Originary Temporality: An Essay on Heidegger's Being and Time and His Interpretation of Kant

The keystone of Heidegger's Being and Time is originary temporality, which is supposed to be a non-sequential, triadic structure that makes sense of not only the sequential triad of ordinary time (past, present, and future) but all of the other triadic structures of Being and Time. Extant scholarly attempts to say what originary time is fail to get hold of it. They have much to say about sequential time, which is the time that is manifest in what Heidegger calls the 'care structure'. But nowhere in the commentary on Being and Time do we find an account of originary time that fits what Heidegger says about it. I offer a novel account of originary time: one that lives up to Heidegger's description of it as a triad of non-sequential moments that demonstrates the unity and articulation of all of Heidegger's triads. Drawing on Sebastian Rödl's work on temporal logic, I identify a triad of temporal “gestures” that we can recognize in the moments of originary time. My account makes sense of the twists and turns of Heidegger's text on originary temporality. I go on to investigate Heidegger's controversial Kant interpretation. Heidegger claimed that Being and Time and his book Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics were about the same problem, and that the triadic structures of both books were grounded in originary time. My account of originary time lets us follow up on these claims. I offer an interpretation of Heidegger's Kant that demonstrates the fruitfulness of my account. At the same time I show how an understanding of Heidegger's Kant can illuminate Being and Time and how an understanding of Being and Time can illuminate Heidegger's interpretation of Kant, particularly Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics..