ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts two things. First a consideration of the question 'what is time?' through a deconstructive reading of Heidegger's Being and Time and Time and Being. The privileging of Heidegger on this question reflects Derrida's consideration of the Heideggerian meditation as uncircumventable and the only 'thought excess of metaphysics as such'. Secondly, therefore, the 'relation' of Heidegger and Derrida is to be examined, guided by Rodolphe Gasche's recent discussion of this issue. The temporality of Dasein, Heidegger believed at this time, would provide the basis for an analysis of the temporality of Being itself. The irreducible nature of temporalization, granting a certain time/space in advance of their metaphysical determination, is also at work in the notion of analogy or co-respondence. Temporalization, as the condition for presence, must, above all, be distinguished from the notion of 'presencing', as distinct from the 'present', that regulates the later Heidegger, in particular the 1961 lecture, Time and Being.
