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I. Martin Heidegger, his

beings

and

 

times

 Le culte de la perfection porte toujours à préférer la mystification à l'authenticité.

Paul Ariès

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

1.Starting from Athens and Jerusalem2.On Temporalizing Being and temporalizing being3.On the Way to One-ing4.Times :

Temporalität 

,

 Zeitlichkeit 

 5. 

 Sein und Zeit, Being and Time

: the Book 6. 

 Dasein

and

 Zeitlichkeit 

: Everyday time7.Appendix 1: Some Origins8.Appendix 2: Heidegger and the Nazis1. Starting from Athens and Jerusalem

1.1 The Greek god or personification

Chronos

(

Time

) was said to be one of the

Protogonoi

, "the first born immortals whose forms made up the very fabric of theuniverse". According to Hesiod in his

Theogony

, the first of the

Protogonoi

was

Chaos

. The word

Chaos

is related to a Greek verb meaning "to be wide open", "togape". It is often translated as

The Void

or 

Nothingness

or 

Nothing.

but sometimesas

Infinite Space

.

Chaos

gave birth to

Gaia

(

World

,

Earth

),

Tartaros

(

Underworld

,

Hell

) and

Eros

(

Love

).

Gaia

bore

Ouranos

(

Sky

,

Heaven

).

Gaia

laywith

Ouranos

, her son. One of their children was

Chronos

(

Time

), said to have been a wily god who hated his father 

Ouranos

. At the bidding of his mother 

Gaia

,

Chronos

undertook to ambush and castrate his father 

Ouranos

 

while

Ouranos

wasmating with

Gaia

. Thus we have

Earth

giving birth to

Sky

, a geocentric hypothesis,and

Sky

giving birth to

Time

, thus relating

Time

to the movement of celestial objectsrelative to the earth. Question: Why did

Time

hate

Sky

(

Heaven

)?1.2. In the anonymous

Orphic Rhapsodies

, it is said that

Chronos

(

Time

) begot

Aither

(

Light

) and

Chaos

(

Space

 ,

Nothingness

), and then

Chronos

made out of 

Chaos

a bright white egg from which the god (or form)

Phanes

(

Generation

) was born (or hatched). Propagating life was born. Thus

Time

begets

Chaos,

rather thanthe other way around.

 

1.3. In the book of 

Genesis,

it is said that "In the beginning, God created the heaven[

Ouranos

?] and the Earth [

Gaia

?]. And the earth was without form [no

Protogonoi

?], and void and darkness [

Chaos?

] was upon the face of the deep. Andthe Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be lightand there was light." In Hesiod's

Theogony

, there were the gods

Erebos

(

Darkness

)and

Nyx

(

Night

), children of 

Chaos

.

Erebos

and

Nyx

mated, and produced

Aither

(

Light

) and

Hemmerai

(

Day

). In the

Genesis

account,

Time

is left implicit. ThereGod divides the light from the darkness, and calls the light

Day

and the darkness

Night

, "and the evening and the morning were the first day".1.4. This slight excursion into sources of Western culture is meant to set a mood for alook into Martin Heidegger's work and life. In Heidegger's

Sein und Zeit 

(1927,translated as

 Being and Time

, 1962 and 1996), he argues on behalf of a

temporal 

interpretation of 

Sein

(Being). Heidegger contrasts his standpoint with traditionalWestern views in which

Sein

or 

 Being 

or the

One

is taken to be

Timeless

. The

One

was said to transcend

Time

and

Change

, and with the

Many

which

Come-to-be

and

 Pass-away

, which are

 generated 

and

corrupted 

. Sometimes

 Being 

is described as

eternal 

.. In English, the word "eternal" is ambiguous. Sometimes it refers to

 Never-ending Time

, a

Time

without end and perhaps without beginning, but sometimes itrefers to transcendence of time.1.5. Here is a sample of thinking about

 Being 

from Aristotle's

 Physics

:Aristotle.

 Physics

. i. 4; 187 a 12: For some who hold that the real, the underlyingsubstance, is a unity, either one of the three [elements] or something else that isdenser than fire and more rarefied than air, teach that other things are generated bycondensation and rarefaction... 20. And others believe that existing opposites areseparated from the unity, as Anaximander says, and those also who say that unity andmultiplicity exist, as Empedocles and Anaxagoras; for these separate other thingsfrom the mixture.

 Physics

. iii. 4; 203 b 7: There is no beginning of the infinite, for in that case it wouldhave an end. But it is without beginning and indestructible, as being a sort of first principle; for it is necessary that whatever comes into existence should have an end,and there is a conclusion of all destruction. Wherefore as we say, there is no first principle of this [i.e. the infinite], but it itself seems to be the first principle of allother things and to surround all and to direct all, as they say who think that there areno other causes besides the infinite (such as mind, or friendship), but that it itself isdivine ; for it is immortal and indestructible, as Anaximander and most of the physicists say.Simplicius, commenting on

 Phys.

32 r; 150, 20: There is another method, accordingto which they do not attribute change to matter itself, nor do they suppose thatgeneration takes place by a transformation of the underlying substance, but byseparation; for the opposites existing in the substance which is infinite matter areseparated, according to Anaximander, who was the earliest thinker to call the

 

underlying substance the first principle. And the opposites are heat and cold, dry andmoist, and the rest."1.6. Such concepts of 

 Being 

were subsequently interpreted by Jewish, Christian andIslamic thinkers, and incorporated in various ways into their religions. Thefollowing, for example, is taken from an article on Aristotle in the CatholicEncyclopedia on the Internet at newadvent.org .To prove that there is a Supreme Cause is one of the tasks of metaphysics theTheologic Science. And this Aristotle undertakes to do in several portions of his work on First Philosophy. In the "Physics" he adopts and improves on Socrates'steleological argument, the major premise of which is, "Whatever exists for a useful purpose must be the work of an intelligence". In the same treatise, he argues that,although motion is eternal, there cannot be an infinite series of movers and of thingsmoved, that, therefore, there must be one, the first in the series, which is unmoved,

to proton kinoun akineton

--

 primum movens immobile

. In the "Metaphysics" he takes thestand that the actual is of its nature antecedent to the potential, that consequently, before all matter, and all composition of matter and form, of potentiality and actuality,there must have existed a Being Who is pure actuality, and Whose life is self-contemplative thought (

noesis noeseos

). The Supreme Being imparted movement tothe universe by moving the First Heaven, the movement, however, emanated from theFirst Cause as desirable; in other words, the First Heaven, attracted by the desirabilityof the Supreme Being "as the soul is attracted by beauty", was set in motion, andimparted its motion to the lower spheres and thus, ultimately, to our terrestrial world.According to this theory God never leaves the eternal repose in which His blessedness consists. Will and intellect are incompatible with the eternalunchangeableness of His being. Since matter, motion, and time are eternal, the worldis eternal. Yet, it is caused. The manner in which the world originated is not defined inAristotle's philosophy. It seems hazardous to say that he taught the doctrine of Creation. This much, however, may safely be said: He lays down principles which, if carried to their logical conclusion, would lead to the doctrine that the world was madeout of nothing.1.7. Before the time of Aristotle, Parmenides had said in his poem about nature (fromthe Internet, edited by Alan F. Randall from translations by David Gallop, Richard D.McKirahan, Jr', Jonathan Barnes, John Mansley Robinson and others) :One path only is left for us to speak of: that

it is

. On this path there are a multitude of indications that what-is, being ungenerated, is also imperishable, whole, of a singlekind, immovable and complete. Nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, alltogether, one and continuous. For what coming-to-be of it will you seek? How andfrom where did it grow? I shall not permit you to say or to think that it grew fromwhat-is-not, for it is not to be said or thought that

it is not 

. What necessity could haveimpelled it to grow later rather than sooner, if it began from nothing? Thus it musteither fully be, or be not at all. Nor will the force of conviction ever allow anything,from what-is, to come-to-be something apart from itself; wherefore Justice does notloosen her shackles so as to allow it to come-to-be or to perish, but holds it fast.