ABSTRACT
Temporality is evidently an organized structure. The three so-called “elements” of time, past, present, and future, should not be considered as a collection of “givens” for us to sum up-for example, as an infinite series of “nows” in which some are not yet and others are no longer-but rather as the structured moments of an original synthesis. Otherwise we will immediately meet with this paradox: the past is no longer; the future is not yet; as for the instantaneous present, everyone knows that this does not exist at all but is the limit of an infinite division, like a point without dimension. Thus the whole series is annihilated and doubly so since the future “now,” for example, is a nothingness qua future and will be realized in nothingness when it passes on to the state of a present “now.” The only possible method by which to study temporality is to approach it as a totality which dominates its secondary structures and which confers on them their meaning. We will never lose sight of this fact. Nevertheless we can not launch into an examination of the being of Time without a preliminary clarification of the too often obscure meaning of the three dimensions by means of pre-ontological, phenomenological description. We must, however, consider this phenomenological description as merely a provisional work whose goal is only to enable us to attain an intuition of temporality as a whole. In particular our description must enable us to see each dimension appear on the foundation of temporal totality without our ever forgetting the Unselbständigkeit of that dimension.
