilable or not. Allkt aht actually does mater is that at each and every level – there is a holding fiunction operating according to understanding’s categories. That is that there exists at some level, a form of empricial consciousness that can allows hold together in one concept owo apparently irreeconcillable parts of consciousness. In one move therefore Kant hopes to neutralize the otherwise corrosovie effects of time. Time need to be problematic – that it the gap between two differing presents need to create problems for different and apparently unreoncillable consciousness so long as at some level there is a point all the apparent choas is is holdable within nother explication of facts (and so trancdendental unity is not comprised.
Kant’s move with rgorad the present is more interesting and potentially problematic. One of the theorectiucal shifts of the two versions of critiques is that e moves to drop the word present from th second critique. This is clearly seen tin the two introduction of the introduction of the Anticipaions . In the first version Kant is comtent to l;et the word perception (which he has al;ready defined in terms of consciousness , stand while in th second version he needs to account for it, and to assure us that the term is caught within space and time and should not be thoiyhght o an somehow seoate (kon the contrary the problem is baldly stated of accounting for what is exrea for space and time within the perception – B 208) . Simialrly one of the key differences of the two versions of the critiques is the rmoval; of the word perception from th account. What matters are not diverse individual perception but a manifold, whose actual nature is beyond understanding (B 139). It is therefore no longer of gathering senatios, but of two differing manifolds – the manifold of sensation which is itself unthinkable ( B 130-131), and ungivablem, and the manifold of space and time, in which, (and via the imaginatio) I represent this world to myself (B150) . The worl of sense thereofer can only be given to me at it is already within poace and time- that is already within the apprehension of imagination (which kant formally defines as the abilty to represent what is not present B151). It is this ability that wil then give time;.

What is at stake here is complex – and amounts effectively to a shift in the nature of the present. The eteral ‘objective’ present is replaced with the manifold – which is absorbed into apprehension. What is now driving apprehension forward is now the transcendental and quite unrealizable present of apperception. Apperception of itself of course is.never simply present, but rather amounts to the ‘ever’ present – the I Think that demands unity in apprehension (B150) – and which is being perpetually re-given by a faculty (imagination) which is defined as a an agent whose essence lies is representing what is not already there ( B151). The contrast menetioned above between the last of first presents in the shifts of tense then becomes a contrast not between two versions of the external; present, but rther between two versions of the self. On the one hand there is the empirical present – the world of the empirical conscious which at any one time finds itself within the world as a present (which is delimted by a certain set of concepts). That it is finds itself in the world of houses which require successive apprehensions – or ice which freezes in a night ( B 162-163) – and which it must find an appropriate concepot to define and think. On the other is the transcendental present itself – the I imperious and unrealizable I Think which demands and creates the linkls in the first place. The gap between the two is therefore now seen not as a potential problem – through which the first present can somehow elude understanding, but rather itself as the resultof the very creativity of the process. That is it is the role and function of the transcedne4tal present to challenge and re-challenge the empirical present, and drag it this way and that – effectively fracturing its apparent unity in the name of the higher unity o of the I Think.
The ‘reverse’ temporal enginering which actively constitutes time is therefore subsumed as the very creativity of the first present itself. Apperception is demanding a unity of past-future in order top represent its own impossible nature, effectively ensures that its present- and the final present in understanding that the process produces are never reconcilable, and are always misallied. Time (the reversing of the tense- the contrast between the two differing presents) then becomes witness to a creativity that is quite distinct from it- and through which it has been made. Kant therefore argues that time itself is powerless. Time cannot be directly represented – or thought – but is rather given across successive apprehension – and as that which apperception is creating an order that it gives its own unity ( B155).
That is in one bound Kant makes the creative and disjuntive property of time the product of an impossible present – which is creating itself within understanding across this disjunction. The disjunction is apperceptions property – apperception creation, and need not therefore worry the critical philosopher anymore. Howver of course the cost paid to read this happy state is very high, in particular two aspects need to be noted. Firstly Kant can only achive this move by effectively relativising all perception – and locating it on the subject; secondly he can only neutralize time by effectively stripping it of any creativity- and by demanding the creation of an analytic principle the I think which is capable of acting across tenses t be producing time, so that after discovering the jarring nature of the temporal inversion involved in time, Kant immediately retreats to quite a different position and invents a present hat is capable of through its own action, creating the reverse temporal flow (that is the gap between itself and the empirical coinsciousness it creates). Tio deal briefly withi each in turn.
By locating truth of conscioiusness Kant will effectively relative all truth. The only ‘present’ become apperception. It is appercpetino – the inner self that demands one is realizing it across the world – and so the world is always caught up in giving it, I creating it. That is the effect of Kant’s move is that what testifies to the inner unity of apperception is no longer its reflection in the mind but rather its reflection in the world itself (B163). It is the very unity of an external world which he have no right to assume it unified that gives an hidden identity- our hidden present. That is, Kant effectively invertys the move of the first version of the critique. It is no longer the case that the I think is the principle of unity which is needed to hold the manifold in one sensation- but rater it is the I think that is now the problem – the challenge. It is the I think that is itself unrepresentable and unthinkable 0 and which one needs to turn away from the self – and from any consciousness to hink. It is not therefore that one needs the I think to give te world, but rather that one needs all the world and the amnifld of intuitions just to think the I think. It is that which is the mystery – not the world itself – and that which the ,manifold world of shifting perceptions must testify to. This move will effectively (and certainly) ,move kant beyond the pretentions/possbilites of ontology. Ontology is mistaken because it reverses what Kant had revealed as the true order. It is not th world that it the problem, and the self the solution, but rather the self that presents the problem whose very solution is the world.
And yet such a move is extremely questionable- as it rests on a negatiuve ontology. The I think is both just an analytical propostion (which is now it is as an idea justified B138) – and therefore merely a logical principle a necessary unity- and yetb it is this unity which drives the entire process forwards- and aroud which it must then always turn. Kant stars thereofe wih a very innocent remark about he need or a logical principle to provide unity, but then immediately transofomr that principle into a singl unity around which the enitire process must turn. Te point ehn being that this shift from logical demand to ontological tyrant is itself a product of the apparent innocence of logic itsel. Lguca might only asks for ‘one little unity’ to call its won – and yet this is precisely what one cannot simply have. Apprehension and recollection might be indistinguisilbe in themselves- the grasping of the future might immediately create the past in which that future it held – and yet there are two quite distinct principles of unity at work – the unity of moving forward, and the unity of holding what one has. The second unity may well involve the first , and yet is clearly distinct from it – and it ans somethign quite distinct of its own. Kant will effectively mask this fact by simply in the second version of the first critique ignoring recollection altogether, and making his argument revolves a round the relationship between apperception and apprehension alone.The simply dermand then for unity presents (as Neitzsche noted) nothing of the kind. The I think is far from an immediately known and simpl notion, but rather involves a whole sequence of highly diseprate and complex ontological statements – statements whttya are either rprovable or could no be deminstated without a great deal of pain. Effectively therefore – the I think is not so much a solution but a new problem – or perhaps more truthfully a defenc of an old idea 9that the world could be held together n a unity) but means of a new move (that unity is the problem, the world is the solution.
The second problematic move involves the notion of the inner sense.
Or to put this another way Kant’s demand for unity isitself highly suspect The unity he requires is a double headed one. He is looking fir a present which as it is in the present is capable of opening out a difference between itself and all representations of itself. It is what is paradoxically given as a dijunction – as that which has always shifted what it is in its being given. And yet it is highly dubous to claim that such a present is itself possible – and could be said to be driving the process forward. That is the dsijunction of two presents, which is the essence of time the disjunction of tense is a reverse temporal enginnering – which gives us the idea of time – as that which gave this gap – one cannot hen simply invent a present which is as itself, and by somekind of transcendental agency, capable of producing the gap – as a product of itself. Such a move is more than a ‘daring metaphysical statment’ and much closer to a directly and simple trick – ir even a double inversion of time What was in fact the feeling of time – that is the one-relation of two tenses becomes the product of one of those tenses the first present itself. It is simply defined as that which is present by making this disjunction and the means by which this disjunction is created. Kant therefore immediately covers the radicalness of his own position – and rights somewhat desperately for the rights of a present which is capable on giving / creating the very disjunction that his analysis has so cleverly uncovered.
The second point mentioned above concerns the relationship of time to dsiperate empirical consconsciouness. Here the problem is no longer about how one thinks the union of empirical consciousness to transcendental – but rather how one thinks the relatioship of time to the diseperate nature of consciousness. Kant of course needs t o be very emphatic here. He needs time to be merely an appearance of inner consconscious – and the effect produces in us of apperectio and understanding – or as he put it ‘ understandig does not…find in inner sense such a combination of the manifold, but produces it, in that it affects that sense’ ( B155). That is time- inner sense is what apperception gives itself inorder that it can realte togther two apparenbtly disperate and unreconcillable consciousness. So for exaplme, when faced with the icy lake of B 164, the mind remembers the water where ice was before, and between these two apparently disperate consciousness creates a link – namely ausailty. Time becomes therefore the supreme holding ground of disperate empirical consciouness – and the palce in hich one shift from one to the other can be created. And yet what engineers this move – apperception is simply defined as the rpinciple that is capapble of giving the move form consciousness to consciousness. It is the immediate unity that kant thinks is the only possible explanation. Aagaint ehrefore this move is little means more than sayiung such a priunciple must be – and so le us accept this fact – it has little or no explicative powers, and it totally open to endless reinterpration, as any principle that is capapble of setting diserpate consciousness in relation would be equally as valid.

In short Kant’s wo m oves I the differing transcednetal deduction represent conflkicting attempts to address one of this great problem of time. Time starts to bite – and to be thoyght once it is realized there is a prolem in tenses. Tenses do not produce a simple reconcilable world a world where one tense just reflects th other – in any ordered way. Tis is particularly the cas with the present – where two realties that shoul theoriectically reflect one another –infact are readically disperate, and defy direct linking. The question Kant is then faced is what to do about this fact.
He put impoly 9and in the light of subseqnet as well as repvious philosophy) he has two distinct options. On the one hand he could accept the disjunction of tense- and simply allow that within his system – that is he could just allow that the present does not reflect itsel;f – or hat the fuure and the past are not an immediately unieid has he hought – this was after all what lebniz or Spoiniza did. Indeed one might go so far as to say Liebniz built his version of all three Kantian cirituques upon this very disjunction of present=past and present future. This gap between perception and desuire is simauyaltaneously what dirves time forward, what allows the possibility of morality, and what gives as deep aethetic feelings. The diusjunction of tenses is therefoe or Leibniz and endlessly productive place. However there is no way kant- who is commtted to uncovering time nt tesne – time understood in itself, as that which immediately opens out the difference between tenses, and which is somehow responisle for this difference. The alternatie approach is of course to allow time a disjunctive reality of its own. That is to allow it to actually be that which makes the gp in thense- that which sets up and defies tense- and ensure every ‘roesent’ is merely as a product of snse ‘an example’ an ice lake’ ‘a house’ or ‘a bar of cinnabar’ – and not then icey lake, the house and the bar o cinnabar. That is Kant could have attempted to squaely face the disjnuction itself – and acceopt that possiblieies opened out but a force capable of detaching and plling apaprt apparently similar presents. He of course does neither- rather he attemps to reconcile the world of time with the world of tense by atmeting t create within tesne a present capable of giving itself it time. That is (in strictly Kantian term)
In he furst verion of the first critique he uncovers two quite distinct relations. Firstly and her eis is not that orogianL0 he traces accurately a sequence of inary tenses. That uis a sequence of tense relationship – within each realtonship involving subsequent and previous relations. A presrnt is transformed into a future, which is given as a past, which akes a present. Secondly he then turn around and realizes that the final rpesent is in no way reconcilable with the first present – n he gives the anme time for this very basi irreconcilalblity. One is in time because one peresent is not the simple relfection of thither- that is one is in the world of inner sens eand perception. At this point on is left as it were with two contrasting possible moves. The move of tenses with gies itelf across a sequence, and the moves of time which reverses this tenses real;tionhip. In thesecond version of the ciritque Kant endeavours then to sort through these relations- and attempt to found the relations of time pon a vey special tense realtionhip. That is he attempts as it were to synthesize what truly belong to time within tense = and accounts to gve an ccount o tense that is adequate to uderstading time. The result is hardly a success. One is left with a badly destabilized theory – where the demands that everything be reconcilalble with a single overaching present is in itself unjustifiable, annd pproblemtaic. What Kant is effetvuely failing to face is that he is dealing with two quite distinct account. In one account one stays within tenses – and understnd how tense is primary- and gives up the attempt to create a union between tenses. The point of tense is that each tense is disitnct0 and chamelon./ the future that apprehension grasps as it is defined in the present – is never quite the same future as that which the pst creates in representing it – or the concept gathers in the single concept. The point is tht one has a sequence o binary pairs- each defined in reference to the other – and yet each sinlge tense is gatherable up in another distinct pairing. Unity cannot thereore be siply supposed. The alternative postion is that of time. In time – which takes as its starting point the disjunctin of two differing versions of the same tense- namely the present (for Kant, but one could use the past or the future fot that matter), and attempt to ocmprehend directly what could give the disjunction of presents. Tht is that formless form that can hold differing form itself within it – and as it – and can therey create for itself, and in its won action that apparently contradictpry world of being present. Kant however attmots to take this world of tim, and trace it back to he world of tense – and to synthesize with tenses times – and the possibility of time – with a result that his crituque lurches from a creditable, and highly complex expostion of two distinct systems of thinking t a travesty – whee one world is spuriously collapsed into another- to the deterioment of both.
Of course Kant does not leave it there. Indeed one of the joys of Kantian scholarship his restless and constant re-working the relations of time nd tense. Sometimes privelldgeing one – sometimes the other. – sotimes attempting to present sythesis in which tenses give time (as in the first crituque) or time tense – while somethines attemtpoung to produce a world where each relation can comprehend in someway the other – or give itelf across the other. For example at the heart of the third critique is a double act of comprehension. In the critique of the beautiful where a mystery is installed between thw twin presents of perception and concept. The beautiful inhabits a gap where apprehension and recollection and endless bought in relation to an immediate present which defines concepts, and frees tense from the necessity of producing a single present a concpt 9and there from being bound into a time). In the Beautiful the freedom of tense is thereby comprehended with time itself- as that which eludes the creator of tim. The oppsote is then the case in he sublime. In the sublime, it is time that emerges traumatically within tense. Time merges in the impossible gap that is opened up between the future and the past which can no longer create or give that future. An idea I presented that is unrespresentable within the world, and that emerges into it – ripping through it – and forcing it elsewhere. That is the point of the first book of the third critique is to show how tenses can be comprehended within time – as what is endlessly eluding it – and moving elsewhere- and how time can be comprehended in tense- or other in the pulling apart of tenses.

Kant and the full temporal inversion.

Kant will pursue a totally different statedg in Metaphysical Foundations. The foundation for this strategy no doubt can be seen is the first critique. As metioned in footnote aboe the theorecticl point of the refutation of idealism is not that spce somehow is a sinulkar entity within which alkl is conctained, but rather that it is oif its essence manifold. Space is permentent because it is many – and exists in being many (and therefore not in being a simple unity), kant returns then to space – and its relative independence from innr sense and understanding in th Cocept of reflection. Here the argument (which is made against liebniz) clearly sets up space not only against inner sense – but against understanding itself. Kant notes four way that space that is outer sense needs to b thought of as extending beyond inner sense ( B319-324). Firstly space is of its essence muitiverse – and mltitle. It might be adequate to say in the world of concepts that if two concept are absolutely identical in every way then they are the same individual – but this is clearly not th case for space. The very point of spac is that special difference is enough to ensure two different individuals. The effet of this move is of course very radical – as it ensures that each and evry part or even segement of the universe is utterly diverse. We do not live in a universe of sameness – but irreconcilable differences. Secondly he argues that space puts truth into question. Kant has already considered this in the refutation of Idealism. There space put truth into question by allowing the same point to move –0 to no longer be the same, and therefore by its very multiplicity made every conjecture provsion ( B 292). In the reflection he considers another possibility. The point about spac in contrast to time is that it can contain diserpate and potentially conflicting ele,ents within th same individual. Aagain the effect is surely very radical. One individual ceases to be a single thing – but just as easily could be the union of potentially infinte subofrces – ll of which are balancing acting upon one another to produce a single movement. Now again the radicalness of hat Kant is saying here needs to be chiseled out. Wha is radical in Kant is not the idea that an indiuald could be the combination of a very largenumber of diseprate forces 9that much is in Spinoza) but that the forces could be contradictory (which Spiniza flatly denies). The feect is then that the individual cease to be in anysene a thing – or even a force, an could just as eaily be understood as a multiplicity of conflicting forces – all pulling of in contrasting directions. Thirdly Kant argue that the distinction of inner and outer is oput into question by space. Udrstanding knows the world of the inner – and yet sace consists merely of relations between contrasting elements. What is more (and tis is a ppint he will return to in the metaphysical foundtation) th foundatioal forces which allow us to understand matter are thenelves merely forces which operate to produce relations (these are forces of attrction, and repulsion – B 321). At its essence, and running totally counter to understanding, and the inner world it creates, spoace is realtoation, and noting but relational. That is in space there is only the manifold , n one must understand occurrence in it in terms of the manifold alone. Finally space defies the customary relation which draw between matter and form. Traditionally Kant asserts logicaian have seen matter as predating form ( B 322). Matter for Kant amounted merely to the demand that something is given – (B 323), for which one then discovers a form. Matter therefore represent one underlying relatity – in which thing adhere The same is clearly not true for apce and tim. Sapce is not a thing as suh an underlying reality, but rather a merely being many. Space is present therefore for me not as an underlying truth but merely are an underlying form into which all senses (matter) but conform inorder to be present form me. Likewise time has no matter of its own, for Kant, bu merely represents the form – and way of relating that things must be inorder that they are real for me.
Running through all these reflections is then the idea that what makes matter different and unreducable to concepts is the fact that it exists within relation alone. Relations that cannot simply be reduced t ounderstnading – and that defy any one grasp – but rather always elude undertading – and force it ever to look in inner sense for a new way to combine what it thought it already knew. This thn is the context in which metaphysical foundation is written 9and what makes it so interesting). Throughout the book kant is trying to grasp at th sense that the manifold of space- its irreconillable manyiness – problematizes understaning and the time it creates iself. What then in the context of the current inquiry is o interesting about Kant’s various inquiries is the way thr0ough out then he chooses to think time in terms of a feedback between tenses (that is of thinking the element capapble of opeining out a different bwten two contrasting tense) rather thn allowing these tenses to exist by their own right.

Kant starts this book with a deceptively simply premise. Namley that empirical space must is the matrial sum of all the experiences within it. Kant is here very careful to delimt different spaces. In any one space is defined not by the diverse range on movements within it so much as the fact that all these movements are themselves moving in relation to a subsequent larger space. What therefore makes a space the spoace that it is – what defines an particular relative space is therefore the fact that all the movements within it are moving in the same way relative to another containing space. In contrast to relative spoace Kant suggests all movement must- to be within what he calls absolute space. That is space though of as an idea in which this movement exists as something that has moved – irrespective of the local effects of this movement. This division of absolute space and relative will then give Kant the tools to devlpoe a very flexible and nuanced synthesis of space and motion.
But before I can fully expl;icate this, two other Kantain moves need to be noted. Fgirstly Kant is very careful to rule out the possibility of absolut rest – or even abolute motuon. What is absolute is always space not movement. It follows that all movements are themselves in the effect relative and constained within a particular space (that is a space that represernts the conscious experience of being within this set of movement – the material space the consciousness would make to create itself these movings). Every one motion therefore- although it must relate to an absoplute space- that is to the factr that motion has happened – that something has occurred will in local effect be totally defined by the space in which it is. The same motion will change therefore as it wandewrs across differing spaces – or at least comes to be seen from different perspectives. That is Kant rules out the kind of moves that spiniza wishes to make when he insists of the reality of absolute rest in order to define motion. There is no absolute motion or rest argues kant – only realized movement in relative space, which realte to a movement in absolute space that it ideal. Liewise kant is very careful to limit his delimt motion to fixed parts – or even point of space. Motion itself he defines as the change of a things external relations – a change that is applicable to points as it is to bodies. That is a change that he sees as fundamentally applicabole to space relations. Again the contrast is with Spinoza. In Spinoiza bodies are reciporically defined. That is bopdies move other bodies – and therefore the entire system is relative. Each body having no other existence through the movements of all other bpodies – and while each bodiy is in essence the movement of another body or bodies. Theree is no absulte point of movement therefore – and no way one can simply apply saoce to movement (the argument infact runs the other way – whaty we call space depends on the existence of corporieal substances – that is the world of things – so space truns on bodies properly understood, and not bodies on space). Kant inverts this therefore. Movement realte to space, and to something- call it a point which is moving.
Now the problems Kant is attempting to solve here is profound – the extent that he could be said to be solving it distinctly questionable. Kant argues in th first critique that a key element of space as relativistic, and yet also argud that apce in the ultimate differentiator within which merly to occupy a different space is to be different. Here are then two quite distinct means pof being different. Is to be different to be making a difference in another – or is it merely to be in abstact space. Kant chooses the latter alternative – when forced to face the choice in metaphysical foundation. The point then being if he did choose this option – and had suggested that the realtiviness of space must be thought before any absolute properties it had – in wpould be impossible for time as he understands it to actually represent that space. That is for time to be representingsapce as a line thjpught and held witjin the mind – it must be possible for a line to simply be. In the relative world which a spoace defined only by movements of other movements- such a world ceases to be self vident.

The effect The effect of this move is to create or kant a relative disjunction. One the one hand here are bodies (and ultimately points) the sum of whose motions create empirical space. Space is therefore the creation of the movements of its part – that is these parts acting together create it. Empirical space is therefore the matter –the concept, and movement that which is apprehended to produce this concept and this particular matter. And yet concept is ‘quite the same’ as the opposite concept – which would see space in motion, and any one body at rest ( ibid 488). This transforms he problem of the first critique considered above. There the problem ad been the apparent disjunction between the two different presents – the present of the moment and the present of understanding – here this disjunction is effectively filled in a highly original way. One on the one hand it is simply accepted that there is a disjunction between space and actual motion. Any empirical space Kant says needs to be understood as the sum total of all the experiences within it ( 481), and what is experienced is never absolute motion its – but rather the differing (and relative) effects individual motions have upon one another. Any one motion is therefore only apprehended as it constitutes an element in creating a concept that remains in itself very distinct from that that motion is. Or to put it in terms of the first critique (which Kant does not do at this point)– what is crucial here is the way that every one motion is apprehended – so much as the way this apprehension is recollected – that is represented in memory. Within memory what is present is not the fact tht one moved absolutely – but rather the tissue of movements all relative to each other across which the concept of a space is formed. On the other, It is clear that there is nothing special in the construction of the concept about the moving parts. It is noting the moving parts that essentially create the concept itself. There is no reasons therefore why one cannot reverse the procedure and see any individual movement of a certain body as the product of the movement of space itself – which is flowing I the opposite direction to the body apparently moving. So that it might be the case that it is space itself that is moving and any on body is fixed. Kant will give here the example of a bll rolling in the cabin of a boat in the exact speed and reverse direction to which the boat itself is moving down stream. To someone in the cabin it would no doubt appear the ball was moving – and yet someone one the bank would see the ball as still, and the boat was moving (488). What moves, and the concept that it creates to express this movement become therefore a flexible element. As that concept never itself represent absolute movement in absolute movement in absolute space – but always relative to relative space, so that exactly what has changed – and what is attempting to grasp at that change and to force it into a concept becomes relative . The might therefore remain disjunction between the two presents – and yet this disjunction essentially is made relative. There will always be a disjunction – and yet it is by no means clear which is disjunct. One can no more say that any one movement is has absolute motion, and space is the conept we use to understand that moption, as one can reverse the procedure, and say that space is in absolute motion, and bodies are the way we grasp at the absolute motion of a still reataive space.
There is a more or less explicit element in this move to janus pace-body relations. This move would surely be impossible if every body (as it is preset in Phoronomy) is merely an set of differing points. That I hat is mattering about the body is its form or even itself extension or matter as they are what is being formed), but the fact that every point in that body in somesense involves moving –a movement that Kant will define as the change in external relations ( 482). Kant will therefore very explicitly claim that as he is considering noting more that motion, and matter which is attributed to ‘ the subject of motion’, so he is entitled to consider matter in terms of mving point alone (480). Whn he uses the term Bodies (as he does in setting up the argument the above argument) he therefore insits that this is because he is anticipating soe of the more determined concepts of matter – and that he does do inorder to make the argument less abstract and more comprehensible (ibid). The above argument therefore is founded upon a perception of bodies are being comprised on moving points – and is made on the understanding that it is only the points that are significant. And yet this move to points is far from simple or innoncent. Here again the comparision might be usuall made with Spiniza. Dpiniza never jumps to points ad in any ways wishes to create a physicis that’s imply cannot be characterized by the point (1/15s and ep12). When he is faced with the apparent realtivism of motin,he therefore restists the simple move to points- and rather insists that there are two quite distinct relations at stake here. Every motion is in essence the motion of another – or all others – and so motions movement no points –but motions (all motion is therefore reciporically {invicem} distinguished). But if one want to consider any one movement – and it actual existence, one immediately needs to understand that individual existence interms of all other motions, and how they are constantly chaning, inorder that this motion is. The simplest bodies therefore exist as it were as the essence of other bodies (t the way they are moving), while there existence depends upon the essence (that is the endlessl moves) of all other bodies. The existence and essence of imple bodies are therebty riven in to – an they do not exist as an individual. Thing I the same sene that they act. Thius irreconillable divisio is then very important for Spinioza as it is just thi division in the infinte thatpulls apart tenses from time, and prevents one ever simply reconciling one to the other. Now Kant can simply avoid this move and presenrve the right of time over tense by instisting that motions relates to abstract points. These abstract pointes then, iunlike the simple body, have the property of being identical both as their movement is seen to constitute space , and as space can be understood as moving around them. It is then ths identity that seves to rivet space and time together – as its it’s the point –he moement that is the same both I the act of giving a space, and being the point tyat space cold be said to itself be giving. Ythe point provides the janus figure – capapble of constituting and being onstitiuted in the same breath. Or to put it another way – it is the unique property of the point that it can be part in the constitution other another concept – as it can be the concept itself around which others revolves.
However Kant wants to push the argument much uirther than this. He argues (486-495) that as the concept of a motion in a space does not allow us to distinguish between a movoing point or a moving relative space – it will also follow that all possible combination the two possibilities are open. That is both popint and space can be moving is the same diretion or in radaially differing durection- and the resultant moption might them be the amaalgum of these contrasting movements. In effedt he argues that each and every motion opes out the popssiblity of diverse constitutes motions. We see only the result, but there are an indeterminate number of possible motions of point and space that could produce this apparently singular motion. Kant will peg this idea onto the categories of quanitity arguing that as this category runs between unity, to pluracy and finally totallity –so a single motion starts as an intital grasp of a single movement, but it is thenrealized that this apparent movement involves a ultiplicity of possible component moves, and finally a concept that allows in it for all possible moves- all possible parts of the moption of a line.
Now in a sense what is really interesting in is the exact pl;ace that this multiplicity occurs. If one compares what is being said here to the first ciritique then it becomes clear what isaat stake here is the recollection – that is the past –and possible pulracy in memory. Kant therefore is clear that he motion itself –as it is a motion is unified in direction and line ( 495) – that is, in rms of the first ciritque it is unified in apprehensin which immediately grasps this direction and synthesis it part to part (B204). Liewise in terms of the eventual concept – the empirical conciousness of a certain space existing and being real – the concept is the same whther it is space or body that moves. But what differs – what omprisies the multiplicity of possible combinations of moving point or space is then comprised within recllection – under the aegis of he catageory of pluracy. That is – what is diverse it infact memory. Form a mere perception one cannot tell ‘whose mmeory’ – whose past one is beleonging to. At one exreme one can be belonging to the memeory that belongs to the formation of a certain empirical space. Here a point moves, and this point is taken up into the memeory needed to orm the concept of this space. At the other extrme one is in the memory of the concept of the moving point, and all of space is mopving to give rthat memery. But one coul;d likwie be in any coposite of the two. That is one could be both in the memory of a space that is changing as a point is absoltuel moving within it – and forcing it to change what it is – while at the same time that point is itself being moved – and reformed in our notions of what it is. That is thereby broken open is the unque past. Every movement – can open to an panoply of different memoriues – and different possible pasts, and it is no longer inistelf possible to decide which exact past an one movement belong to – rather it must be seen as that which immediately opens out to an ininftity of possible pasts – all of whih in the end produce the same concept.
Now such a diversion into many pasts would itself be unconceivable without time. Time here is again complex –and will need to be seen from two differing angles. At the most basic level all the times involved in the construction of these differing pasts are identical. That is – it is the same amount of time that needs to be constituted or grasped within apprehension. Likewise in terms of inner sense that is time as it exists after understanding has completed its synthesis and realized the totalillity of differing motions –it the same –all the different possible pasts are gathered therefore in the same basic ‘time’ . That is time – as inner sense has no reality beyond the concept in which it inheres – it therefore can easily give unity to apparently disperate mpasts as lonbg as those pasts can be gathered within a single concept – and thereby made to relate –ablit if there own partocualr format to the same basic period of time (that is movement of inner sense accord). That is what Kant has opened out here is the realtionhip between apprehension and its recollection. Any act of apprehension is always an immediate unity –that it something has moved – we just do not know what point or space opr any combination of the two. The same apprehension can therefore be iommediately linked to a multitude of different reclloections – that it pasts – and yet reamin the same apprehension. A concept then can be formed – and a time thought that is abole to gather up within inner sense this multitude so that they will never e directly exerpeinces as such –a nd will as far of most individual; are concerned simply be contained within a single concept – that be able to change across all possible inner senses – that is all comboinations of pasts – and give then within the simple idea.
The first chapter o the oundtatin therefore very much dealt with the first two concepts of reflection. It asserted the rights of space over mer realtivitiy – and thereby gave to differing in space over mere relation (a move that preserve the unity of duration), and then argued that all motions re themselves relative – and could contain an number beyond count of other motions – so that every motion could if understood in terms of a different pasts and yet produce the same basic motion. It is tempting then to say tha the former argumnt really comes down to exactly what apprehension is responding to., Apprehension (or at least apprehnsion when it is in the serves of the axioms of intuiton0 always serves space, and not relation – it prime aim is therefore to produce space relations – and as all other aspects of metaphysical foundation depend upon this basic phoronomy (– so relations must be made to accord to this single basic fact 472). The latter argument is then a matte of recollection. It is recollection that offrs us a ay of viewing the world from a multiplicity of constrasoing perspectives – and viewing what in might mean to have opoosites included within a sinlge concept – and therby ensure that although these is an apparent – and potentially problematic disjunctio between perception and concept – this disjunction is reversible – and thereby contained.
In the second part of metaphysical foundation Kant moves on to consider the quaktues that fill space itself (477(). Angai here a comparison is seen in the concepts of reflection. In the concepts Kant has discussed the foundational forces he disovers in mwtahpysical Fpoundations, as examples of pure relative forces. That is what is so peculiar about them what defies any simple act of understanding them is the fact that they are forces that need to be understood as having no inside. A force like gravity therefore cannot be understood in terms of a body – or a concept with inner properties of its own. ( B 321). It is rather the case that it straddles who differing bodies – and gives the reakiuty of one in altering the other.
In Metaphysiucal foundation Jkabnt considers separately the two basic forces that are capable of acting to produce pure relations. Firstly he considers the forc of repulsion. Matter he suggests need to be considered no in terms of atoms – but rather in terms of a certain force of repulsion, that fills us space to a certain degree ( with a special moving force497-499). The strength of this force then varies according to the relative degree of compression or relaxation any one part of space is forcedto endure (, with the force increasing as it it compressed ( 502). For any one finite force a greater force can be found, ibid), while any one region of matter will ultimately be able to resist any penetrating force ( 502). This is because the force it resists is relative, and varies due to the space that force is forced to occupy – and this force decreases the relative force of repulsion incrases unti li reach such a point that it balnces out any finte force of comprssion. Finally it is a feature of matter – which is not compsed of atmos (that is smallest parts) that it is infinitely dividable – and that all part can move relative to each other. Kant then suggests that running counter to repulsion there must be a force of attraction – where by every part of the universe attracts every other part ( 512), this is of eqyual importance I th gensis of matter as repulsion ( 511), and operates as a active principle, forcing matter together, and gaining strength as matter comes togther (as the force increases due to the relative mass of the many parts involved 526) while rusion at a certain point forces matter apart again. However Kant is clear of thee two it is attractive forces that grounds the possibility of matter as it is attractive forces that forms the glue which allows any region of matter to hold togther, and thereby diefes the forces or repulion that left to thensemles would simply pull the universe apart (516).
It is then quite clear why these forces must be understood as realtie. Itis this irreconciallable being within another that the first critique calimed was the hallmark of space ( B340). The foundation though show on exactly why these forces need to be understood as relative. On two sitnct levels thes forces defy understand and inner sense. Firstly it is clear that the point about a reltive force is that I is not simply restrictable to itme – at leas tas Kant understands it. The inner sense is the world of the smooth progress of time – and the stright line of inner sense – and it is exactly this straight line that the purel relative world of outer sense so problematizes ( B 292). The outr world of sense straddles this line of time – not only forcing it on – but forcing one also to make connection tht straddles it – that run backward and forwards across it, and through it – as outward sense ceaseless reaches toward others, and gives itself across another and in anothers time. That is, in the first critique the manifold nature of outer sense clearly runs counter to inner sense and the world of concepts abd things. In the fondation kant provides in his two forces to explicationwhy this must beso – mand why/ how these force must be seen at odds with time itself ( or at least time understood as a straight line). Outer sense can defy concepts and force one into the world of the relative – by ensuring that the synthesis of imagination are not reducible immediately to concepts. As each synthesis of imagination itself is defined in terms of tense – it becomes possible to see this relativity as coming down to an issue about tense (although very crtically Kant does not make this move). In order to assess the complexity of what is involved here I will firstly assess – from the persepoctive of tense, exactly how foundational forces elude concepts, before turning to the problem of how Kant wishes to understand these forces ot in terms of tense –bu an ideal event.
Repulsion as a force is Kant thinks deceptively simply. He is very clear that we can immediately know ehat he is talking about ( 514) – and so assume we kno what it means (in a way that we do not with gravity- that by contrst we are tempted to deny – ibid). And yet Kant is very clear – repulsion as a foundation force (and so unconceivale in terms of anything else –513) needs not to be thought of is simple terms indeed lying at its heart is a mystery quite as big as the mystery of gravity – namely how one can undrstand parts of matter that are always continous – and therefore in immediate contact with one another expanding or contracting at all ( 505 and 522). The actual mechansism in which compression becomes a force remains ideal therefore – and beyond understanding – and unconceptual. The reason for this is clear enough – what kant is advocating in he force of repulsion is effectively some kind of inversion of his norml conception of tense relations. In the force of rpulsion it is as if as past – that is a changed state of relative contractio or relaxing) directl produced (and in a way that defies concepts) another apprehension – that is a counter force – so that one cannt form a conception of one without the other. One moves therefore directly from a relation which is established within the past- an pertains to relations to links one must view in terms of recollection – directly to a new apprehension – which will in time create a new concpt –without the intermediatary concept – that is how one moved from from to the other being formed at all. One remains in imagaination – but an imaginatio that eludes understandings grasps – and forces it into another world in its very act of grasping. By examining firmly within the world of imaginatin – that is sense repulsion remains purely relative, and multple. The effect of one part of the uiverse upon the other (that is a past), is immediately translated nto a similar and retaliatory effect which operates on the force which forced he intial compression.
Attraction will then make a similar and perhaps even more paradoxical move. Attraction is a strange force in that in itself – as itself it remains not only utterly unapprehenanble – but also open and unlimitable (516). Gravity therefore does not relate directly to any one body itself- but rather exists as an effect upon other bodies- that suddenly find themselves – moving towards the effecting body. It is as if the force of gravity involves an apprehension that acted directly upon another- forcing that other body it witness it not directly (as its own apprehension) but rather by always already moving another body. Kan will therefore calim that even if one did apprenhend (or perceive) gravity directly it would not give one a perception of an object. Gravity is never the property of the thing that attracts – but rather the way that this thing captures up al over things – and if one could perceive it, all that one would perceive is th sense that one is caught – that ifs the fact that there is a force moving one in a certain direction. Such a perception would not Kant suggests even give one an idea of where the affecting body is located ( 510). Gravity is never therefore a property owned by a body- and if not therefore apprehendable as anything other than a way another body has been taken up an moved. This fact in turn explains a ver deep paradox implict within gravity. Kant is vry clear that every part of indivisible space attracts every other part. Gravity is not therefore the preserve of larger objects –but all object – however small in indivisible space ( 517). No one region of space (or a body) can be thought of as peculiarly producing an attraction towards it – rather that attraction is the product of all its parts (of which there must be an undefinable number) – and therefore fundamentally manifold. And yet for a second body – this manifold will be unified, and experienced as a single (an amplified) attrction – whereby alothugh the diseprat parts of the body might theorectically by having individual effects upon this second body,it experiences directly only the effect of their combined action upon it ( 542). Gravity therefore is only unifies as attraction within another – and as that other –is bing pulled according to the force acting upon it. Gravity in kant’s hands represent therefore a fundamental force whose very essence lies in mivng another. Th force of gravity operate as it were an open ended demand for a future – which individual bodies witness in being already moved – and which even if they couild perceive directly would exist no more to them as an impulsion into a future, and a demand that they change.

Th foundtion forces therefore exist in a temporality hat defines th normal temporality of concepts. By either operating as a past wich gives another future, o directly directly producing a different past in another – they straddle the normal temporal flow of understanding – and create links between matter that cannot be simply understood – and reduced to a mere set of concepts.That s the realtino of the amphibody of the first crituq – ar realtino which in a sense run against time, and pitch contrasting tesne relation gainst the smooth flow of tenses and time Kant initially suypposed. Faced with such a situation – Kant clarly has two options. The first wold no doubt to appect the paradoxical nature of the tense relations he has uncovered – and to attempt to think through what that paradox might inolve. And yet such a method would of course take him very far from the critical method – and would force him back into the world of ontology we sought to depart from. Kant therefore simply cannot move in this direction – and is forced upon another move. This move which is pursued riogourously throughout Metaphysical foudation involves arguing that the action of fundamental forcs is itelf unconceivable – and tht they operate in a time and space which is distinct from hat of the physical world – a time and space only accessible in reason – in which spataiity and tenmporality is freed to directly, and in itself synthesise the problematic tenses relation demanded to understand the physical world.
Kant’s setting of point for this move is very much the concept. One knows of the existence of fundmetal forces if ‘they inevitably belong o a concept concerning which there can be proved that it is a fundamental concept not further derviatble form an other (such as is the fundamental concept of filling space-) – (524). This move is vital t Kant – as a containing move. If fundamental forces must be derived from fundamntal concept – at that which the concept already involves in being formed – that which it must allow for, then it will of course follow that such forces must never destablise the concept – and will remain only those ideal thoughts that are necessary for th concept to be at all. Kant therefore trapps one in a box, befor he ever starts to think. Forces must therefore not be thought of as actual – and no concept of them should be inferred ( ibid) – but rather they must represent the last point our reason can go as it considers the world (534). Reason is thereby further restricted. Fundamental forces must not only be defined within concepts –but also reason can go no further that their production. The can be no infinite regress therefore – merely the uncovering of a final necessary ideal element – an ideal element that must be given/thought in order that the concept given. So that again – and very profoundly Kant insulates himself against the possibly very corrosiuve effects of the search for fundamental forces. Not only must these forces remain ideal (and so the problematic tense relation that they involve are therefore not real in themselves) but also there is a particualir albeit ideal event to which these forces are linked. That is the force must be doing – creating something – a something that is then made actual in the concept. These is therefore an ideal event – which is directly reflecting the concept (the actual) – and which is operating as that ideal element through which the concept is produced.
The question of course then is how does one envisage the space and time within which these ideal elements are operating – a spoace and time that is of itself capable of directly producing the apparent temporal inversion implicit within double tense relations?
In the case of attraction the mov top the ideal is relatively eay – as unless one understands gravity as already ideal (in some sense) then one will not be able to understand it at all ( 513). Kant will therefore contrast two quite different conceptsion of space. At its most basic level Kant arugs space must be seen in terms of mathematical and geometric space. The key featue of such space Kant argues is that no two objects touch each other- but rather have points (in the case of lins), or lines (in the case of planes) or planes (in th case of bodies) in common Objects do not touch therefore so much as have elements in common with other objects ( 512). Phusical sace Kant then argues physical space depends upon this mathematical space, as it includes in its idea of space repulsive forces.. Physical space therefore involves a reciporical action of repulsive forces at the common boundary’ (ibid) . What is more kant is very clar that such physical space- such contact is in fact impossible unless there exists a force of attraction which is capapble on bringing parts of matter together – a force of attraction that must be understood as operating prior to all contact, ad therefore as operating not in physical but empty space (ibid). Kant therefore carefully positions physical space within mathematical apce. The realities of the latter are only possible because of action within the former. It is therefore a kay principle within mathematical space that all action occurs outside the agent that is creating it – in a ‘place it is not’ ( 513) and to suggest therefore that because attraction must be thought of as operating in another it is someone impossible is to arbitrarily assert the rights of physical space over mathematical and thereby ignore not only the fact that two quite different spaces are involved (514)but that also physical space itelf is only conceivable through mathemical space – as forces of repulsion occur in the plane of contact between bodies (512).
If gravity occurs in idealized mathematica space how should one envisage this space? Kant argues that the effect of gravity n other bodies must not be seen as rays eminating from a given point- but rather in terms of successive hollow spheres of action. Where eachpoint in a certain sphere is effected by the gravity of a certain body in a certain way ( 519). Wha is more as the effect gravity has varies across distance- these surfaces of effect will have no depth – and each body, as it is attracted towards another body (and moves according to this attraction) will perpetually moving across these spheres of effect – with, as it get closer and closer to the centre of gravity of the attracting object – the force acting upon it constantly strengthening. What is more Kant argues it is a mistake to see this attation in terms of the attracting object. Gravity is not a force owned by th attracting object at all – but rather it is something felt within that which is attracted. The influence therefore runs from all successive ‘surrounding spherical surfaces’ toward the centre, and not the other way around (ibid). The point then tht is attracting a body (or which lies at the centre of each sphere of action) remains totally ideal. It is just the point in which all the direction of movement from the all parts of the successive surface converge and has no reality beyond this convergence (it is in itself merely a mathematical point – the centre of gravity). Gravity therefore in the hands of Kant situates all bodies within a single idea event. Where what is actual is not the attracting body, but the fact that all other bodies are caught within a relationship to an ideal point. This repositioning of gravity around its effect in another body- and the ideal event is a very subtle one. Its effect is of course to remove the danger to time of the action of the dual tense relation. By locating the actual action of gravity within the body moved, which is caught in a relation to an ideal event of moving towards, both future affect and current action are caught within the middle of one action- one event – the event of being gathered by gravity. Each body will therefore actualize this event in terms of a recollection – that is a past – the fact that one has always already moved – and yet this movement will – in the every act of being moved – change the effect of the force moving (as one crosses from one surface of effect to another) – and is then constantly locating the moved body within the middle of a certain effect. The future, and the past are thereby gathered within a single synthesis of ideal event within takes up others, and endlessly negiocates their own nature, and so re-creates the sense through which it is.

Kant thereby finds a space and an event which can avoid the potentially disruptive effects of dual tense. Once what is at issue is an event – which locates all other bodies within the middle of its action – and creates the assymetrical relationship of past ad future as the domain for its own action. Kant repeats the same basic move with repulsion. Here of course the initial problem is somewhat different, as what is at stake is not an apparent mystery – namely the mystery of occult attraction, but rather something which appears self evident – the mutual repulsion of bodies – and Kant must show this repulsion it itself far from self evident – and requires one forms an ideal event to synthesize it. Kant move here again is Subtle. One the one hand he argues that understanding is not capable fof furnishing a concept capable to explain repulsion. Repulsion – necessarily involve the compression of points that at infinitely close together – and understanding necessarily divides the world into particular entities. Understanding can therefore always subdivide any one concept of smaller concepts – and yet never reach the end of the process. It is therefore quite inacapble of providing one with the idea which is necessarily to understand what is cocuring here ( 507).In effect therefore Kant is arguing tha the apparent before and after of repulsion realte to concepts and not to the ideal event itself. One can certain form a concpt of a before- the compression, and a concept of the after – the repulsive force, and even infer a libk between the two – and yet this move itself will tell one nothing about the ideal event with is at work here. This ideal event must then realte not to concepts which can only divide up continual space (as a monad does) in a specific domain – but rather be what is creating that continual soace itself – a continiuum which predates the concept and its division ( 505). The space involves must therefore be an ideal space, the the gap etween any two parts of it must be infintessibly small – and tantamount to contact ( 522). That is rather than envisaging a real space- hich belong to a certain fixed concept, one must in reason alone fom an idea of space which is capapble of disitnguihing between two points which are in actual contact (that is between which no assignabl space can be fixed) – points that are quite literally infinitely lose togther. It is this space that Kant thinks must be understood as filled with more or less repulsive force (ibid) – and which could be thought to increase or decrease inside as a body is compressed or as it expands (ibid). Repulsive foce therefore does not inhabit the real space of location, but rather the ideal space which must be thought such that two points while thy are in absolute contact (and no difference can be thought between them), yet remains distinct – as two joined points and not one. As such repulsive force is the natural inhabitant (as is gravity) of the very possibility of space itself (that is the very fact that point points remain distinct however close they come together (505). As such repulsive force must always be though of existing between objects – in the space that is utterly between, and which cannot therefore be owned by either. It is the outside which is also in another- such that for any two parts of determinate space there is always a space, and a force which inhabits that space, and which varies in inverse proportion to it (522).
It is again clear Kant is resolving the potential threat of the double tense relation – by hypothesizing the existence of a single ideal space. It is not that a past is converted into a future directly – but rather there is a single event –that of impacting which occurs in a single ideal space which is already filled with a certain quantum of force, a force which never located in any one concept – but rather always between concepts and always making something else move elsewhere. So that instead of seeing two differing tenses which pull time of in contrasting directions – one can must understand a single event which gathers up both past and future – as it straddles any one individual- and any single concept.

Farewell to Kant
What is really at issue here –what Kant really discovers in the foundation – is tha there nee not be one type of series. In the firt critique I argued above Kant endlessly creates double headed sereid – the I Think, that is as equal the Think I. – so that where you ae in the sereies – and what you are dong within them becomes a matter of perspective. Uch seris as transformational in their nature. That is the point always of this clutch of series is that they take one elsewhere even as one thinks them – to graps the I think is already to be caught withn a provision Think I, which is arelady withn another (and distinct) I Think. Such series are creative – and nit disitiributve. That is the role of such a seris is not to pread on event across different otion – or even see the same event from differing perspective – but rather to capture everything and everyn in an endlessly mutuating ngine of change. Kant in meahysical foundations clearly uncovers quit a different series. In a foot-note towards the end of the book disucss the possibility of a disjunctive judgement (560). Obejctive judgements must either to true of false he suggests – but subjective ones – such as th judgement which moved –body space can both be true- that is are both contained within a singke propostionas equally valid. Likewise he argus that mechanical philosophy (as opposed t dynamic) needs to be understood in terms of distributive disjunctive judgement , so that it is immaterial exactky which body is moving towards which one – all that matters is the effect of their combined motions relative to each othe. Physics therefore ceases to be aboutseries of tanforomation – series which as one thinks them one is taken elsewhere, and becomes bound in series whose role is to distribute the actual world – and comprehend within that distribution the apparent ambivalence within single worlds .
The contrasts us then between series whih frce elsewhere, and series which attempt to map out the always being elsewhere. Seen from this perspective, the first distributive series Kant identifies in Kants must surely run ‘ Here…T(here)…T(here)…T(here)…=Together’. So That Apprehension grasps a unity – the here- in which something has changed – the world is not quite as it was. This change those is equi-potent. That is it is impossible to form a simple idea of the there which grasps at it. Any one thre – any one recollection, is simulataneous a ‘here’ the apprehension to an other there, and likewise is in itself compose of an indeterminately large number of other possible there and heres. So that, in every simple event it becomes impossible to talk of one body taking up another – and whichsink it elsewhere- but rather one must always stand between bodies – always be crating a concept (the final togther) which is capapble of creating a disjunctive elemt (the gap between here and there) in either of the moves. The feedback which founds tim becomes usjectively valid – and self evidient, as every singe dual tense relation can be inverted whn viewed from nother angle.
In the dynamic Kant creates oither quite different sereies. Now he calims that as thse series are not objectively dijunctive (560), it is possible in the world of dynamics to produce movements that apply o one body and not to any other. The series will then not be double headed – but rather different series will need to be thought from the concepts within the event and the event itself (which in exists within the same where the double head would otherwise have been) The repulsive series starts in onepts with a movement elselwhere. – thi movement is then seen as the result of a previous movement – and so be dependent of that movement. He sereies might therefoe run Where? As) As)AS – with each bracket taking up the prevous where as – and producing an hew as of its own – so that the entire sereies is recursive ., and the whee – always opened to the previous as. Underpininng this play of concept – in th realm of the ideal is quite a different series. In idal space the issue s always one of force – and being forced. Each mvement will necessarily produce new forcs operating in ideal space- forces that immediately change what it is to move, and drive it elsewhere. What is more these forces are univocal. That is the force which compress – and the force which compresses are equally inscribed in idea space as differing competing force – force which must always act upon another. O the series would run something like Then…Not…Not…Not… - where an initial some – the then – a move which places two bodies togther – and makes the on impinge the other space, get caught up in a consant ‘not’ its force always being moved elsewhere – each nt being double headed – and being a ‘not’ for either body, each ofwhci forver discovers its mvement is not what it was. Repulsions ideal space is then defined by perhaps a bizarre negativity. It is an unvocal ‘Not’ – a not which exists between two bodies,a nd ensures that neithr reamin as there were . Gravity.
Attraction from the perspective pof concepts starts very clearl with a motion. One is gripped in gravity by mvooing – a kvement which constantly shift as one moves across the surfaces of attraction. It series is therefore relatively simply and runs ‘ Then…which…which…’ – one is cought is a movement which constantly changes- even as one moves it. And yet the ideal series is more interesting. Kant by formulating gravity in terms of the attracted object – rather that the attractor – opens up a second aspect to attraction. It will not be just the case that each body is attracted by a constant gravity- but also it will follow that the act of attracting – of gathering other bodies will itself increase the power of gravity itself to attract others this region of space. All acts of attraction (or the failkure to attract) will then perpetually re-give th idal event that of attracting it – making it constantly hift across time. It series could then run ‘ There …which…which…’ where the thre represents the natal movement of a body as it is attracted towards the ideal cente of gravity – a movement which triggers a change in gravities power to attract, which is trun produces attractions, which in turn strength the force of gravity- and so on. Gravity then constantly involves a re-giving a constituting such tha it will of itself essence reforgre itself across its own effects.
Follwoign kant’s typologly dynamic forces are not disjunctive because they are obejective. Or to put thi another way – every concept in dynamic movement is no doubt objective. Each oves – and moves as itself alon – but this movement I formed elsewhere –in another ralm etire – anb ideal event in which double headness is a product of the ideal – of a certain apoce and time – which inscribes actuals within it- and allows for apparently descrete concepts to be in perpetual contact, and so pertpetual evolution. In the mechanics Kant turns to consider a subjective distributive series. If to bodies are impinging upon one another Kant uggests it is a atter of not concern which is moving and which is still. The series perhaps could be thought of as running ‘ When…whatever…whatever…’ _ There – something certainly happens, but where and whatever that I matters not until after it has happened!

Kant is the a master of series construction. His work rnanages across a mulitiude of different possible series –different way repeting can be mad to matter – and yet at the heart of what he doe is a paradox. His physical world is only thinkable as ideal in this foundation. Now being ideal is actually essential to the argument. As mentioned above Kant can only relative movement and create a union of tense by invoking the point. It is the point which is simultaneously in the apprehension of another – and in yet in the same voice is capable of being the effect of this space. Likewise Kant’s events remain thinkable through point. Events relate to the gap between points. Event can therefore only set up their ieald space between concepts. It is as if Kant needs to think of the box – the concept, the point inorder to subvert it. Kant does not fall out of the box – so much as to attemot to climb out of it – and then as he does climb out of it he finds I is imposible to think the world into which he climbs as anything other than through the prism of continuity. That is Trid himlesof the box, Kant needs to think of a placeless place- in which everything- all space can exiust as already caught up with itself. And yet this leaves onpen the question about what tht soace actively is. It is really just box unpacked – unthought. That is is it just th saoce that needs to be givien so that boxes can be made within it it. The book building materials, that are actually stream of the individuals and yet are being thought of as the coinstituting factor?
And yet it is right not to be too hasty here. Kant is certainly very aware that space needs not to be simply tht which can create bodies. His argument is rather that it is space which is what can be embodied at ll. That is wh yspace actively matters is that it is space, that can be thought to be creating itself across, and giving itself through time. Why soace and time matter is therefore not bto be defined in terms of the place for the raw materials of the bod,so much as the zone which allows embodiement at all. Bodies exist (and are givien across time) because at another level – in a before, in th apripori structure of the human mind, space embodies itself0 that is gave itself across time. The Principles section of th first critique wil therefore give a sustain attemot to understand what it mans for space to arrange itself, n give itself across time. Space is given in termporal succession (in the fact the paersepctions alays take longer), and are always already doing soemthign. That is in the fact tht time has no end. Space is given as the rupture to any simple ‘there’. Sapce is never merly being there- but is the moment that forces one into te next- beyond the next moement. To be in spoace is to demand lfe beyond the present therefore. Space Time is liewise dynamically the palce that an order is estaiblished within space. That some orders ar seen as necessary – so to events are not in the same space, and yet are of the same space- ar caught it the way of being/ thinking space (the is causation) or they ar in the same space, and at the same time 9community). Fibnally space is tha which as otuer sense makes the inner sense possible.
At each pojnt therefoe space gives itelf acors time – as its hidden essence. And yet the realtionshoip between the essential natue of soac and the body it is creating itself within – I an indirect one. Time is not the same as space – it merely witnesses it – it merely forges itself it creating or giving space. Both space and time remain distinct – therefore. Kant certainly makes no crude connection between apce and time, nor goes he naively assume that on equals the other. It is rather the case that space is what is mbodies in time. It is the elusive ‘essnce’ tt time cannever find, and hich can neer be located, and is never therefore present- but rather endlessl eludes as it embodies – endlessly demands a different way to be ni the boy.
The absolute nature of socae and time will then come down to how Kant thins of this embdying process. By which I mean if the poj t is that sopace gets embodies in time as that which cannver be finishes or completed, tht which mus always overrun and recreate across further times, thje it follows that the very act of thinking space –any space drags us across all times, and into th absolute. The absolute will then not be an option extra that can simply be imposed on space in one space – but rather evere point need o be embodied within gong elsewhere – and as it is already caught in an eleseqher. If time (as a whole) embodies space then the ony possible place for thought to go is the universal and the absolute. At each point one is dagged elsewhere. Kant sries will therefore have to be equipotent and distributive. As one series is moves to create another- it is so in a distibution, across doing another – so perhaos the ultimate Kant series could be said to run ‘ =Hey….there=hey…there=…’ This series can then be startyd at any one poiunt, giving as one does o, adiffrnt takes of space and time. The series acan therefore equally run ‘ =hey…there=Hey’ that is it is a seris understood across two equalus – disitriubted in two presences. Space being that which emboeis itself in time, and the impossibl equals before ay Hey, tht which apprhension grasps, and that while is ultimately given in the …there – across time, and = is another sense – a sense tht will then spawn a new Hey of its own. Time will then embody apce, is the body in which two =’s, that is two types of present can eqully be given. An alternative would run, if oe satred with the time itself, with There=hey…There=hey’. Aaain here thequestion is about the way time embodies space – but here it is a question of giving space, giving the world as a seeunce of distinct presents, of one time follwed by another. Alterntively one might run acorss’ hey…there=hey…there’ this series presents a different aspect of spce and time- namely that offl. Tp give the equals – to arrange the world as soac, in equals, one needs to understand apce s successive, and at a place thining can can been, and a s they were have had effect – have left a presentce. To be in soace needs therefore t be undrtood in terms of changes that are always grater that the individuals within it – an tht lways involve them moveing elsewhere, and moving a they are part in soce, as spac dmands this move. Vevery Hey, is therefore already, in the process of becoming there, and being in being there replacd in another hey.
The pont here is that the complex Kant series will produce within it formalr an very number of possible readings of h relationship of sapc and time. And yet all these readings share the same basic idea – namely hat spce is somehow given in time – that the latter embodies the ormr while reaming distinct fro it. Kant is a theoriest of what might be refered to as an absolute embodiement . that is to embody the abolsute- th outer sense world of spae one needs another principle tha is equally large- one needs time. Time operates as the ‘screen’ memery for space. The space where in dojung something else, as I am caught up in givng another- in doing something iffferent from what I was can think space, nd I give it as there and as essentially rea. Hwver that reality is not directl realized. Itr is rater the case that time gives spac indirectly – and as that essence it must allow for (hence the refutation) and yet never directly create. Kant then thinks that the only possil embodiement- is on the lvel of the bsolute. There mist be an aboilue giving another absolute r noting. And yet this answer seems not necessarily to follow – and rathe to realte to th dictates of Kant’s problemof how knowledge is opossible rather han to any requirement of wht it in itself. I mean here than Kant need absolutes here- needs one way of embodiying as if say there wer mny – that is many ways in which one element could give itself in another (which could likewise create itself in yet another) then the pretentions of abilue knowledge would collapse – and the orld who shift into a relative gear – where it stopped being easily to negicoate the difference between radically different tenses – that is moods of essence and embodiement. It is then to just suc viion I will no turn.

Hediegger and the collapse of Space.

The aim of this section will to try and reforge ones understanding of what Heidgger is attempting to do with time and with tense.My basic argument s that Heidgger goes very far along the road of replacing time with tense, and with an elabourate theory of essence and embodiement. I mean here that Heidgger provides us with a world where one tense is in itself, and yet always given through relation with another. The possible will therefore give itself in the having been, the having been in the present, the presen will then give itslf (in th Augenblick) across the future. From this move there streams Hediegger essentinal probem. If one does envisage the word in terms of tenses, and a different tenses creating themselvs across one another how is it possible to ever create authentic, that is constant thought? Why should thought be constant at all? Why is it not always running across togther tehsnes, and always changing into other thoughts – into other popssiblities. Heidegger’s originality lies in his attempt to answer this problem. It is possible he argues to define an affect, namely care, that is the same in all tenses, and so can of itself straddle being in tense. What is more it is possible to define two affects ( resoluteness in the face of death, and guilt) which are defined in the same way and in the same tense in relatlon to all other tense. It will therefore be possible Heidegger argues to actually take the inauthentic world and forge from it resolute individuals- that is individuals which are capable of existing aross the transmorphizing effects of tense. However this move in itself clearly cannot be enough to Heidegger. It is not through to show how such an individual is possible unless he can also show how his authentic individual is more orgianl and som,ehow predates the inauthentic from which it is made. That is he needs not only authentic individuals, but he also needs these authentic individuals to actively reflect the grounding of thought itself – and it is this that will cause difficulties. Firstly in will the possible number of option of time and its embodiment. I mean here tht Hedigger will only arrange tenses in a neat successive order – and can have no scope for thinking other possible order in tense – other ways though which what is loosely temporal could be thought to be. What is more – this restriction will present real problems when Hedigger is attempting to think of how Dasien gives itself as part of world history. That is how it exists and knows it is at a certian time, and in a certian place – where Heidgger instince on a strict successin of tenses creates an inability to distinguish between two different aspects of the past- the past of history and the personal past of live- a distinction that has drastic consequences both for his thought, but also for his politics. The argument will then proceed to analyse each of these points in turn. I will start be showing how Heidegger breaks out of space and time and into tesne, and then move on the examine exactly how Heidgger thinks embodiement happens- and the potenail danger of existing in a world of embodying and embodied tesne, before turning directly to the themes of authenticity, and history.

Space into Tense.

Heidegger basic accuation against Kant., and all previous philosophers is that in starting with a continuum to describe either space or time, they simply missed what is perhaps most interesting about both space and time – namely the very fact it both highly divided, and deeply textures. Space the abstract entity does not exist as such. I do not percive distance – but nearest and furtherest. Space is therefore initially an matter of what is present to me here – and what is far away. My conceptipon of space with then be directly dependant on the technology. If the world which I inhabit. Technology will make things nearer, and reduce space – with Dasien over all having Heidgger suggest a rage for nearness ( Hedigger 1992 p.229-230) And yet this nearesness which dissolves space into an embodiment of a certain tense is only one aspect of what is commonly called space. It is likewise important that space is an area of movement and remoteness. Things are therefore not simply in space as a passive medium, rather they are coming out of it –coming at me from space – and I am moving towards and around them. Around any individual and moving with them, there must be Hediegger says a sphere of remoteness (ibid p.232)- a sphere in which and through which are defined possible futures – and the multitude senses through which I can have a future – across which the future is arranged and though. I am therefore endlessly moving into different futures, each ne witht heir attendant impatients and scurrying thoughts ( 231) and make computations based of being of the future, and through the future. It is indeed the future that will then define what I think of as near – space that is closest to hand – the street I walk in, then room I sit will feel less near than the place I am going, or the room I am moving towards (ibid). Space is not therefore the realm of homogeniety, of a single theme – but the place many themes erupt across each other. Finally it is a key feature of space that there are parts of it, and in it that can never be changed in any manner – as I can never Hdigger says catch up with my shadow (ibid p.232). There is hedigger says always a world in which I am already in, already orintenting myself through and across the world as I have a being in the world (ibid 231). That is space is also already a matter of the past – of what must be thought in being already there. Space will therefore cease to be an objective field across which thought can be given and created- and become rather the play ground of tenses. In space, in differing space, and at different, but highly interlinked levels, tenses orchestraes worlds. A world which is not simply there, and not simply a tank in which one floats, but is rather a world where necessarily in which a consitituent part of ita being, is that things are already moving elsewhere and to or through another- a world of competing and conflficting and overlapping texture and difference.
But then what is this tense – and how do tenses relate to producing possibility and option. It is here that perhaps Heidegger is at his most original;. A single tnese is never simple – but rather must be understood as involving a highly complex relation with two other tenses. The ordering here is frequently confused, and complex – and yet two things are very clear throughout. Firstly each tense temporalizes itself in two senses. Firstly it exists as a way of embody another tense – That is a way in which other tenses can be given . Hiedgeer will therefore say of the having been that ‘ Moods (which relate to the having been) ‘temporalizes themselves – that is their specific ecstatsis belong to the future or the present in such a way, indeed that these equiprimoridial ecstatses are modified by having been’ . Secondly it is clear that Heidegger has an estalsihed order to this process. One always runs from the future to the past and the to the present. All temporalization run across this ordering precess- for example ‘fear’ (or any affect) is a forgetting which waits and makes present. That is it is one temporalitiy (in this case having been) which give itself, and yet in giving itself relates to another temporalitiy – as that which is awaiting, and so related to giving the future, while making a third, that is the present. So Taking has his example Fear. On one level fear in clearly about the future. And yet if it was the future pue and simple – the future would be nothing to be fearful about. It would remain the future. What makes something fearful is then not the future – so much as the way that the future is being given not – the way it is already there – a there which will define wjhat one is ‘fearful about’ (Ibid 341). That is as Hediegger puts it the ‘character of fear lies in the fact that in it the waiting lets what is threatening come back to ones concernful potentiality for being’ (ibid.). It is not therefore a certain singular future that may or may not tumble into being – therefore that characterizes fear but an awaiting in the having been, across a having been, that remains open to what could happen – and so gripped in fear. Any one future therefore cannot directly express itself as being of the future – it is rather expressed in the past, which embodies that future possiblitiy in its current state – and opens one up to the possibilities of its existing – to what that possiblitiy might mean. To be scared is to be always already caught by the future and what can be of the future therefore. The having been (that is the factical potentiality for being) will have Hediegger says a character of its own. As Dasien is caught up in fear about something, it forgets its present, and its current situation. Its having been lose the ability to give it as that which there there and capable. Fear is therefore in itself (and as it embodies the future) a kind of forgetting and depression ((ibid p. 342). The forgetting then in its turn makes a present which exists in being bewildered. The present giving the sense of this forgetting in endlessly running across possibilities, and focusing randomly on what it to hand. The victim of fear then snatchs at what they can get a flees ( ibid). The intial future which one embodies has then shifted into quite a different feeling – as one moved from past to present, from what was which awaited, to thatwhich expressed the sense of that waiting. It then follows that when the bewildered present in turns embodies itself in the future (and so completes to loop of Dasien) it will so in a characteristic way of its own, and on Hedegger notes has a ‘character of depression or bewildered awaiting which is distinct from any pure expectation’ (ibid). Inauthentic Dasien therefore produces a loop of being in which when one returns to the temporality one set off from, what returns is utterly different –as it bears testomy of all the shifts of temporalitiy, and all the hallmarks of embodiment across which an affect ranges. The Inauthentic temporalities is one that is then forever on the slide, where no affect remains true, and where what one it endlessly shifits, as a waiting, moves into forgetting, which moves again into being bewildered, which finally creating for itself quite a different set of possibilities than the intial awaiting gave.
There is therefore both a distinct order to creation, and of giving. The past gives the future – creates the sense that the future can be thought, and gives itself in turn the present. The present then is what embodies, and is embodies the past, and yet with will do so in a way that it is in trun embodies in the future. That is it will give itself across being engaged with the future. Heidegger suggesting there then being two very different ways each of this giving can exist. One can exist authentically, in which case at each and every point the way one tense gives itself, rpeats itself across another, is such that it is the same affect which is repeating (that affect being care). Alternatively one can repeat and mutated. This is very clearly seen the the example of the way the future is created in the present. On the one hand this creation can be in terms of how the future will then take up itself, and give/regiven itself in the past), and exists as the ugenblick – the momement of vision. Such a moment defies any presentation or location at any one present (ibid p.338) but rather looks to the fact that the present always makes the future, the possibility that this future will be authentic and given as such – (and as the future which is in the process of having been (Ibid p. 326)). The present then opens out the actually possibility of percieving the future, and embodying what it must mean to already be within ones own future. Inauthentic presents are likewise defined in the future- that is they likewise give themselves across the future – as curiousity. In curiousity the present endlessly creates and recreates itself, giving itself not as anything fixed, but only as a way which is already running elsewhere and to another . The future the present creates left to itself is endlessly busy in changing – curiousity only giving a things present as at the same time it fabricates something new (ibid 348). Curiousity therefore is that which creates the future- which demands the future, but in such a way that it itself embodies a feeling from any act of awaiting in the having been. The Having been here not been authentic but rather being seen in tems of have the present directly embodies the having been itself (with out the future), as that which has already there (ibid p347). It is this demand that was is given is already there- a demand which curiousity then carries onto the future which it creates, that founds the impossible strving for for Heidegger characterizes curiousity.
Heidegger will summaise this accont in a very interesting manner. He suggests that while understanding is aways futural,, mood relates to the past and falling the present – it remains the case that each of these individual tempoalities implies a change within the othe two. So The future he assoiciates with the Present ‘which is in the process of having been’, while the past with the is linked to future which is making itself present, and the present to the future that is caught in the having been ( 350) . Any one temporalties therefore is the sight of transformation for the two other tenses . To Understand is for example to effect a transition from the present into the past, and understanding in ‘each and every case’ gives the nature of this transition. And yet this transformation clearly has direction. The past is the movement of future to present – and not visaversa. What is more this movement clearly involves at least in the case of inauthentic temporality a slide as one moves across tense. Heidegger makes this most clear in the case of present. The present exists at the way through which the past tumbles into the future – and yet the present will either leap away from the future – that is open out a difference between the having been and the future to emerges in the present – or be held within it. A single tense then gives the conditions for the way other oter tenses interact in it and across it – and creates the sense for that interaction. In this passage Heidegger goes no further than this- and rests content with merely showing how and whay a single tense must inolve the other two. In this chapter I have been (and will continue) to trace the complexity of what is involved in this process – and attempt t show how much more complicated it is – than this simple summary might suggest.

To think temporalities is therefore to think in terms of tenses which embody something of other tenses – and are embodied in turn in other tenses. The entire forming a whole in that there are only three possibilities and one order for such tenses. And yet this very fact clearly represents Heidegger with what he feels to be the problem of th everyday. There is afterall reasons why each tense in embodying another tenses and being embodyied in turn shoud produce exactly the same feeling across different tenses. On the contrary – as is clearly the case in curiousity – as one is curious one looses sight of anything and every that one saw – everything that makes one curious – or as one fears one looses sight of what was fearsome in itself,and flees across the present, and into another quite distinct future. Inauthentic temporalities are therefore marked by an unstableness in thought. Each tense creates in another, reaction that screen out or at least promote in an elsewhere reaction to this tense – so that as one goes around the perpetual loop of tenses – across the differing temporalities what one experinces radically changes. This is then the world of idle talk. In Ideal talk each time a story I relates and thought about, it runs across the gamut of tesnes, and changes slowly and surely across them. The same story becoming endlessly transformed and moved elsewhere so that one ‘will never be able to decide what has been drawn from primordial sources with struggle and how much is gossip’ (ibid 169). While Dasoien remains ‘floating unattached’ (ibid 170)- to the world, and yet within it. All truth will become ambiguous as it becomes actually impossible to every trace a thought back the the tense in which it originated. Rather evey things has range across reanges of different temporalities – and is already caught up with everyone else, and everything else. Each though can then be misunderstood or undersootd in the same breadrth – as all that thought is composed of is already an amualgum of different movements different tenses produces across each reatelkling. It therefore becomes impossible Heidegger says to descide what is truthful or not ( Ibid .173). In Idle talk therefore it will become impossible for Dasien to pull itself together as Dasin. As its affects mutates across each telling, it becomes in time a stranger to its own affects, and the sense it is able to have feeling at all. All its feels they become increasingly grpundless, and likely to move of into other tenses, other possibilities, with little or not ability to hold them down.
The Inauthentic therefore needs to be comprehend as the way the natural set up of tense actually makes one a stanger to oneself – as each time an affect gets repeated, it get pulled into another tene- which is distinct – and which will in turn create another distinctive tense. The same idea mutating thereofore perpetually across each thought one has of it. If one gave such an being a sequence it might run “ This…No…That…Is…This…No…That’ : I have started with version of the series with curiousity: Curiousoty in this series is seen to start from a present – The this, which immediately gives itself in th future- in which its demand to be this – a demand which ois routed in the having been) if not possible- and which it can expeirnece only as a That, a That which eixts for it in the having been which is (as having been), and so exists already for it as yet another this – which again attempt to move elwhere. The mind is restlessly driven across presents, and beyond any possibility to let things be for itself. Alternatively one can procede in the having been – in the That…is…This…No…That’ Such a having been is nevr able to give itself in the present – but must rather constantly invent itself across idlke talk and shifting moods. Fibnally one can start with the future – which the the case of the inauthentic tempoalioty must surely be the No of th past- the No that stops anything tumbling acriss possibility as a currently understand it. “NO…that…is….this…No’ : that is the future becomes as a no utterly thinkiable and ungivable. One moves out of any one orbit of it – and all it is left with is a dnial of whatever possibility the present trues to create in it. Every is merely a floating No. A floating already changed.
This idea will effctively present Heidegger with two further problems. Firstly he needs to account for the reason Philosophy never quite grasped the dual nature of contantly mutuating tensns. His question must be what is their in the tradition account of time that allows one to be masked from the effect of tense? Why is vulgar time all about a sequence of nows, and a matter of flow? What is flowing? And secondly and far more profoundly – what on earth could – in the absense of God ground the move across tenses. Why should the future embody itself in the past, and the past detach a future form possibility? Why should curiousity create hobo affects which range across differing tenses? What is happening in this process? The former problem occupies the final section of Being and time, while the latter takes one through most of the rest of the second division. I Will tackle each of these problems in term, running through first he reasno why vulgar time articulates in the now inauthentic and shifing temporalities, before turning to the far more serious and tricky problem and where and how double tense originates as such.

The Hobboism of the vulgar.

The Task facing Heidegger in the section on Vulgar time is a double one. His argument needs to both explain why vulgar time is so effective at articulating an errorenous unity within inauthentic time. And secondly he needs to articulate this unity within philosophical definitions of time, and claim that it represents the dominant philosophical viewpoint on the temporal – and therefore all philosophical theories about time are inauthentic (and so suspect). In this section I will conisider the first move in detail (which I would argue is Heidegger dominant concenr and leave the second task that of assessing Heidegger’s treatment of other philosophical works, for over books.
The aim of Vulgar time is then to unconver a principle that is capable of articualting the hobo-temporalisation of inauthentic time. Its problem is to think a single thing which can always be given across there apparently radically invarrying temporalitize, and can be thought to articulate there relationshon with one another. Heidgger’s basic answer is that one must seek for this element in the now – that is the making present. It is the special provenance of the making present which can (In the now) come to create relationship that naturalize the jarring of temporalities, and gives this jarring interms of a single simple unity. The basic move here will be to argue that there is something about the present that pulls the future away from the past- such that the past the present expresses, immediately jars with the future that that present then creates, and does so in such a way that when in its turn the future creates a past- it does so I a way that is utterly dominated by this fixed present, and in such a way (as a form of counting) that occludes any further possibility of change. An identical present will then straddle the different temporalies. – as that which initially creates an assyemtry between past and future – and that which is then counted in this assymery. I will now consider these moves in detail.

Key to Heidegger account of vulgar time is the nature of the present which can inhabit such a time. The present of a now he suggests must be understood as a self- interpreting making present – a present that then defines not only itself but what time is (408). It can do this because such a present exists as it is giving itself a body within understanding. Understanding (which is the source of all intreptation (154) will therefore understand itself – and give itself as awaiting as it is making present. That is understanding will await – will move into the future as it creates –or embodies the present of making present (409) This embodiment will then take the form of an ‘until then’- a making present will then be articulated as a certain move into the future – a certain arrival one will be in a time – until a certain time. The time, the time that this until then will then in turn be defined in terms of a span, which is full of its own ‘until thens’- and therefore potentially have a dateble structure of its own (ibid). In this procress The intial sense of the past- the past which escatically created th present is actually forgotten. The past is not embodied in the present as a past at all – but rather as that which is forgotten – that which in awaiting the future it mst already have forgotten (407). That is, the present give the past only in term of what must be no longer- what has already passed for it to be at all. The past becomes that which by being forgotten is expressd in the being of a certain now. Of course the past itself even if hidden will remain of itself critical to the entire procedure – it is only because Dasien has a historical temporality that the move to define time from within time can be made at all (409) And yet at each and every manifestation of the making present the being of this past is forgotten – and in the name of the present which awaits (and which is only retentive awaiting) increasing abstract takes of the past – that is of what it is to be thrown are produced – until one eventually reaches a notion of the having been – the counted – whose means of retaining in counting is to have always forgotten – always past on – to the next. That is, in Vulgar time one simple relationship of present giving itself in future tears across all other temporalities, and all other pasts, until eventually it creates a past and with it a notion of time that contain it.
This process is complex, and Heidegger is careful then to trace the intermediate steps on the road to counting – and the past that can be actively retained as forgetting. The argument through out follows the simple sequence of tenses I have already outlined. It runs therefore from the future to a past in which it gives itself, and a present with then gives the past in itself giving the future. But now of course in the idea of making present Heidegger has opened up a gap between the past and the present. `What the preset gives as the past does not directly embody the past as such, but merely expresses somethihn of the nature of the past (that it has already past), and something that it immediately forgets. His starting point is the fact that the future the making present embodies is a public future. In awaiting what is present, Dasien cannot await itself, or give itself in awaiting but must rather be awaiting something in the world – something that is public and acessoible to all (410); From this it follows that the kind of past the this future will in turn produce to embody it will be public and universally accessible(411) . Such a past Heidegger suggests must take the form of a reckoning up of time (412) – and in which one measures ones existence in constantly changing natural phenomena (ibid). The until-then- will thereby embody itself across a having been – and as that having been is seens as a witnessing of the its time passing. And give it in public – and as accessible to everyone (413). And yet the making present is cannot be content with such a past pure and simple. But rather it will understand the passage not in terms of the changing natural sequence of event (which will always be forgotten 418) – but rather in terms of being measured. That is, when the making present embodies itself in this past – it will forget that this past involves the passage of natural events – and see only the measuring that the past in engaged within. It will take up that past- or mor specifically the regulative measurements that this past gives it into itself – and forgetting the rest (413). It thereby creates a new level to its abstraction – time is no longer merely the making present which awaits but is now the measuring of the past – a measurement in which the past is only retained insofar as it is measured and counted ( 417). This in turn produces a new future – or a new aspect of the future. The future of measurement- is the future of running out of time- of time perpetually running awaing from what one is – and always being in the next (418). This future in turn will create its own form of retention – namely counting (421).
The production of the past as counted will then present the end of the process. In reducing the past to what is counted –the making present uncovers a past which is able to exist – and even register the sense in which the making present necessarily forgets it. The making present will then, as the now always be in the next time, while the past, as it is giving in the counted by the future registers this movement way from it- this ‘forgetting of it’ in terms of an increased space of time. This then is the sense Heidegger makes of Aristotle’s famous definition of the Now as where the movement from past o future is counted (ibid). And yet once this point is reach and made present – the future itself will be effectively transformed (and loose out). The future will cease to be that which is doing the counting – but rather will exists for the rampant making present as merely that which has yet to be counted – and that whose passage will merely involve counting as is therefore essentially no different from the past (421). The present will thereby and very effectively manage to wield into itself the contrasting temporalities of past and future., and do it ony as I is the making present of the counted unit – a unit which is already counted, and already recorded even as it is given.
Heidegger will therefore present us with a genealogy for time – for the concept of time. The time he reckons philosophers deals with his so-called vulgar time is the most debased form of time – a making present which has hollowed out the past, and which has finally fled itself into the future – until eventually it reaches a place where it can give then two in the same sense that it itself is. Such a time is therefore utter leveled of and contains only two differing elements, the now, and the succession is therefore curiously undateble (422); It is likewise infinite – as each now is always given as being caught up in the next- that is as it leads to the next, and continual and eternal ( 424). Now these features are critical as together they will allow inauthentic time a handle on the potentially intractable problem of inauthentic temporalities. I argued above that the problem of such a temporality is that the mind is pulled across its own temporality – as each temporlaities produces others that are different to it – and for it. Vulgar time has responded to this challenge then by synthesizing a temporality that represents as it were a final and stable state of this tumble across temporality. Vulgar time – the level of temporality into moment and succession represents not a final form of ‘temporalitiy’ so much as that which will as it runs across the gamut of temporalities can remain itself. It will therefore exist as the yardstick within through, and through which all movements can be measured – as every potential movement across time is bought into reference with its own critieria – and then held there. That is every future –or past or for that matter present is fixable within the public time vulgar time constitutes for itself. It stable features – its being levels off, continual, and infinite represent then this ability is practice. Vulgar time will level of an temporalities that it turn to, and brings them into relation with itself as present (a move which Heidegger thinks is the defining point of inauthentic times – 410) – once it has achieves this move – any further temporality they may or may have can be ignored – as they are bound up into it and as a part of it.
Vulgar time will therefore serve to legitimize inauthentic temporalities- and create for them a bastardized time. Heidegger will of course argue that this succoring of the inauthentic goes all across the board – and will include death. By presenting the world in terms of a continual and every shifting time – death is effectively rendered obsolete– as Dasien sees and knows that they world is full of a time that is constantly replenishing itself (425). This ability to hide from death of course further encourage by the very synthesis that Vulgar time is managing here. Death is essentially important to Dasien as the point in which possiblitiy ends – and therefore the point where the future is forced to give itself in the having been. That is for Heidegger death is tied to the way the past emerges from, and as different to the future. In vulgar any such difference is effaced – and on the contrary a temporality is created which occupies a space where all such difference is occluded – and so the threat/need for death is avoided.
However Heidegger is clear that this occlusion is never total, as Vulgar time can never escape the temporalities across which it was forged. One speaks Heidegger says of time passing away – and knows that time moves in one direction – and one only – because underpinning and vulgar explaination are the temporalities that have created it (426) – and in particular (427) whose future it is occluding. But in terms of the argument of this work – this underpinning of vulgar time by temporality – is effectively a feed-back argument. The eventual ‘future’ produced in vulgar time can only exist in time at all, and be called a future – if it is already in illicit connection with a future which must precede its own nature- likewise the counted past can only be called the past because elsewhere – and silently giving it are other pasts – be they the passage of the sun across the sky, or more profoundly the having been to events within a life through which this counted past can be given. Vulgar time then pitches existence within a space of feedback – it is ultimately a name for a type of feedback relation – where what should be thought first becomes unthinkable-while what is derived and second defines itself through what it has illicit taken from this first.
It is therefore axiomatic for Heidegger that philosophy as it is normally understood cannot avoid the inauthentic – or the contrary it is prepared to simply connive with it – and by ranging across itself produce a temporality that can apparently and thereby effectively justify the most inauthentic of temporalities. In place of the relatively complex series of That…is…this…no…that…is…’ comes the far more simple series of ‘then…now…then’. Which needs to be read as Now…then…now that is the sequence of nows which endlessly follow into ont another ( this gives is simplified version of the ‘Is..This…No…That’). While the series ‘Then…now’, and ‘now…then’ – series that define the past (the then now, and the future the now-then) are simple run together as the identical ‘then…now…then ‘. Vulgar temporality therefore can offer no grounding but only a justification of nothing nd everything. It is a time which naturalised roving temporalities, and makes what should be w most strange- namely the world of constantly evolving and shifting tense appear normal and simple. It is a time then which is constinutied merly of illicit feedback – and upon illusion. Hwever a question still remains about the alternative. This question needs to be understood both in th sense of ‘why should a replace normal time with a theory of temporalities – but also with th far deeper question of how Dasien grouds temporality in itself? That is why must one start withj a future that gives a past, which creates a present, which finally gives a future? What is it in Dasien (rather that th world world, or God for that matter) that will demand this series of moves? It is Heidgger’s answer t this problem I will now turn.

The Turned Finite

It is worth here briefll pausing to think about the nature of the problem Heidegger is facing here. He has been characterized above as a philosopher of embodiement and essence (in another). Such a theory is of course the immediate legacy of phenomology. Once one says that hat matters is perception – one implies both a relationship with the worlkd – the other perceived, and with ones owns thoughts, as that which hoilds such perceptions.This twin relationship is then of course problematic. It is perhaps Berekly who stated this relationship in itself most problematic form and simply unreconcilled form. For Berekly philosophy in the end individed into two quite distinct ‘otherenss.’ Firstly there was the otherness of perceiving. Berekley of course famously claimed that perception is essence. Therefore there must always exist a chasme in perceiving the world. One does not ever perceive the world as such – but merely have ideas that must remain profoundly other to that which they give. Effectivly then the mind is caught within a paradox. As it thinks on the world – it must think of it in terms of ideas that must remain totally different to the world itself. Idea that can only embody that world as an idea – and according the the rhythm of being an idea of the human mind. But at th same time the mind – and thought of itself and through itself cannot form a set of ideas that are somehow distinct from these perceptions. The mind is given in being this perceiving thing. To be a mind is therefore to be embodying another as its other – but in such a way that the otherness of giving – of thinking itself cannot of itself (and for itself) be thought. This leads to the second point. If essence is perception Berekly suggests one must be defintion deduce another agent – a spirit which is capable of giving and thinking perceptions. Such a perception cannot of itself be an idea (a perception) but must rather be an action – a way of willing and thinking – though which embodying happens.
And yet of course the realtionship between the twin others - spirt and perception remains a highly problematic. The spirit is in the end only deduced as that which must be inorder for perception to be what they are (merely embodying relations). That is on a very deep level – it is not that the soul is the essence of the embodying – as that which can somehow own being a body, so much as that the soul itself is that which must be hought to be embodying the perceptions – that is that body which is capable of giving the ‘essence’ of embodying itself. An essence that is clearly causally dependent on the initial embodying relationships themselves. This was afterall all what Spinoza effectvuely concluded in ethics 2/15. Here he argues that the idea of the mind in already compound and highly complex because it must include within itself the multitude of other ideas that comprise a body. It gathers all these other ideas to itself – and gives an essence though them . So that the mind is effectively the essence of a ‘body;’ that is in its actually giving as itself quite distinct from the mind itself. The idea of the body being complex – and compound – its essence being simple and unified. Spiniza is then more than happy to accept the full consequence of this move –in particular that the idea which the mind is remains dependant upon the body, and lasts as the body last (5/23?); and that can actually give the idea of the body itself – but rather relates to something else – something that can only be thought as that mind is affected by others (or itself – 2/19). The mind as itself can have no privelledge access of its body – of which it is the effect o and grasps at it in exactly the same way it grasps at the world ( 2/ 26?). Berekly in contrast cannot of course accept such a consequience. It is the role of God in his system to effectively turn perception around. It is not that the spirit must be thought of as the ‘essence’ of embodying – but rather that embodying must direclt own the perceptions it is infact produced by. Only Goid is then capable of installing such a feedback relationship – and Berekly therefore concludes that God is a necessary hypothesis for philosophy.
Heidegger of course will make neither Berekly’ move nor yet Spinoiza’s. He would no doubt reject both solutions as failing to get at the active heart of being itself – and remaining stuck on the in-authentic so that all they can do is appeal to an authentic elsewhere (Berekly), or attempt to found morality in that unauthentic life (Spiniza). And yet Berkley effectively outlines a problematic paradox for theories of embodiment, its reality is the embodying the essence of another how can one think that other? How does not think that emobodiment? How does one think of the agent – the being that could be arrange across differening embodiments? How does it escape either the trap of merely being the cause of something else – or relying upon God as its only gurantor? These question are then very much the one is the forefront of the opening chapters of the second division of Being and Time – where Hediegger attempts to grapple with how being can create (as essence) itself as what is embodiement in another- and yet at the same time be those self same embodyings.

Starting then wit perception. From Berekly it is very clear to perceive is always firstly to be caught in giving another – something which is distinct and different from the perection. A difference that is of course essential to perceiving itself. As I percieve I must be caught up in giving another difference – and creating another across my mind. Morevoer this another will be singular it itself. As I peceive I perceive something – and yet it is constantly elusive – each perceptuion of it is never complete, but leads to more and yet more. Each other then might be been – embodied by one in many – and yet that giving requires me already to be many – arranged across many thoughts. This leads to a second point namely that each perception is only given, only embodies in that it is given across something utterly different from it – and something that effectively delimits it in the very giving of it. In perceiving therefore it is not just that I am drawn towards an other- but also that I am able to give it only its other – as I am already distinct and different to it – and of it – a difference which will be capable of itself being articulated (in its own elsewhere). To have a theory of Being at all then one needs to create a sense in which Dasien can essentially own not just one otherness but two. It must be other to itself as essence of any one giving – any ony embodiment – an essence that is somehow removed from what is given – and never finished within that given – and yet removed in and through its very being finite – and as it is finite. And yet and at the same time that which gives it must de distinct and of itself – and otherness that must similarly be comprended in being (and as an essnce in another of itself own right). Dasien must then be constantly arrange across particular relationations that pull in two differing directions - even as they give something as finite (or perhaps better – actually as they give it is being finite). Hediegger’s challenge is then to proof that for authentic dasien all these disperate moves hook up to form a circle or cycle – across which Dasien can give itself. That is, Hedeigger’s answer to the Berekly challenge is that Dasein is its own other – and that all the otherings link up, and form a circle of being through which the what Berkley erreonously though of as a spirit can be thought.

The Rotten Whilenss. Being Towards Death.

It is then in this context that being towards death matters some very much to Daisen. Death is the paradigm case of a finite relation – which must be contrude in (and of itelf) across two differing otherness. Death is a paradigm case of a future – which must be as something which remians merely possible. There are various complex moves behond he jump to this paradigm case. Behind them all, perhaps, is a key inversion of the classical conception that which possibility embodies for such thinkers as Burpson. Bergson followed the tradition is asserting that possibilities are external to finite things. Possiblities therefore run between all possibles (and are therefore not ‘fully’ real’) Heidegger move inverts this. Once one accepts that it is the finite and not the infinite (however that is constituted) which matters – possibility ceases to be something external to any present at hand, but becomes the internal property of Dasein itself (Heidegger therefore claims that the possible becomes through death non-relational 263 and that it forces Dasien to come up against the reality of it own being - 266). To have possibility - that is the future as a reality for Dasein then one simply must begin with being finite – that is being within death. It is only this death that will allow Dasien to be authentically (that is really) possible at all. And yet such a move this geing ‘one’ in the face of death will itself never be given in the possible in itself (as it exists it possibility as such), But is rather then essence given for that possibility within the having been. It is only in the having been that all Dasin’s possibility can exist as possiblity as such – that is they are pure and simply being creative (and not merely as they are embodying this or that option) : it there, and as an essence that it is constanly enriching the having been then that embodies on itself the enriching which the possibility that gives for it – so that to be creatiuve is in itself to be it open. Dasein will then endlessly create – and give itself as that which is endlessly creative- and yet as it creates – as it gives a sense of being here and being one – it eludes just that which is just embodying – and moves elsewhere- pitches its unity through another move – another having been. Dasien’s essential possibility cannever be given of itsel (if it were Bergson and the authodoxy of possibility would be right)- its nature is to be ever elusive (as Death is) ever impossible in any one giving and ever then moving on.. Possibility is no longer the choosing between various mutally exclusive options– but is rather revealed as the endlessly re-giving, and re-negociation of options themselves ( 262). That there is no template as such for Dasien. As it is possible –it is free to create its own possibilities (266). The possible is the essence of the having been – that is is that which it must embody – as something elusive- soemthign that cannot be fully given. More than this (and again it is it given in a relationship to dying)- it is the very existence of this possibility that demands the having been moves one. That is the having been is constantly ‘made in finite possibility, as one thing it was is shifted, and changed – forced to become another thing I also am. As Dasien is possible in the face of death the having been must be multiple- and constantly changing. In the face of death- I can only embody an unity which is beyond any representation as I am shifting across the giving – as I am dragged by the essential nature of possibility from one giving to another.
However, it is equally obvious that death imposses a limit upon the possible itself. As in death – and at its most essential level – possibility cannot be given as such. It is impossible to think or give the possibility of death – which must remain simply the impossible possibility. What is more the having been will be able to give the sense that I have a life (that is as I exist in the face of death) in and through the very way that it limits possibility itself. The having been is of course as much the death of the possible, as any possible is the death of the having been. Once a particular possibility has tumbles into the having been – it looses its character of what is possible (and so dies for itself) but then get caught up in another reality- that of the having been – in which it now remains – as a part of life. It is the having been then – which thruogh its very limiting of possibility – presents the wholenss of a live- and the sense that this wholeness demands that one moves across endlessly ceasing – and shifting possibilities.
Death is the paradigm case – of a possibility that canot be given as a possibility in itself - but rather (and as the very essence of the possibility itself) demands a giving at another level – where it both remains creative and yet elusive. Upon this level, this finitude will be essential present- and yet never fully given – and so always demands new representations – new ways to be thought and supposed. But also this other level must, even as it has the ability to give this essence, remain distinct from it to to it. The Having been can give the essence of the future – only in the sense that in – and as it actively gives that possibility it remains not only distinct from that essene- but that it must remain essentially so – in its very giving that that essential nature. Death – in its essence demands – as it it represented at ll – as it can be given at all – a giving in another –whose very anothering of death – whose very difference is essential to ones ability to embody death at all. The essence of the finte of being finite then creates an apparent pardox. As it is given – it demands the having been to have a unity which it cannever finish – never simply create – but rather which must constantly drag it across new representations – new possibilities – and do so as that having been is embodying something essential (which is not of it). And yet as that which is embodied is finite – in its very being finite – it will necessarily be given in another- but another – and according to anothers limitiations. However it is is the latter point of course that death is unique. No other essence as it is embodies in another temporalirity can have any demands upon the limitationn that that temporalities imposes upon it as it is given. In the contrary it is normal that such limitations belong to the ‘nature’ of the embodied – a nature which will in turn be expressed elsewhere and in a temporality of itself own. Death is therefore the founding poin for authentic Dasien – as it essential demands in its very giving as a possibility – as something tjhat can remain purely possible – and never actual – its own limitation – its own not ever being given as it is. Death is therefore unique in that it can straddle in its very otherness the otherness of essence and the anotherness of representation – such that one is another it giving death beause of the nature of its very otherness. Hediegger therefore puitches death as the bridge for the Berkley divide: Only being towards a death can give the sense in which I must be other than myself, in being my own another to myself. It is death alone then that others the opportunity in through which one can being to see how and ewhy the differing essence and embodiement of dasien are united with one another.
Or to put this another way it is death, operating as the impossible possibility that transforms the nature of possibility –and does so as it gives its essence to another. As one dies then possibility must cease being simply possilbity itself. Not to choose –or to choose all options – to choose possibility rather than choice beomes itself a possibility (or even a non-possiblity).To be finite then it to have to choose. The essence of the possible and essence which is other than the simple embodiment of possibilities is that the act of choosing it itself a finte possibility- and must be understood as such. It is, of course, in the as such that the essence of the possibility shifts from being given in possibility itself –and becomes given only in another –in the having been. Left to itself, the possible only endlessly chooses and rechoses possibilities:. It is then only the having been that that give that essence of that possible as the need to make a choice – as the fac that not making the a choie it to have chosen. Only in the having been then is one essentially (and absolutely finitely) possible – must one always be in a state of being possible – (and not merely lost in a maze of bewildering possibilities as such) – and only in it as that possibility is totally different from what it is that is giving or creating it. Being towards death is not therefore to be a possibility like any others – amongst any other- but rather it is the very essence of possibility as it is given in another representation anothers sense to be a body.

The Skeleton of Being- and the Rivet of the present..

At this point Two quite distinct reading of Hediegger become apparent. On the on hand there is what might be referred to as the ‘skeleton’ reading for being. This skeleton reading will attempt to trease the three temporal escaties as three moements in a process of essence and embodiement. Three necessary elements to embodying. There is no doubt that Heidegger does – for authentic understanding views them in this manner. And yet it is qually obvious from all that is said before that any attemp to rush into understanding the ecstacies in terms of a simplistic essence or embodiment I wrongheaded. Each escasty is ‘both essence and an embodiment – at differing selves – and in differing anothers. Or more properly each ecstacy in firstly the embodiement of another essence – then an essence in itself own right – which in turn becomes embodies in another. So that the future is ‘in every case’ the ‘present which is in the process of having been’, the past is ‘ the future which is making present’, the present ‘leaps away’ from a future that is in the process of having been’(350). In authentic temporality – then and unique to it alone – each ecstacy performs its ‘true’ function. It is worth then very briefly dwelling on the nature of this true function – before one turns to consider how this uinque juxtaposing comes from – and is given over two the more typical potion whereby the different twenses are successively essence and embodiement of other tenses.
Hediegger claims therefore a very simply a very stripped down relationship for authentic temporality He suggest ‘ The Characte of the having been arises from the future and in such a way that the future which “has been” (or better still which is in the process of having been) release form itself the Present’ ( 326). He goes on to suggest that the future must be understood not as simply a ‘before’ what is as something ‘not now – but later’ but rather as that whih makes pentiality for being an issue for Dasien ( 327). While the having been needs not to be understood as the past – as the no longer now – but rather as that which I already discover myself in being – that is the fact that I am always already in the middle of being something, and having sime kind of mood or state of mind (ibid). While the present which he characterizes as falling – falls within the world, and gives it as then world – even while it remains caught within the having been and the future ( 328). He later gives the same basic set up claiming that only as a thing is futural can is be given over to death – and shatter itself against death, and so only as it is futural is it also equprimordially in the process of having been, and in turn only as it is already a throiwn possibility can it take over being thrown itself, and convert it into a moment of vision (385).
In terms of the argument made above what is occuring here is simple enough. The future- is that which eudes any simply being – and to that which cannot be simply present of given. It is then the essence of being – in that this being an essence is being problematic – rendering problematic. The having been is then what embodies that possilbility- and what mut be given as that which always embodies it – and has always already given it. As I am having been I find myself already giving a possibility – already tht which must represent it. However the present creates a new twist to the argument. In the present – as one shifs into the present two things could occur. On the one hand one can move into the world of the fallen – one can fall among things and become inauthentic as one looses oneself in th world – or alternatively on could in a moement of vision – weld being teogther – and understand what it means to create. The latter of these options I will return to latter – although t basic move which sees the present as the essence of the authentic future must already be obvious enough. However the first option leads further eluciciation.

To understand what it is in the present that both creates the situation and yet runs against the risk of falling and becoming inauthentic – one needs to go back to the realionship between the present and the essential past. What is there in the having been that is essential? Where does the essence of having been lie? And how is it expressed. Here again Heidegger is very clear. The essence of the having been lies in repetition (344). As I am having been I am always repaing something that has been in the world – whether I repeat it authentically or inauthentically. And yet this begs to further question – why repetition? What is it in its relationship with possibliy which it embodies that necessitates that the having been repeats? And second what exactly does repeat? Or perhaps where is this repetition possible? What differs so that this repetition is possible at all?
Hedegger’s answer to the first question is clear enough (339). Repetition becomes the essence of the having been because of the way that it is that which gives possibility. The having been is of course that which express a possible as that which is – and so in being there no longer possible as such: And yet as it expresses the possible in delimiting one incarnation of it – it opens up for itself the possibility that what is possible might repeat. That is – that possibility which produced this particular embodiement will not itself be exhausted in its giving in the having been – and will as it is possible already moved elsewhere – and will be opening up the possibility for future embodiements. To express possibility in the having been- it is not then enough to imply delmit it (as exhaust it), as that would be not possibility at all – one must rather always in delimting be open to the idea that that which was can return – as the possibl it expresses can be given again. The option then for the having been is that it either understands that possiblies will always of their nature as possibles return (and are authentically understood as that creation which can never be exhausted, and must be over ever returning): or one understands inauthetically, in which case one does not understand this repetition as it oringates in the possible,(and so as it is repreated), and sees not possibilities so much as a series of differing conflicting options in which they are caught. It which case the having been does not have the character of memory and repletion but rather forgetting (ibid).
The essence of the having been is then that which embodies a possibility – as that which can repeat – as that whose givn could be regiven elsewhere – and which as that which can then, as it is possibl never be fully given as such. This giving then exists in the mind in terms of a mood. A mood has the structure of being that in which I find myself thrown – that which I already am, as I come t examine the world (342) – that which is already giving the sense I am operating in the world – and looking to the world in a certain way. This is either authentic – when it takes the form of anxiety in which the true structure of the having been is revealed – as repeatability itself (343) - where presents must be held onto as reticents – as saying nothing – as one attends ones own ability to be ( 296). The alternative being fear which turns away from the ability to repeat at all and has the charcter of forgetting (341). It is then in the mood that a certain essence of the having been – as it is expressing something – authentically or inauthentically about possibility is givn. The difference beteen anxiety and fear then being – with anxity what the having been express in the very effet th possible in and of itself has upon it (344), whilein fear what is being expressed relates to a present which has produced possibilities between which the fearing dasien is driven.
However the question must immediately be asked – where does mmod become expressed? Or more generally what exactly is given as that which does repeat? If the possible is what by its nature that which can repeat (as it is possible), and the having been is that which gives the possible in erms of being that which can repeat – then it is the presents I which that repletion is actually given. That is it is the present – which cannot of itself repeat – but must forever locate one in a certain time and place – whci is caught up in the reption of the apst – and given as that which embodies it. The exact way that the present embodies the past’s essence as repetition will vary of course in as the past’s relaionship with the future varies. If the past is inauthentic – then the present will give that past as thrown and in terms of being fallen. What is real is that one is already lost in the world – a mere entity amongst others. One will then forget ones own being in expressing inauthentic existence. However tow other possibilities are open. Firstly one can embody the repletion of the past directly – that is give its integral uncanniness. This uncanniness is the call of conscience – th ecall for Dasien to stand before itself (277). What calls is the having been – what express that call – what is called by it is the fallen present (278), which is summoned to take heed of itself. This heeding then not immediately taking the form of doing anything other than listening – silently (reticently) to its own being – as that which is in the world and repeting itself through being across the world (296). Hediegger however is clear this by itself is not enough to actually be resolute (although it is authentic). To be resolute one needs to be open to the future in a moment of vision (344). This only occurs when one is clear that what is repeating is possibility itself – that is the reption of a past possiblity ( 385) A repetition that does not bind one to a past that was there – a being caught be the past, but takes the form in he present of a reprociative rejoinder – that seeks to answer the past- by responding to it anew – and through the present ( 386) This move is not simply a matter of replying to what has been (as Bergson has it) – so much as engaging in a ‘reciporicative rejoinder’ with it – a rejoinder which as it replies actually changes the past’s nature – and is changed in turn in it. Such that inauthentic repetiion it is noi only the present that differs – but the past itself – even as it gives the present is clarified and modified – as the possibilities it turn expresses are repeated and enriched.
It is therefore clear enough that the essential structre of the has-bee lies in its ability to repeat – and that this repletion occurs not in the past itself – but the present. It is the essence of the past that is embodies in the present whether it is authentic or inauthentic not as sameness but rather difference. What is repeated is either forgetting or silence or rejoinding. To repeat is differ – but to differ as something which as it differs is caught up in a repletion – in what is reapting itself (necessarily)_ across and through these differences – what is already acting to produce them. Here of cause Heidegger is repeating the basic paradoxical essential-embodied relationship. Where before this was between a possibility and its having been – a having been that expressed that possible – and yet could only do so by rendering it no longer what it was – while the same move is now being suggested between the past and the making present. The making present will express at a certain time – and in a particuliar situation (as Being alongside the world), the uncanny repeatability of Dasien. It cannot of course directly express such a uncanniness – as such – but rather must give it body. Again here the issu is very much about bein finite. But here the issue is apparently involves not one being finte but two. One the one hand there is the finte of having one life and no other –on the other there is the present situation – being at a certain time. The first finite is of course created initially within the relationship the having been has with the future – and being towards death. As it dies it must essentially be caught in giving certain life. The question then is how is the essential being being to be expressed. How does the essential ‘having a life – that is essential to the having bee – to what the having been is as it rpeats itself in life, and creates reption across life given? The entire point of hedegger anylsis is to show how th latter point is infact embodying the former – and giving the sense in which it could be given at all.
The call conscience – and the anxiety that related to it – arise from the very essence of what it is to be a having been which is expressing in finte possibility. As such I repeat myself – and must always act in the knowledge of that repetition – and yet I can only repeat myself up to a point. The Having ben is not therefore just repeating it is – as it is authentic, repeating itself up to a certain limit. Any Dasien then is repetiing must ;relentlessly’ indvidualize itself - and give itself as non-relationation (307). Anxiety therefore conveys to dasien that it is it that is in the world, and having this particular life, - this particular way of repeating itself across itself – and up to a certain point after which reption becomes impossible. To be calld by conscience is therefore to be called choose a life ( with resolute anticipation being that which understands itself as that which does have a live, while irresolute looses itself in the choices it has already made – 308) The essential part of the having been is then that finte which cannot be simply located at one tie – or one present as such – but rather is that which gathers presents up intoi isel, and the manner across which it gives its finte nature.To Be a life- and the to expressing the essence of repating – I must therefore give myself a siuation . Hediegger therefore says the ‘call of conscience’ will ‘call forth a situation (300) in which I am expressing that life. To be a finte being is therefore to in the world at a certain time – and to have a live that can only operate across these beings. Life is that which is uncanny in that it repeats what it is through situations – such that it briging diseprate situatins into resonace with one another – and thereby bring forth new situations – and with them new possibilities. It is in the current situation therefore that one encounters what is ‘factically’ ready-to hand’ – in such a way that pone can make it present for oneself – and so can act (326). That is – it is only in the present that the factical – that which is already there and already repeating as having been, is given to myself as to I must have already taken up into myself as I create a present – that which all presents must be alongside.
From this a further consequence clearly follows. The Having been as it is essentially producing itself within the present does not produce itsel en mass – and across a range of situatoin. It is rather the case that each having been will create itsel a certain present – in with the ‘already being; which it creates can be expressed. This present may well include elements of a previous present that are being repeated (and thereby changed – rejoinded to) in this current present – but as they are they do as part of its current finitude – that is as part of its situation. One only rejoinds then in the moment of vision and at the present – as one is making it present (386). The having been then repeats itself across the particular. From this last point two further things follow – neither of which Heidegger explicts draws out. Firstly relates to the nature of memory itself. Memory is not simply the memory of the embodied past or even an embodies future. Hedeidegger certainly this much explict saying that the past – the having been must not be undersood in terms of being in the past (with a little part of it is the past already) but rather as a thrown fact (328). The Having been as it is in itself is therefore not emcountered in being the past- or as one is embodies in the pure past – but rather relate to what it is to be in the present as omething that is already thrown in th world – and forced to account for that world – and account for it as a fact – that is a particular occasion. Memory likewise will give us the particular things that we already are. It therefore will therefore always relate to a certain occasion in the past where the having been either delimted a possibility – closing down certain options as it expressed (and had done with) a certain possibility – or else managed to give authentically as that which expresses the possible as endlessly creative. This essential ‘fact’ (be it thrown or repetetion) of the being a certain having been is then expressed in the present as certain memory. The expression will now follow the formular suggested above. As the thing is a thing in the past –I is essential and unified – and yet this unity cannot be simply given as such in the memory – which can only grasp at is it holds in mind certain composite (and complex) images. An act of inauthentic memory at leas therefore juxtaposes two disperate world –an essential past, and an embodying present – which meet in a particular imporession, and give an image.
The second consequence goes back to the nature of the future as it is given authentically or inauthentically. The former situation I will consider below – when I return to the sense the present is essential in the situation for the future. But it is the latter that is clearly so so very problematic. The present as it exists inauthentically in the past – only knows itself as it is given in one occasion – one circumstance – as it is drawn into now here and how. And yet the having been which it embodies it itself multiple –in relation to the possible – and the world that it creates as it is in itself wil lbe unstable, and constantly shifting. The inauthentic present will have no idea of the having been’s relationship to the possible – and will merely experience a memory that endlessly slides across other memories interprentration then as it is inauthentic. It thereby becomes absolutely lost in the they- as one looses one reality as possibility within being fallen into the world (176). In such a situation the nature of possibility itself will shift its meaning - as it is leveled of, one become possible not in specfic engagement in the world (and so possible as one is doing) but rather the to be possible becomes simply to be mutiple – and constantly changing (on matter what) – with newness itself becoming the critieria for truth ( 179).

The Past then creates itself in the present – both as it demands that the present embodies the fact that the having been already contains, and as it creates across the present a sense in which repletion is real. And yet what of the present itself? What is itself essential nature? And why must that essence be given in the moment of vision – that is in the future?

To understand this again- one needs to consider what is the essence of the situation itself – before one then shows how such a situation will in come to be embodied in the past. What the authentic situation takes from the past is never the simple past occasion – in which the possible world was closed of in the having been – but rather the very essence of the past itself as it is in itself. That is its ability to express the possible as that which can repeat – and so that which even in the momement of its being given opens up the possiblitiy for a subsequent giving. The authentic present will then come to understand itself as such a giving.. That is it knows itself as that situation – that moement within which the possible has come again – as possible – and so in reaepting itself can change the world anew (308). The situation in then the occasion for the change – the moment the past is given anew – and given as what it is – a past possibility whose possibility has come again. Here (as I menetioned above) Heidegger is very careful in the phrase he uses. The present does not simply simply to the past – but ‘reciporically rejoins’. It modifies the past then in that rejoining – reforging the nature of the having been – as it takes up the possiblities that has been present in it - that it was expressing in repeating – and making them anew. The Essence of the present then lies in the fact that in expressing the past is not only finds itself as that which it already is but does so as it is recreating that sense through which it is being given – that in which it is taking action (300) a taking action which will itself rejoin replically with the very circumstances that gave it – forcing these two to be examined anew. The Present therefore as the past was before it – exists at the juncture of two apparently different finite occassions. The Finite of being caught in being in a momement of time – at a certain situation in life – a certain situation that one must already be it – and through. But at the same time in this being already encased in this situation – one is expressing or giving that being given not as being simply there as present at hand – but as that which by taking action regives the very sense that one it – opening on out to new possibilities and new circumstances. To be acting in a moment of vision is therefore to be ecreatng what one is – as a finte thing – and what over the course of a certain time one could be. Again the argument rests on the fact that the realiy of of situation is not given in a simple present at hand – but rather in the future that embodies that situation as free-resolving which cannot ever be exhausted – of simply finished ( 307)- so that as what the moment of vision creates is boundless within a single dasien – which it constantly caught up in making itself anew – and never therefore indifferent to locatable time as such (338). The essence of what is given in the present lies in the fact then that t acts even as it given the past. It does not therefore give the past as simply ‘there’ as what was –but always in a circumstance which is unique and different each time ( which is implict in repetition which demands a difference each time). This being different each time is then taken up by the authentic future which takes expressive the present within itself – and gives what it means across itself. The situation is then what ‘anticipatory resoluteness’ needs to be making present, so that it can be possible at all ( 326). That is it is only as it embodies the essence of being in a situation (siuation that possblity as can be given to me at all.
Such a resoluteness will of course then bring around full circle. Possiblity is now revealed not as an essence- which can only be given in the having been – and it is in being possible at at thrown into the world as that which can repeat: But it is also now possible to conceive of a way if giving this repetition in the present which that it can embody what it is to repeat as all – and do so such that as that present gives the essence to the future – that essence is able to take up and give the future the sense in which the present it realtes to was already essential caught up in the past and the future itself. Dasein thereore in being resolute in the situation finally understands itself as whole – and whole in being resolute and creative – in its constant ability within presents to reforge what one is – but only as that reforging is possible because on already is something.

The Problems of looping the loop.

Heidegger’s answer to Berekley’s problem then is that – one needs to think of temporalities which are ‘perceived’ in the sense that thy embdy there essences always in nother – and of a ‘self’ which is not some mysterious entity beyond (almost) all thought, but is really a loop of being that endlessly refeeds the future back into itself. The particuliars of this solution are no doubt orignal to Heidegger – and yet the veery basic of his solution is clearly one rooted in phillsophical tradtion. That is, on a deep levl Hediegger wants to demosntrte how a system of being within another – must loop back upon itself, and give a self as being – which exists across this anothering. Such a move is of course one of the mainstays of post Bereklian philosophical tradition, and it is very necessary to exactly locate Heidegger whith that tradtion – and thereby demonstate what he can and cannot say. It goes without saying of course that this problem resolves around the issue of feedback. Hdiegger is suggesting being loops the loop – is formally theorizing a notuon of feedback – tht is of thouights that are albe somehow to return to themselves- and which in this return found time. The question is then always one of exactly how one formalizes such an idea of feedback- and how one understands itself siginifcance in relation to that into which it is feeding back. Within the philosophical tradition there are then two very different possible strategies here . One the one hand one can attempt to iscolate the feed-back elements – and hypothsize an absoltuely different domain within which it is locate. Alternatively one can attempt to set up the feedback element of the system – the identity- and pitch it as feedback within th system that set it up- but within it as something that ha its own role to play. To clarify my meaning I will briefly consider a philosopher whom embodies each aguement- before turning to attempt that have been made to synthesize these differing postions, and then considering exactly what it is in all this Hediegger cannot accept (and what must follow from this deneial).
It is perhaps Hume who most profoundly hollowed the radical implication of Berekely. Hume will of course classically accept that all there is in the mind is perception. Ideas are merely a weaker form of perceiving – a form which run togther varying ideas – accordig to certain established patterns. Identity is then Hume suggests totally cauhgt up in memory. I have an awareness of myself one as I can remember- and as that memory constantly sifts and changes – what I am cannot be thought as at all fixed – and singular ( Hume 1978 p.262). Such a radically empircal postion has led commentators to speculate that Hume’s theroy of human nature involves a ‘bundle man’ (Gellner 1978…) vision of human nature. Whereby humans are simply seen as a rag-bag of miscallenous perception – arbitartily united within habit. And yet such a characterization misses the full subltity of Hume’s argument for two reasons. Firstly such an approach simply misses the subtlity of what Hume is explictly claiming. He is not saying that humans are merely a ragbag of sperate perception – but rather he goes out of his way to show that identity needs to be understood as neither one nor many – or rather is radically both – depending upon the view poit we take of it (201). The claim is simply not then that humans are somehow more ‘many’ than one- but rather that the entire idea of identity puts ones ability to differentiate the one from the many in suspension. What is more- Hume is very clear that the one-manydistinct is not merely the momement one should give up philosophy and merely go of and play back gammon instead – but needs to be actually understood as the founding point of morality. The purest affect and the founding point of Hume’s ethical theory is pride. Only if I am proud will I take care with myself and the world. And pride’s source is clearly identity. He will go further – this pride is the product of a feedback mechanism (Hume calls it a double geneis) between an affect of pleasure linked to an object, and idea of ownership of that object – and idea that then creates an idea of the self which owns, and an affect of pride that goes along with that selfood ( 278). Once this system is set off the different ideas and different impression will then endlessly feedback upon themselves within the idea of the object creating an idea of self, and the idea of selfhoods sparking of ideas of objects – and each idea being asscoated with corresponding affects ( 289).
Feedback is then by no means something simply negative within the system – but rather sets up it own dynamic but one that is still located within the system within which it occurs. The self is something different and special by dint of its cause within the system – and is way of exsisting across the system – and by dint of having thought with a being that is different in kind from other thoughts native to the mind. The self is then a naturally finite systm within a greater system – in which everything has at its most basic level finite. Hume thereby creates a world where one can indeed think the soul as feedback within the mind- and yet that feedbak not imply any higher reality that that which was present in the world that set it up – and whose imporant therefore lies in the way it can convey a different system – that of morals upon the otherwsie disoerate and ‘inauthentic’ mind. In terms of the formualr suggested above therefore Hume preseresents an attempt to think pure feeback from within the system. The contrast then will be with a thinker whom attempts to defin a system of feeback that must be external to the system – and thought of it a totally different way.
Schopenhaur again self consciously coming from Berekly suggests reality needs to be divided into two. One the one hand there is the world of perception- which he argues as ideas and concepts are necessarily in another. That is they are that which is given within the self – and as they are caught by a subject- and the world the subject constitues for itself. The constant then is the the will. The Will is of course classically that which asserts the rights of feedback – and Schopenhaur set it up as such In the Will exists in the space the body- that is our own inner worldhooks up into the physical world itself. It exists that that which natually inhabits the two at once. But this border line is not merely a membrane or even a point of contact- but rather a suspension of feedback. Within the will – the normal assumption of the inner and out realms is suspended – and one is caught naturally in a world of feedback where what was inner – and impusion is seen as already merely outer – as a bodily action while apparently mechanical bodily actions are understood as being inner ( so the heart wills to beat). The will represets then a world of perpetual feedabck – ‘unity’ of the inner and outer worlds constituted through pure being already a feedback. By supposing an absolute division between the worls of representation and will – Schopenhaur is able to suggest the existence of a feedback relationship that is some how prior to that which is feedsback through. The being a feedback itself becomes the reality- and the perception and concept merely the idea which inaccurately grasp the reality of this feedback.
Hediegger, while he can of course accept nither of thse two options – does pitch his aguement within the consequences of the failures h perceives in both approachs. The reservation of would of coursw have abou Hume’s apparoach is that it puts th inauthetnic as fundamentally propr to the authentic. There is not Being which falls,m so much a bing which whith themselves, and as a product of themselves produce an idea of Bein. That is Huime revolves the prblems in the beings of Being – and insitss that ht beging many comes first. So that when he susbseqeuntly produces a finte wold – that world is only conditio of the unlimited world of perception which preceeds oit – an therfore unable to give a concept of being. In contrast Schopenhaur is for Hidegger right to inists the prioprity of the feedback. It is the feedabck of itslf that must found the system but then not a feedback that is to be udnerstood a somehow sepertae from th world – and within a being of it own (a being moreover that is quite unlimted). And so for Heidegger Hume and Schopehaur make exactly the same mistake, I that the proceed from indefintate towards the finte – and do this irrespective of whetehr they think feedback to be finte or not or necessarilky thought first or not. What unties them is the idea that one needs to start in a bing beyond finte – and proceed to find the finte within th world. No of course Hediegegr postion in realtin to thins is highyl complex. His move is not utterly dissinalr – as after all he does want to lopop the loop and find Dasien within beings – as that which must be supposed to think them at all. However what is critical for him is the finite must be thinkable as that which is prior to the world that it gives – and proipr to a something finte – a most that neither Schopenahur or Hume makes.
Or to put it another way Hediegger wants to effectuvely synthesize elements of schopenhuar with elements of Hume. He wants to take the feedback of Schopenahur which is aprori – and yet transopose this feedback into Hume’s self which as a finte this comes to knoiw itself- and giv tself within the world. Oime is then the medium that Hediegger think such a mov is possible. Time is where all indoividual temporalities can be fixed in realtion to one another – such that the loop which defines priet can be represented as caught up in time. On can lopo th loop – and igven the self within the world – as something caught up – anf given through th world, and as a being- being of time- because that is the future, the past, and the present remain temporalities – and thereby are necessarily caught within time . Amd yet ther reamins a celar problem here. Can this time be tought of as really supporting such a looping of the loop of bein? Or is the giving of time in feedabck antithetical to the giving of bing itself? Or to put it another way can one guratanee the union of the looped loop of time withi anything other that an appeal to the vulgarest time imaginable – a time that asserts the future as future is sipy united – or the past as past must be one?
The basic move taking one from an attempt to synthesize a finte feedback systm has of course a history of its ow – as does the splicing togther of this attempt withi the idea of time.
In particualr – ad classically enough both Kant and Hegel attempt soluion for it. Hegel will accept that what is real is feed back – and that one needs to understand the indisivudla at that hich constitutes himself as feedback. The end of history and thought then occurs when individual realisze thi and realise that in their very individualility they are caught in giving feedback. Individuals thereby reatin there own individual freedonm – and reamin individuals (and so are not simply subsumed within an all encoosaing will0 but hey do so as a part of something else – in being caught up within Geist itself. This processs then caught up within the world as time. History being the unravelling of the realisation that the finte is actuall emboding the world of feedback. While Kant of cours attempts the opposite move. The world of feedback is perception – a perception which is held within the finite ‘ I Think’. Time is then not the external motr to the system – but the internal dynamic within which the impossible synthesis of an I think withc I trancendental and a world of experince is givien.
However again bothj of these two altrnative must falil for eidegger in that they fail to postion the finte first. In Hegel the finte is that which is given as a part of another – as cuahgt within the feedback of Geist – and so not real. While Kant in constrast – alough he gives the I Think – as perceives it as not being substance- fails to understand he true finte nature of that giving (as that which ius giving the world), and therefore Heidegger argues falls back onto the idea of th the subject- understood as a presaent at hand accompanying thought ( Hedegger 318). For Hediegger then it is not tneough to simply suppose a finte self within time- one must rather suppose that time itself is finite in hich it arragngies for itself a kind of constancy across a sequence of imprssion. A stretching along that must then be understood historically (375). And yet this being given hiostropcially opens up what a deep problem for Hiedegger. Hediegger is very clar- it is in and through history that Dasein achives a constancy in its being (392). Such that as it rspoinds to the historical it will come to know itself as Dseien – which is acting as it is already within the historical – and already a part of history. Such that it perceives the world in terms of a having been before it is (388). It responds to this having been is a reciporicative rejoiner (386) – whrby, and in an augenblick, this past is given in terms of a se of possibilities which can be chosen(385), and repsent not a simply responding to what has been – but a taking up of past possibility itself. Such possiblies in turn wil have there essence is being within a certain point of time – and therefore with Dasien’s bing finte – and before death (391), and as such will then be translated intot h way the Dasien can give itself within its being. History is the point then that dasien loop of its own bing – and comes back upon itself – as that which was already there – and already there as it is a part of history. History therefore becomes the grounding in which Dasien can give itself an unified. Or to put it another way time must form the horizon of being ( 437) – in that timem that is history is the place – the grounding withi which apparently one can loop the loop – of temproiality – and remain within being –as one is giing time .
Anmd yet this is of course the final problem within which Bing and time ends – the final answered question . How does time actually gorund temporality and being? Can it? How is the ‘mode of the temporalizibng of temporality to be Interpreted?’ ( ibid). Or is there a very real problem here – uch that on can have either time or being- but not both it the same sense? That is such that one can have double tenss of he condition that one does not imply attpmt to catch them within a single unfied time – or alternativly one can have a unifed time (composed of feedback) but one that does not give or create an idea of being? Or alternative one can hae an idea of being, and an idea of time but only such that they donot realt directly to each other. These three possible answers to Hediegger’s question – will then imperial th very tie in of being to time. Wah tif both can be though but not togther? Thuis question will now be xamind in detl – and in reference o the three philosophers. Lebniz, Spiniza and Kant who each attempot an answer to each aspect of this question.

Three problems in being and Time:

At the core of Hediegger’s argument is an explict calim about the nature of being finte and temporality. As I am finte I must be at a certain point in time- and have a certain set of possibilities. One can therefore go immediately form the possibilities given to because I exist at a moement in time – to understanding these possiblies in terms of the fact that as I am a finte thing I must respond to things in the world – and arrange my being through them ( 387). This then is effectively a double calim, Fuirstly it is claimed that as I am fint I mut have a postion at a certain time and be open to a set of possibilities – a set morevover that is repeatable I another tim. And secondly that as I chose to axct at noe time – and in one place- a straighten time out. The Augenblick the moement of revalltion movs ime onwards therefre – and maks one arrange ones life – in terms of a linear reality. However this tie in is by no means simple – por obvious. Lebniz perhaps more than any other philosopher explored th problems involved here – and the fact that infact what seems so simple – a finte being in a linear time is infact highly complex and exremly problematic. He therebereby challenges the very notion of simple linear temporality – and the idea of bing within it..
His starting point then is very much ‘what does it mean to be finte’. Liebniz classically claims that being finte as it is commonly understood involves not one realtiy but two. To be finte is both to b at a location (and therefore to be a certain perspective) ad t have a body. The former will thn delmit the worl that I see. Such that each monad always sees the wold from is perspective alone. However the latter is the source of all morality. Her the argument is complex . For Liebniz yhuman freedom involves having micro-desires – not just of everything that does happen – but also all th possibilities that might. Every monad will contain every possible desire of every possible choice it can make. Be have a body- is to have a means to make a choice, As one has a body one can within time come to focus of certain felings to the exclusion of others. Every Monad can therefoe always o something different – and always has choice- in only it ncouraged its body afresh. However Liebniuz is also clear that as one exists in time this woill become progressively harder and more complex Ones body therefore is habit forming- and comes used to the kind of choices one has mad – towhat one is already listening to. Beeblebb hims;lef might be safeble, but onluy f he could fight against what hi body has become throygh the chpoices he has already made.
Toi be finte is then to have a persepoctive- which is open on an infinte universe – but iut is also to be a body. That it to have a zone of the universe that one clearly expresses – and which one uses inorder to understand and make choices in that universe. It is then this body – or rather the ability of this bodies which enables one to choose what direction one follows. What is mor – Leibniz is creat that which I am- the being that I am is the product of all th particular choices I have made. The Adam that sinned is only one possibility amonghst all the other adams in the world. So that evry moand will contain within it the unheard desires, and possibilities of other vrsions of itself., there is of course a disimialirity here between the future in all possible Adams fro this point are present, and the pastm, in which h we exist withi the one who didi sin. But even here there are complications. No actin the past is necessarily fixed 0-such that what the past meant- what adam the act of eating an apple produced need to be fixed. Rather exactly what that sin was endlessly changes exactly what it means- and devolpes nw possibilitieswithin itsel and for itelf- and which it –new possiblieis – new kinds of Adam. Such the the moemnd does not just open out to an ininfty of being for itsel in th future – an infinty of ifferent things that it is – but alwao looks back on a past whose import to it constantly shift – and throiuygh which it must constantly re-arrwnage what it is. In short the very fact that it has a presencxe in time – that is whih the set of possibilities preclude for monad a being a such. Being monad is endlessly germaine with other monads –oher version of itself – versions it could listen to.
\ What makes time go one way rather than the other is nevr thereore the Moand but Gpod. God from realm outside time and space, and according to a set of criteria of its own (and it a certain moral set) chose one world over all the others as that which exists. The criteria that then create ‘vulagr’ time – that is the time of progression are ultimately moral and utramondane. Being itelf- understood as a monad cannever guratnetee such a move. Being ius not therefore fixable in itself in tim. On the contrary to be in time –undertood effectively to be ni feedback – in the world of sptrange communication between thenigns- is tyo be constantly slipping in being – as cerain possiblieis opn,a nd others fade – and as the possible constantly regores what it is out tof what is. In short Leibniz raises a question mark about whther one really had being in time. Mybe one needs to think something else – which is freer that being, an balenot to restrict itself to a set of possibles – or a fixed more of duraton.
Leibniz therefore suggests that is time understood in its full radicalness then no being. Howver there is another option. Spinoiza will (in a highly complex and idiosyncratic manner) suggst there is another option. Maybe being is posslbe but no time? This he makes this argument across a number of highly involved arguemens (and in respect to the future, present and past). In the current context I will keep my discussion to the past, and being. Spinoza is very clear that existence needs to be thought of it ters f some kind of bieng. It is as beins that individua;s are modes of Gods – even though there essences are separate from that being. This being always belongs to God – and yet to a God who can only express the nature of such a being within the world that is created ( 2/10s, 1/24, 1/17). So that unlike Liebniz Spinoiza certainly does make the basic unit of thought being – a bveing which is always owned in God,and yet hich must be expressed across and through all of creation. But what inplicaion does this have for time? Or more particualrly the past. If youflollows the offical Spinza line apparently very little. Spinoza ecribes th pas as the idea the mind has of things it has been () the exact phraze in that the mind has an idea of things tgther with past time, and an ide of future thing realterd to soime future time 2-44s)., Now the realted, and togwgether here are of course highly suggestuve, but hardly critical. Spnza’s ethics offically – or at least as it ois commonly understod not about time.
And yet the time (and in rfernce to the current argument the past) runs throughy the analysis. Spinoiza apparently never tires of thinking different typs of having been. To Undetsand thins one neds to undrstand that Spinoza like Hediegger thinks nature as histrical ( 389). That is., nature is wht givevs you what is there. Yet Sponoza points out there are at least five different ‘whats there – five different senses of being having been. What is more his argument runs lthoiuyght these senses are highyl intergrated – and caught up in the giving of individual being – I is the role of finte beings to actively move one from one apst to another. Being therefor can act and be being at ll because it breaks open the having been and moved from one kind of past to another. The argument then comes int two pats. Firstly the different types o past will be identitified, and secondly there various realtions very breifly considered.
The cricital past for individual modes is Naures order. An individual owes it own existence to nothing it is – but t what imemdiately preceds it. What si mor it keeps its existence only as long as theat immediatey precedding modes is determined to create it (1/28). This is not then a strigaht causal chain of a giving b giving c. It is rather the case that B can remain B only because A is continuing to exist, and ;likewise C reamins C because of B. As yet (as an embodiement and its essence) nothing in the existenc of B or for tht matter causes the subsequnt mode. Ll Spinoza says is that every within had an essence must produce an effect ( 3/6), and that the effect produced by this esence will be another mode (1/26). Ech individual then express something of the essence of the previous one (or in terms of the lagauge employed here it ebodies that essence), of another mode – while that other mode is as it existes emobodying the essence of yet anotehr mode. As one runs up the causal chain then one mode does not ‘exaplin’ another as such. Each individual essence prduced by a certain finte embodiement rpdoiuced an essenc which is given in another. Spinoza has ths basic idea of essences produced in another very early on. In [perhaps his earliest writing the ‘ tratise for emending the Intellect’ he suggests that a cricle needs to be defined by a line moving around a fixed point, and a sphere by a semi-circle moving around a fixed point. That is essence is defined by the motiuons in another. Natures order then impose of individual modes an ‘unlocateble’ past. Each mode is what it is because there are already things in the world – and it is already part of that world. And yet what those things are – and what makes then actually matter is not so easily locateble. The set of natures order is aways infinte – in that very having been already implies an unlocateble previous presence, which in term implies yet another ( see 1/28, but also 2/9 , 3lemma 3, and 2/25 and 26 What is more this order is differently angles in realtion to embodiement and essence. Asoething embodies another 0 then natures order is xed ( Spinoiza makes this very lary in 3 lemma 3). As a thing exists then it will have a cause, and that caue a cause. But what that mode is itselfbodies is more complex. Each mode merely ‘rpoudced and effect’ – and what that effect will do or be has as much to do with the what it encounters as it has relity in itself (3 Axiom 1”). There is then uncertainity as one runs forward acros natures order – Spnioza singalling this very clearly by defining of the infinte level at least otion as reciporically destinguished. A Mode is what it it – that is its ‘essence’ produces an effect bcause of what I arouind it – as much as to anything it actively is ( 3 Axiom 2’). Natues orde then realtes to the order of existence across a past.. It is an unlocateble past – which anders acorss disitnct modes – all of which ae arranged in realtion to one another. This realtion being defined not due to any ‘cosmic singinifcance; as such – but rather in realtion to the continued existence of one partoicualr mode. Natures Order are wha explains such an existence.
Thought of as such – Natures order becomes then some species of having been. Ad yet Spinoza immediately idntifies a second species ( 3 lemma 7 schol). Namely nature itself, as it is understood as a single individual. What makes any one individual is the ability to communicate difference to one another. Each individual hoilds its unity togther as a body just so long as it disperate parts are able to communicate difference ( Spinoza very singificantly says that bodies are reciporically united, as opposed to being reciporically distinguished). However the case is differrn for nature itself 0understood as an individual. Spiniza will describe this individual as the en’endlessly changing fac of the universe itslf’ - , and very singificantly decline to define a parallele ‘mind’ which expresses in terms of thought directly such an entoity. The reasons fpor this omission are highyl complex (and ould tke one very far form the context of the current discusssion), however the mere fact of this ommisssion singals that Spinoza is attempting to think something very odd here. The Univesre itself as an individual is something which is uncollectable I a single mind – but is ather a differnce whose essenc lies in always changing – and eluding iminds. Spiniza phraze would be ;it is in God as it has the idea of many things – see 2/19). Its physical reality then will not lie is being one thing (Spinoza is clear enough it I not tin the sets of thibgs to which the categoriy one or many can imply, and to be numberd at all implies that one can compare different individua;s, and there can only be one such an individua 1/8s) – but rather in the fact that each mode it wlays shifting into another mode – and yet this scond mode express 9or embody) something about the first ode. That ois Nature’s essence is the communication – the slip[page which runs across essence and its mbodiement. As Something produce an effect is creates a difference in another- a difference which is of course unlocateble in that first mode ( Spinoza is very clear that a cause is different from its effect). Natures itself is then that which naturrelly gives just such a communication, it is the essence then of the past in so far as the past has always gone – and yet something or it reamin – some different which is different from what has been is caught b ht is now – and caught even as that present is itself moving of into th past. It is less then the poast of the having been – or what already way – but the essence of the reprocative rjiondr itself. The sense that the past is what exists acrooss coordniating differences.
The two infinte modes the represent twin asepocts of essence nd embodiement. As each essence only produces an effect as it is generated through the embodiement of another – then one is cught up in natures order, and the world of unlimtied having beens. In contrast as an essence demands an embodiement of its own, but in another, then one is in nature itelf, mutating as the past past runs forwards into others. Hovrver Spinoiza is vey clearl when it omes to individua things many other new pasts are [possible. Individual things first (and mos cirtically0 exist between these two infinte bodies. They are an embodiement, and have n essence/. There role is then the ffect the transoition from one infinte mode into another. This tranfer then in term involves power – nd is perhaps he most obsurwe thing is Spinmoza/. It appears simple enough (and uttery unlinkd to the past). As a thing exists it has power – and has it has power to shared with God’s essence (2/45), that is his ability to do things ( 1/36). So that things involve xistence is two ssense. As an individual is crated as that which embpodies aontr the quality of its exoistence is abstrct, and nevr simply given (but rather must b arranged across all of natures order), but as it actually exoists, it is doing something – havig some effect -= having a power ( 2/45s). God is then directly involve within this power – a power whicha rises from existence- and reates to the essence ability as it it existng – in its existing to be acting and dpoing things. What it is as essnce is to be ceating others. Spinoiza thereby firmly locates what matters in an essence not in natures order- but as what makes nature itself. So far it is relatively uncomplicated – and appears not to involve the past at all. And yet in 4/4 Spinoiza makes the argument much more complex. Here he argues that an individual as it acts as it express ts as a power explains itself as part of nature sive (or) God. The key word in this statement is part. Spiniza has apparently (and offically) a very strong line on p[arts. O be a part is to be caught within giving another. One is only a part as one it therefore compelled by the external world to acrt in certain ways, and produce certain effects. So that one is only a part of another in not being in onesself and an individual – but as on is caught up within a chain of causes which takes one always byond oneself ( that is as one is part of a mutally modification of parts- ep 32). In Ethics Spinioza will therefore claim that as God constiutes a body from such parts he can have no idea of the entire body itself ( 2/19). Such that each individual part, and even in its being a part – even that is as it is modifying itself (embodying onthers) such that it will itself act as a part) will not giv an idea of a whole. It merely embodies the action of others – and gives an essnce for these same other to embody- and at no part of this process is it expected to produce an idea of itself as essentially a part of another. And yet his is now expactly what Spinioza appears to be arguing. The essence is essenctially – as it is a power a part of nature sive god – nature or God. T
he clue to what is ahppening here no doubt lies in h sive. Spinoiza’s use of siv is itself a complex issue – the transaltion is ‘or’ butor in ther sene of ‘that is’. That is what are being suggested are exact eqquiva;lence. However things are not that easy. Spiniza clearly juxtaposes things togther under th banner of sive which at othrt times he will pull a part. ( for example in 2/11 c he will distinguigh the minbds nature sive essence from the minds nature alone). It I perhaps safe to say then thay the sive reprsents a one of union. It is the as the essence understands itself- and it express/explians itself as a aprt of nature – that nautre is givn in the ame sense as God. But then in what sense it it a oart of both at once? Being a part of nature is clear enough. Of be a part of nature- is to b that which is at it exists fecting the transition frm one sate to another. That ois it is to be an essence which is embodying – is changing the world, and forcing it to differ from what it was. Tjs then of course is exactly the sens that Spinoza used power in 2/45. To be in God’s [power is to be able to be differing the world – to be engaged in changign it. The the imdividual essence htrefre in expaling itself – in giving itself as a p[art of a whole – gives itslf as that whichy it mutuating – and ceating change. That which,m is then as it acts driving itself into the apst, but a past which matters,m a past which as it is a part of nature has a singinifcance of itself own – a past the endures in creating a differenmce. Here then is yet anothyer use of pat. Pat is no longer simply the order of the having been – or the facthat things constantly change and shift in defintion – but is rather a necessary part to bien g itself. Each individua;l thing, as it has being expereinces itself as that which directly is creatingh the past- that which acts, and has essence as it makes itself a past, and constantly moves into another- in trms of the apst it has made. The sive then matter because it indiciates that God, and hrough God nature is not essentially different from this being a part. God is that hich always givies himself as the master of parts. God is ( by 1/16) aslays ensyring that each indicidua;l element in nature needs to b thought of as a part – as something on the way to something else.Nature itsef is then simply the embodiement of this bing a pertpetual pst. Each essence he will as it acts be the essence from syuch an embodiement. It will ,as it makes itself a pat, arrang itself as a part – a part which it gives itself as such belong to nature itself.
Such a past then ehas the role of effectively inverting the relationship between nature order and nature. O act in this way – is to act withon natuires order. That is the action one does will no doubt be located within the the cahing of causes 9one can only act is a certain way because one is), and yet it is no longr simply bound by such causes. As one acts on in the name of nautre producs natures order. That is one becomes a course for anothers existences amd locates ones self in another criticual past. The essence then b giving in it own sense of being a part of nature - is what knows itself as a casual element in Natures order. It get to expressly expreince itself, then as a part of such an order – and as what is at that point driving it forward ( Spinoza thiks that this is the key to the third and highest form of knowldg 2/45, and 5/40s).
So fa then three quite dsitnctive pasts have been identified. There is the past in the sense of natures orer – the past in the sense of nautre, and finally the past in the sense of finite being – hich as it is infinte detrmined the order by inhabiting as it inahbits the apst of nature (and in inhabiting it clreates it). Howvr D[pinoiza is far from finsihed in indentifying finte pasts. In the course of thics he identifies at least three more sense of the term – which are gain highyl realted. There is a sense- and Spiniza is very awre of this that to be embodying anothr is to be caught within a past. As Another force acts upon one to produce an effect (4/5,6 and 7 one is gripped in being that which has already moved. One is part then of a past – in the most absract of senses. That is one is in a world in which one ha already moved And ye pinoza has two things to say oabout such a mvoement. Furstly it is clear that taken abstraftly – as simply that which locates on in the past – this movement means noting. In the very erly (and famous) eP12 Spinoza says that it makes no sense to divide motion up into segements of time. Wah tis at stak is spiniza is though clearly different from what is at stak in Hediegger o say bergson. He clearly can agree withi then that any attept to divide up time into a seris of nows is pointeless (this is the argument in ep 12). Hover it is lss clear what he wishs to replace such a division with. It is clear that niether duration (in the sens eBergson uses th twerm) or the haivng been are for him ana dequate description of the sense that acts put me in the past. And this for essential the reasosn that such defintaion are too all encom,passing.. that is they do not adequely differentiate between the past of nature which runs forwards and the past of the past, which pulls one backward. But what is more they confus both these sense of the apst with the fact hat as I embody another I cahnge – and an caught in giving this chang. Now it is clear for Spinoza that such a chang – as it embodies anothers essence is essential ni the present. That it it is what must be thought of in terms of the actual present ( the argument here is again far more complex that I have space to express, and involves extremely subtle distinction between the being of objective ideas, and the being of things – including thoughts). The point being tha as I embody anothr – I give the actual present of that other in my very moving. If one takes then the fact that I have moves, and tears it apart from the ‘efflux’ of eterninty (ep12) and considers his in itself (something my ‘objective’ intellect neccearily does) I will loose sight of what actually matters- namely the sense that an essence is enbodying itself through these changes. And sny attempt to characterize it in terms of the past alone is to loose sight to what realy matters. The is the sense on is being gathered up in any other. Spinoza therefoe insists that eve as one memebersm and things things ‘togther with past past, or in realtino to fuure time’ one doe not change how one understands what they are in themselves. What one sees or feels is in repaltion to a sense that one is embofying another – and this basic basic does not change. This then leads to two futher questions. How does on think this past? And what does it mean that things are in th apst to us?
S[inoza suggests then different answer to botht hese question. Tyo think a past – is to think a thing ‘togther with past time (2/44). Critical here is embodiement. Embodiements for Spinoza (unlike Heidegger0 ar complex. One does not emoby pur and simpy in a tense- but rather each [particualr embodying will occur across others embodiement- and will gather then up into it. The exampl he gives is the the sun. the sun effects us – and gtahers us in giving it throughut the course of the day. If then at certainperiods of t day other events occur – I meet three people say, then as a subquently remer eithr the day passing or each individual meeting, some kind of realtion it established between these differing and temporally disitnc embodiements. The pat is he a essence that comes of this complex itnerweaving of the embodiement. To thin a thing togther with past time- is thn to subequently embody the sense of this tense acorss the memories which orignally created it. I give what the past meaning in the fact that memories which are different, an removed from each other in time, endlessly slide otgther 0 such that I necessarily imagine the whole course of a day – with doiffering events within it. Ones ability to do this Spinoza suggest ( 4/ def 6), and will only be possible as I can arrange embodiements whoich imply and involve each other. My formal understanding then of the past – as th togther of embodiement is then limited, and firmly occurs ;wohin’v time. That is past time represents the attmept within time to explain what it means to be caught acorss embodying. One mst not thn (spinoza argues) abstract fom this ability to arrange different embodying that there must exist some cosmic order where all there embodyiments are preserved as such. That is one canmnot infer anything about ntures order in itself, or nature in itself from such embodiements. They must reamin utterly contingent and limited in tere scope.
However Spiniza is of coruse aware that time passes – and tha I can rembmer things that are not present. His answe then is that things which are past diff in intesnmity. Again what this means in terms of emodiement si cleqr enough. To be in the apt is to have less power- less abilty to embody in another. The seence- the producing an effecti s of course opn ended – and could gather an undefinate numebr of things to itself. Howvr Spinoiza says it can only do this so long as it does not meet something else – some other cause which hprecludes its ability to to embody itself directly. Causes are therefore limited in he ability to embod by other causes. If two occur in the same individual hich operate against each other the effet aof each will be to exclude as far as it can the other 3/4). Each embodiement is delimted by other embodiements which prevent its being given. Spinoza will flag the ‘oddness’ of this idea by talking about ‘cooperal causes’ ( 4/7.) The role of the cop[peral cause- a cause which cannot b given in the thing thatought –or even directly thought as it is cperal – and so relate intally to the body itelf – to what the body is already being – th way it is already pulling itself, and being acros itself. Spinoza again makes this clear by in 4/7 citing in reference to coperal causes 2/6 – which is the propostion which suggests that individual attributes need to be considered in iscolation. That is exapolkaining a failure to embody – that is to produce an idea in therefore the body – as it ixsits in its, of which one can only have the unclearest of ideas ( 2/24,amd 27).A individual then cannot idrectly exist within the past – but will ratgher suddebnly dicover itself of the past. Or more properly it will suddenly discover tha what was giving itself with a certainpitch and intesnity – sudeenly falterts. This faltering will be assiocatd with another idea (the ide in the mind of what [precluded the embodiement of this thought) and yet the link is never direct. The past then is a sudden lack of intensity (4/9) as I have a body I suddenly find myself within. The past is then what haepens ecen as a present if being given – to sudeenly pull me away from the giving of this present.
Spinoza has therefore produced six very different readings of what Hedigger calls the having been. The apst is not one thing. It is not (as Bergson might have it) one way of differing from itself – but is rather a polymorh amalugum of several absolutely disperate elelemtns. Elements that are of course liunked up within one another ( the chain of coperatl causes is thrfore part o natures cause, and the idea of the past as embodiement is of course liunked both to nature, and natures order as well as intensity) and yet this being involved witin does not of itself genrate a single time. Hediegger therefore simple faith that I can at any one time act in a part of history – and as I am a part of history – is simp,y miss placed. Being is not a thng that is located within a time, and through a history – but is rather that which asks ‘what history – or way of being throygh history am I in. or ather what pasts- what difsitnctve sense of being in the past am I already arranged within, and what can I determine (3/28). But what is at satke in this arranging – what a single being is moving across that through are utterly disitnctive sense of being in a past – of beeing within the having been – elements that might meet up in the essen as it has being – but which do not gain ana boslute unity for all that. They remain disitnct, and it is the special preserve of the essence as I is existsing to move between these differeing sense in which it is – across which I has being.
Thus far we have two alterntives. Either one can have time, understood in terms of feeback, and then as the monad one has no being- or at least not being that can be guranteed in the universe itself. Alternavitely One can have being – but being is in its essence able tpo rnge across wdiffering sense of the past, either constituting them, and gving itself as they coistitute it – or discovering itself already in them- or ivg itselfm across seprate meobiments that are linmked in it alone – are togther for it lone. The essence is that which disvoers pasts not that which is cuahgt in th past as such. Ic acannot therefore simply act to produce a past – an to unite itself in time –whiout endlessly problemetizing that time. So that one might say that Hediegger pronouncement that in the Augenblick Dasien can give its nature as constant in tim – as it is a aprt of history – and has it chooses a hepor from charatcers within history- would immediateky cause Liebniz to ask ‘ what bing” no being simply own a set of possiblity – as freedom does nto allow it. While Spinoza would note that Heideggger had simplistically confused the past of natures order with thepast of nature itself, and the past tha I give myself in nature – a mistake be thinks is all too common.
However there is a thrid alterantive – that outlones by Kant. For Kant it is clear that both being (is a sense) and time are possibl but not at the same –time or in th same sense. The first part of this is perjaps best illustrated by Deleuze. De;euze suggests that time exists in the abislute difference between the the emprical and the trasncendental self. The trancendental self then is what always is elsewhere- and what has given itself as I think I a relam rarrel to exepreince. As I Is their thinking, then one always moved foard – always dragged into another place, also change. Its being ‘I think’ propels one into th middle of temrpoalitiy – as that which ahs always changed. He empircal self ois then that which si given by this time – that which occur within it and is quite internal to it. My Being is therefore that which is given in ti e – but given as the way that time cuts that being opn – and pulls it of in two constrasting direction. In one directio I am caught as that which must have always moved on, while in the other I fall back into a past duration in which ica nexpereince myself. Being as such is then either that which must be too early, or too late for time. This of course answer Hediegger critism that Kant forgtets that all h is saying is that I think something. The In think is not th I think soemthing- it ratehr the so,mething which straddle and pulls apart being – prevents the I think from being anything more that that which is caught up isn the world – and removinging it utterls from the sometbing that it is.
However there is a second possiblity. It is perfectly possible that under different circumstances – and as one makes a moral judgement that being will exist if a space which cannot be simply located in time. The Caregiruical imperative is clearly something which give a sense f being. As I create thn I am free and give what it means to exist. And yet this being elludes a simple rendering intot ime. On the contrary the categorical imperaitve clearly incvovles in it iven two tnse 0 whose realtinoship simply cannot be subsumed into an overall tiemporal realtion. On the one hand then there is the imperative itself. Such imperative is clraly formaulted in realtion to an u ilimted future. To treat all huamns as end and not means – can surely mean little elese- then let the future of that which has a fuure be you guide. One must act to take one towards a future, in the thknowledge that other different futures – futures I by defintion cannot get to the end of or finish of possible. It is then only as I create such a thought, and freely will mystelf towards sunch a making future of the future itself that ic an act morally. And yet this actio –this apartoicualr affrimaltion realtes itself to the present. I am fre at a point in time, which lket itself be defined by the imperative whiuch embiduies it. As I now choose to act in a certain way – to affrim the pure future of the future here and now, and give the sense for that oure uture I am free in the rpesent. The Augenblick is thn of course effectively the nversion of this move. For Heidegger what is moral I the present crearting the future, for Kant it must be the future that as it asserts its own rights pure and simply – asserts in a present the rights of the future of the future – then it is real – anf gives being. However the giving of time will then complexify this move. Time will attempt to giveof course attempt to relate this represent ack tot ehfuture that immediately producd it. And yet this it cannot do. The very basic resaon is of course obvious enpough. As I am acting according to reason I am not straing within a present but a future. The presenti then make is caught u in realtion to this future. In the sublime – and as apprenhesnion I can realte such a present back to the future 9in apprehnsion) – but cannot ever simply give that future in a past – and so cannot make it present as such. That is I can instal no simple feedbackj between the prosent of the ing in itself and the prsent as such – and so can form no idea other that the morl imparaive and the resolution to .,ive in the moral impeative. So my essential being is as atmporal as my tim lacks being – each preculde and break the other.

Farewell then To hediegger (and good riddance).

Here then are three quite distinct answers or replies to hediegger’s final question. May be time precludes beig or being the past (and with it time) or maybe both the being and time are possible but not in the same breath – such that being and time is inact simply an oxymoron. And yet here one needs to be careful. What I have argued ni problematic in Heidegger is not the double tesne in itself which he expertly identifies and handles – but rather the simple fith that soime how this intrwev and looped up empoirality wil need back on some level to timself. That is that thee will be a moement when the future as it embodies th preisent, and it is the essence of the the past meeting and becomes one. Gedeigger suggesting that this moement is history itself – and that in this sense history is indeed the horizpn ;line of being. And yet it is just this move that bing and time leaves unbthought- and iunthinkable – and for the rasons that I ahe recounted here – namely that there si no reason why time understood as feedback 9and looping the loop almost be defintino must be feedback) should gicve being – and no reasosn why different tmeproalities with loop up upon each other- and simply produce of affirm what it there. This they do then such a mov clearly involves a jumpinto feedback – and as such pulls one beinyond the scope of being – and intot he sacope of time. The challenge then to think what Hediegger and Spinoiza mean in the word being – I to think it in the absence of the loop – tht is iun the asbsence of ciurcualr time. The cahllenge of coure that Liebniz thought faces is to think in the absence of being. These two different radings o what it means to exist across tense could perhaps be characterizd in terms of two different takes on what it is tha it really matte in the world. If one thinks in rterms of the Monad – and the feedback hen one is not thinking in terms of beings and thing so much as events. It is events that create the middle to time, and that are what isa rranging itself through and aross tiime. However tehre si al anlternaitve postion, and one that Heidegger partially follows, one an think in trms of bieng 9althouygh perhaps bing is not the best word for it, as it already implies a temporal – by which I eman a durational hook up). It one proceeds in this way one will attemot to just immediately onto the middle of existing, and think the nature of this middle in the absecne of thevents – that is denzens. What can be in that middle wil lthen be discovered in terms of what is gernated within it, and through it. That is intems of the world it gives itself – and givs always as middle – as being caught in te middle of itself. This is frimly the strategy of Dspinoiza – and yet it is not only his stragedy – other modern thinkers such as Whitehead and latter Foucault have thought from such a postion as well. In the rest of this book these two postions will be furtehr clarifoied. I wil ltake Deleuze (and to a degree early and middle) Foucault as an example of thinmking in terms of the event which I wil lexamine first, before turning to the absoltue mddl of Whitehead and latter Foucault..

Egg and Chicken
There is a level where this entire event or just being in the middle itself resolves around a chicken and egg – which needs to be thought first essence or embodiment? Now this is not just sophristry – it matters where you start. If you start in the embodied, and then look to the sense that embodied has an essence – you start in the world of the event and its ideal. What happens (somewhere) is a real occurrence – an occurenece that xited – or gave the meeting point of many other events (or in the terminolongy used above essence) – a event that somehow embodied there realtions. Theis event the has ramification and thought – effects elswhere – and ndless reinvents itself across differenting other embodiements. What is more as the embodied is directly thinkable – or perhaps better as the embodied is what is thinkable – and thinkable simply because it is the natre – the embodiemtn of another – hen one starts in the world of thought. One thinks- one has an event – Adam does or does not sin (or sing) – and things mutate adterwards – as that singinng reapeats itself, and reinvents what it is – regives what it is across all of time. In this context to be an essence is not to be anything fixed or determined – fo musch as it is a way of naming affects one has in ohers – and the sens that as one is given in others one moves them radically to an elsewhere – to a different manner of becoming. The alternative poistin then starts with essence. Ironically it hit an immediate and very tircky problem of how to form a concept capapble of giving the essence as action. That is the essence that is automtaically in another. The anture of this problem has been rehearsed in Hdeigger. He resolved it as death itself. Only in the attempt to think death can an essencebe given as what it is – as that which is most uncanny. And yet such a solution is a false start in th sense – one can start maybe with death – with the paradox of being an essence for another – and yet that will give one no handle on how that essenc eis grounded- nd whay it is grounded in being. This was of course then Hediegger’s problem – and one he fatally tried t solve by jumping to embodiement – and events over essences. Perhaps this after all is he key to the opening ten propostion of Etjhic. Spinoza is paibnfully aware of the oddity of thinking of substance – of sence pripr to the embodiement in whuch it mut be given. His solution in the constitutiv propostion that open essence is the then to attempot to demonstrate how ever embodying action is already cuahgt up within and essence- and cannto eb supposed withiut sometbing capapble of deqwelling throught he middle of such thoughts. Susbtace the casuse of itself is then the name he givs to th essence which must be emeobided: Attributes, the idea of God, the infinite modes, and the finte modes, then all comprise a complex eb of different embodiements. However spinoza extreme and highly rigours strategy is not the only one possilbe – and in the course of thisw ork I will examine hitehead and Foucault lternative arguments.