Fractious of Glances
1)It is absolutely Heidgger’s discovery that time implies utter discontintuity. That is the way we think of the past is not the same as t way we suppose the future to be, or understand the present, a; and that the mere vulgar idea that time must be a continuum because in the end things pass, and new things happen, is really not good enough to explain this difference.
2)This failures to explain having itself two heads. A) on the one hand and most straight forwardly, without the idea of past present and future we could have no grasp of time continuum. That continuum is therefore a special case example of a wider awareness , which sets the agenda for the continuum. b) but more critically this agenda cannot itself be reconcilled to a continuum. The past is not an idea of a present that was (else it would be no past), but rather a having been. And endearing in being past. Likewise a future is simply not as it is located in the future an idea of something that will be. It is rather an idea of possibility- of the shifting option of what will be, an the inability to simply tie that being down. Or gain the present is not a simply Now; I is rather an excess, a point of realization (of varying lengths of chronological time, through which the future tumbles into the past.
3)Chronological time is therefore merely an artificial construct. It is the moment that the tenses are held in union. That is the moment they are forced to simply say the say thing and in the same way. It is the glancing moment. A possibility, amongst all the others – but the least creative one.
4) The implication of this moves are immense. First and foremost is the change in the notion of what contains the bleeding world of tenses. The containment is no loner the passive synthetic of Time (or duration ) or even flow. Noting strictly speaking flows . There are no simple or even complex continuums.
5) That is Duration understood as the flowing away of duration: Time as a river, or silent, changing mutter, is revealed as a vulgar formation. The mere mystery that time is contanstanly changing is therefore rendered derivative, that within that change, within that differing, one grasps onto a reality, which actively has as its being that movement. Or better whose being it is to be that movement..
6) the think such a being is therefore not to think the continuum and then the kind of thing inside that continuum, but rather it is to think that being, and then work out how that being necessarily inhabits the flow: To better how that flow itself results from the Being of a being, and is not that in which being itself simple exists ) as it is for a flow)
7) So much for the history of philosophy from Aristotle to Bergson. But also it is also the case that the more sophisticated readings of time,, augmented by Deleuze would be, for Heidegger at least a little problematic. Time is not that which differs from itself, as that differs implies that each extended portion of time contains all the others up this point. Each difference is different sure enough, and yet each differs contains other differings. Time therefore contains also itself in differing.
8) But for Heidegger such a move is false for two reasons: a) it is clear that such a containment keeps the idea that time contains – rather than soemthign else (call it Being). B) but also and more critical such a methods risks losing sight of what is the most important point of time for Heidegger: namely that past, present and future are utterly different if equipotent. Temporalty is not therefore repeating itselg in the same voice: it cannot therefore be argued that it contains itself. Or perhaps better, each temporality contains all the others, and does so in a very real sense, without as it is for Deleuze) that contianment involving a single direction of difference, and a distinct hierarchy.
9)That is, where Deleuze (following a part of Heidegger) argues that the opening act of time is a future which repeats a difference; The second act is the a past which inhabits that differs as differing; and finally a resent which then presents that differs in individual cases (as a span in time). Heidegger himself in making ostenstively the same congregation of moves, will also claim that the past does not simply contain the future, as if it were inhabiting (or grounding) that futures differences.. On the contrary. The having been is crating of itself it own nest of difference, it own way of being difference (albeit one that implies a future, and involves creating also a present.
10)The Having Been does not therefore simply inhabit or express the difference of a future, as if it was the manner in which that differing was given. on the contrary it embodies that difference, through its own utterly unique (and different) manner of differing. The Having been always differs in it own way, and does o even as that differing embodies something of the conflicting world of possibility, and inspires ( quite elsewhere) a present which will ‘subsequently’ embody it.
11) The difference of tense are then very really on to the other (and so never univocal). This move is the on that allow Heidegger from tumbling into what he no doubt thinks of as vulgar time. Namely the idea that time itself drives the entire process forward : a move which is vulgar in that it fails to grasp the critical dimension of time (or rather seeks to escape it): that is that time is that which I always perceived from within that which, it must also logically be. Or to be more precise, the vulgar move, attempts to infer from this point within creation something about the absolute ontological reality within which we are all in.
12) This is true even of Deleuze otherwise utterly brilliant gutting of the rather Naive Bergson (and shockingly conventional) formula. Time is that which differs from itself. It is that which one perceives therefore as one it is: and this perception from within carries something about the ontological nature of time itself, as it nees to be understood in and for itself.
13) The problem here for Heidegger is that t argue is such a manner is to step beyond the bounds of phenomenal reality. It is therefore to infer that time itself is, when that being is itself only given within our being. It would be safer to actually keep the dilemma of time, the within me and within the world, as it occurs within us that is as a necessary adjunct to being. Being is that which then embodies a time within, in relation to time without.
14) Once this move is made the position of Death is of course critical. Death is the point the point which crystallizes this move. The point a without destroys a within, and yet does so only in terms of that within (a to the without itself death is an utter illusion). The position of time becomes utterly caught up with the position of death in Being.
15)Heidegger thereby apparently avoids the too speedy flight into ontology. This avoidence raises both new possibilities and new risks. The risks will be dealt with first, before the opportunities are considered.
16)Essentially the risk comes down to Being itself. Something needs to Be across the difference of repeating tenses. It is these repetitions that are Being after all. The problem of tenses which are equipotent (that is repeat themselves differently) become bound into a problem of the curving of those tenses into a Being (as such).
17) This problem is of course not really an anthropological one (humans reasserting themselves when not wanted) but rather a far deeper betrayal of ontology. After all is was Heidegger who argued that is was never could enough to simply argue for an ontological containment function called time (one that contain also by perception of it). and yet in Being he as of course done just that. Moreover His containment factor has the additional problem that it has to add an artificial folding back of temporalities within themselves.
18)Moreover if this lops if genuine, to loop the hoop of being will take one back into a future which was not the same as the future from which one started. That is Heidegger suggests the following progression. The Future (death),to the Having been (options of life standing before one) to the Augenblick (choices I makes), which then open onto futures again (in the sense of ways a life could then go) , and so back to having been again. The problem is then how to understand difference between these other futures and pasts.
19)Heidegger’s only real recourse here lies in history. If one starts not in personal being, but rather in the past, which is transformed in the Augenblick into action, into a moment of destiny, by which a past is repeated and changed (Napolean and Caesar or Alexander, or Heidegger and St Paul, then one can easy comprehend the nature of the difference. The future which is augmented in the repeating of the past by transforming it (Napolean complete Ceasar, while Martin, makes a fool of Kant), rivet together what was with the having been of the future (that is what parts of history will subsequently stand around, awaiting to be futures of their own).
20)Problem of course I that History and Being is a far worse (and darker) combination that History and time. I one really can make history yin an act, then life would be delectably simple, and a few master Wills be they philosophical kings, or enlightened autocrats would be able to run everything..
21)Problem is of course as Deleuze showed so incredibly well it is at this point that the anarchy of choasmotic time enters in, and makes everything pulls into different orders and places It is far better at that point to sacrifice every notion of Being to that of becoming a some latter Heidegger no doubt grasped at too).
22)Problem here though is surely not to loose sight in all this mystery of history ( and the paradox of the the Turn- the Kink or Augenblick, that takes on beyond the Augen itself)of what was so very original in the Heidegger account: Namely that we need o face up to the fact that the accord between tenses and time is never straight forward or simple – and cannot be given the within- without nature of time itself. One can clearly keep his element of thinking without then needing to tumble into the ring of Being that is without needing to bend all these times into single being).
23) Perhaps that is on might use the method of Heidegger but stick within the aims of Deleuze a Choasmosis of tenses (such as would make poor old Martin’s headspin) appears really to be the order of the day.
24) From this perspective Heidegger somewhat laboured, and yet highly perceptive account of temporalities is peculiarly good at doing. Th Having been embodies a future, as something unutterly different form it (and way that which it must give). Likewise a present grasps as the past, and yet is grasping in giving body to the past, does do in its own manner, and in relation to a future which then takes up what is given how, and wises t make I otherwise.
25) And yet as explore elsewhere, there is no real reason for an older here. On the contrary as Dickens explores so very perceptively in Dombey and Son one can find , resents being embodied in futures or past or pasts that make futures directly. Without the noose of being any order is .
26) running at the heart of all this analysis is however an assymetry which needs to be pulled out in its own regard. If one takes a choice or a life, there is a clear deep difference between the role of future past and present.
27) The Future has a clear role in defining what the problem is. To have a problem is therefoe to ask oneself about the future. It is to choose between different futures. This move therefore has two distinct aspects. On the one hand the futures to choose from are just ht: one is choosing between options one is therefore painfully aware that this is the point at which time pulls apart. One chooses in a choice to make a time descreet. That is one chooses to preclude certain possibilities. On the other the act of being a future itself carries with it uncertainity. One is naturally uncertain about whether these choices are the only ones possible – others might also be. One s often uncertain about whether the choice one makes is a real one (maybe the option are not real, or not what they seem). May be even the choices themselves are not mutually exclusive.
28) The future therefore imposses here a point of break, which is not in itself definitive in anything other than being a point of breaking. One knows one must choose, and hat choice will then stand amongst the things that are – even if that choice itself ends up being illusionary, when viewed from a different perspective..
29)The future is a place where he act of choosing therefore demands precise definitions, and does so in spite of the fact that that the ontological difference between those options might be none. The choice is a false one- but the logic of having a future demands still a choice is made.
30)Hence perhaps the Rubric of death. Death is the ultimate point of choice. One does not know what one is choosing (and so cannot in the light of Being’s death at historically), and ye one must make choices, and not worry too much is the choices were false, or took one where one did not want to be – or did not realize was.
31)The Pat is then totally differntly thought. The joy of the past is that it is never clear when or where a problem started. A problem essentially has no actually history. One is always caught up in it, before one realized where it was or what it was (as that being is only imposed inn the possibility illussionary choices it imposes). The past is beautifully open ended – and without clear beginning or end. One finds onself already within the having been, with no showy slip of difference. It is just what and where one it.
32)The past imposes therefore no division of its own. And yet (unlike the future) the past as a having been, is really there. Or rather it I is lost in the maze this is because one cannot tell apart that which were from on another. The past is therefore not a past in possibility .
33) And yet it will of course n embodying previous possibilities, that is previous choices, keep hold of element of possibility. Possibility lies therefore in the past, without it being any the less the past, and therefore deviod of actually possiblity.
34)The future therefore imposes desrete chices 9it is strangely easier to think of the future than the past). The past is indistinct, and yet what is in it is within it alone. is its alone (and every will sand to within it).tah tyet this within will contain still possibilities.
35) And yet these possiblities cannot of course be dragged out of the past without being transformed. It is never the same choices, but rather the choices re-given by the augenblick, that the past could be said to hold.
36)That is its the role of the past to allow though the present other options to erupt into the future (other choices, other descrete possibilities and alternatives). the past contains, that which the present transforms, into options.
37)Creativity – the ability to take up in changing others, is therefore created in the free play of tenses (and need not simply be assumed, moment by moment).
38) Tenses that relate to one another are necessarily caught up in a maze of creation,willy nilly. The tenses ensure that through their differing roles.
39) The Phenomology of tenses is itself transformed into an active creative process.
40)Perhaps the pojnt here, is that we need to value Heidegger for that which he did not value in himself (or at least that which he turned away from). Namely the tenses which open into a choatic relation with one another (and create across that relation).
41)A Relation that needs ten to be grounded not in being (with its resonance in time), but something far odder: Namely empiricism. That is the mind that grasps at the world that is always of another, and which the through anothers itself (ensuring hat it is always within another idea).
42)The within and the without collapse into a more porous membrane, where one is caught up in poses with drive one to be without oneself or better to be outside that which at another hat one also is. Or which force ones to include as a within elements which as perceives appears also without (what else is a face or possession).
43)The imperialism f Being that really does so very much want to be the Be world, and the somewhat effected modesty of becoming, which know it is not the world, but hopes that is enough to really be it anyway, is avoided.
44) The aim is to being the relax of Being – while allowing that being to be always buggered from without (it is itself an illicit act of buggery – so what?). The claim is to keep the chips of shifting perspective, and yet to do so without making a new tyrant (call it time) of that choas. It needs to be something akin to what we are.