Meaning Takes Time to Unfold: Towards a Heideggerian Ontology of Temporal Differentiation

This book proposes a reconsideration of the intertwinement of time, meaning, and the piecemeal unfolding of things. It gives a phenomenological-ontological account of the time-horizon at work in each being’s manifestation, explores the notion of time as a productive resistance in this manifestation, and redefines human finitude and subjectivity accordingly to enable an attentive mode of waiting for meaning. The discussion is significantly informed by but not limited to the works of Martin Heidegger and thus responds to the question of the turn in Heidegger’s career by suggesting a systematic framework, centered upon a generalized finitude of Being as such, which may have consistently underlain Heidegger’s thinking before and after the turn. As subjectivity receives a qualified affirmation in the book, in contrast to both subjectivist voluntarism and impersonalism, this text also opens up the possibility to think of the plurality of human beings as essential to being human. While the book is a continuation of a few traditions in continental philosophy which takes time philosophically seriously, it is distinctive in not considering time abstractly but always situating its conceptualization in the context of what it means for a thing or an event to be. Instead of a mere measure of change, an itself invariant structure of happening, or a new metaphysical absolute, time is interpreted here as the way beings are. The interpretation comes from, and seeks to do justice to, the basic experience of time bringing about wonder, fulfillment, or disappointment. The book appeals to students and researchers working on Heidegger scholarship, phenomenology, and more generally the philosophy of time and subjectivity. It inspires a patience for meaning in mortal transience, to find dignity and beauty in what will eventually expire—that is, in life as such.