In this paper, I will try to understand Martin Heidegger’s notions of primordial temporality and vulgar temporality which he mentions many times in various ways in his book “Being and Time”. In order to put my thoughts and questions in words about these notions, it would be better to practice on an everyday example to show how these notions work.
We can think of a person who is dealing with human or non-human entities in her daily life, at the same time she has an existential that makes the relation possible in which she relates to herself. She thinks about her life and tries to decide her profession in the future. As every person – here we can use “Dasein” which is the notion of Heidegger- in a society, she is allowed some possibilities. Although the possibilities for people differ from society to society, we can say that one can be aware of that there are many possibilities for oneself. When she asks herself that question: “What do I do with my life?”, she can show her awareness about the possibilities which are certain for her. There are many possibilities for her future occupation such as being a lawyer, scientist, artist, or philosopher which can be chosen by her. According to Heidegger, these possibilities create a horizon, and the horizon is defined as “ the openness that surrounds us”[1] by Heidegger. Although the meaning of the term “openness” needs to be discussed, for this paper I do not prefer to argue about it in details and I will use horizon in a narrow sense as openness containing many possibilities for oneself which has a stretch but surrounds us. Since this horizon has been produced by that woman who tries to decide about her future occupation, the possibilities which occur in this horizon come from the world that she is already in and it would not be wrong to say that in one sense the horizon is she.
Among various professions, she has to choose one of them by projecting herself into one of these possibilities, then she can go for that possibility. She performs this horizon and chooses the possibility of being a lawyer, in other words she projects herself as a lawyer. Then she enrolls in a university to be a lawyer, takes some related courses, and she organizes her everyday life in accordance with her decision. At the end, she can become a successful lawyer and in that case what approaches for this woman from the future is she, herself; because it was herself projected into this possibility.
Regarding that point in the future, she stretches out her horizon. She has the capacity to be beyond herself, thus she looks upon herself from that point in the future. In this case, we can say that Dasein is ahead of oneself in terms of time. No matter which possibility we encounter or engage in, we always find this peculiar structure of being ahead of oneself. Here, I can claim that the notion of being ahead of oneself obviously refers to the notion of future. Due to this capacity of Dasein to be ahead of oneself, Dasein is not stuck in present and future has a certain role for one’s life, because the capacity of being ahead of oneself has its roots in future.
However, according to Heidegger, even if Dasein has the capacity to be beyond his/herself, it is not the case that oneself steps beyond her/his horizon. From my point of view, this claim seemed a little bit controversial at first, because I could not comprehend how it is impossible to step beyond the horizon. I tried to argue against that view by thinking about some possibilities which are out of horizon. For the above example I tried to find possibilities relatively above/out her horizon, I suggested a possibility like being a judge after her lawyer career. This could be a possibility which is out of her horizon in the example for my understanding of time, since it needs a further education and also time, being a judge did not seem as possible as being a lawyer. At least I thought that they could be in different horizons. However, then I realized that the only thing I did by trying to suggest out of horizon examples was stretching the first and the same horizon over and over again. Then, finally I found my answer to step beyond the horizon of possibilities and it is purely and simply death.
In our daily life we live in a realm of possibilities and we engage in activities as the woman practices in above example. In that case we draw a line from present to point in the future and we forward along the time, however, Heidegger claims that here we operate vulgar temporality not primordial temporality. Temporal structure of our everyday life looks different from the temporal structure of the horizon. We are thinking in the framework of vulgar time which present takes the priority, and vulgar time covers up primordial temporality. But, how do we think of horizon then? What makes us able to imagine this horizon and link a relation between Dasein who thinks in the framework of vulgar temporality in his/her daily life and horizon which has a different temporal structure? Answer can be found in Simon Critchley’s interpretation in his article: “ Time should be grasped in and of itself as the unity of the three dimensions – what Heidegger calls “ecstases” – of future, past and present… Temporality is a process with three dimensions which form a unity.”[2] Based on this opinion I would like to construe a possible answer to my question, in order to think of a horizon we do not have to do something different than we always do while thinking in our daily life, since Dasein is experiencing these ecstases together in a unity via the process of temporality. In addition to this explanation, we can add that within this certain temporality, future has a kind of certain primacy in terms of primordial temporality.
On the other hand, we have seen that the vulgar temporality covers up the primordial temporality and thus one can think that people who engage everyday activities and deal with vulgar temporality may never find out the primordial temporality in their life. There could be an explanation in William D. Blattner’s statement which is “… originary temporality is Dasein’s ability to track its development through sequential (mundane) time.”[3] With this interpretation of the relation between primordial temporality and vulgar temporality, one can say that Dasein has a kind of intention to manage his/her daily life organization of time, namely in the framework of vulgar temporality, and at the same time he/she has the ability to possess primordial temporality.
In my view, the analysis of Heidegger about how people’s minds work in their everyday life is very convenient to what really happens and it is useful to understand the process while we are engaging in these kind of activities. Although there could be some troublesome points to figure out the relation between two kinds of temporality, this analysis seems very apprehensible and in accordance with daily life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blattner, W. D. (1989). Existential Temporality in Being and Time. In Hubert L. Dreyfus and Harrison Hall ( Eds.), HEIDEGGER: A Critical Reader. Massachusetts, USA: Blackwell Publishers.
Critchley, S. (2009). Heidegger’s Being and Time, part 8: Temporality. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/27/heidegger-being-time-philosophy
Heidegger, M. (1966). Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking. In: Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking. Trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund. New York: Harper and Row.
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