Being and Time addresses being through Dasein’s understanding, that is, in terms of Dasein’s temporality as the horizon that allows the phenomenon of being to display itself. Temporality is presented here as an essential structure; the text does not raise the question of how time itself might begin. In fact, it might seem that this very question is a category mistake: how could there be a temporal origin of temporality? As Heidegger says in 1927 “Time is earlier than any possible earlier of whatever sort, because it is the basic condition for an earlier as such.”[P. 325] It would seem that, as Sheehan puts it, “the genesis of the space of meaning” is “the structure of care” – a structure, not an event. But as Heidegger becomes dissatisfied with the transcendental tendencies in his thought, he turns toward a more eventful genesis. “What does it mean here to say that time is a horizon? … we do not have the slightest intimation of the abysses of the essence of time.”[P. 146] When we stop treating time as transcendental horizon, it becomes possible to seek the event in which time begins. “The primal fact … is that there is anything like temporality at all. The entrance into world by beings is primal history pure and simple.”[P. 209] “Can one ask, ‘How does time arise?’” Heidegger increasingly believes that one can, but he cannot give the traditional metaphysical answer: “through the deformation and restriction of eternity.” In order to address the question of the origin of time, Heidegger needs a distinction between “beginning” (Beginn) and “inception” (Anfang). “The beginning is left behind as soon as it occurs, it disappears as the happening progresses. But the inception, the origin, is first manifested in the happening, and is fully there only at the end.” According to the 1941 text devoted to this theme, Über den Anfang, “‘beginning’ … means a distinctive position and phase in the course of a process. But … here the word ‘inception’ is supposed to name the essence of be-ing [Seyn] … The inception that seizes is the appropriating event. [Der An-fang ist Er-eignis.]” The inception is the time when time and history come to be. “Ever since time arose and was brought to stand, since then we are historical.” “Why is this sudden moment of ‘world history’ essentially and abysally other than all the ‘millions of years’ of worldless processes? Because this suddenness lights up the uniqueness of be-ing … The ‘moment’ is the origin of ‘time’ itself.”

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