Heidegger- "Being and Time" VI

Heidegger’s temporal interpretation of understanding is part of his attempt to make manifest the temporal constitution of the structure of care. The understanding is an existentiale part of the structure of care. As such, if we are to determine the temporal constitution of care, the existentiale structures, which together constitute care as a unified phenomenon, must themselves be capable of unfolding within the same temporality as care itself. The understanding, treated in this manner, can be treated ontologically as something in flow, in the process of unfolding, a structure whose completion is “not-yet.” Taken as an object in a cognitivist account, the understanding is already determinate, in other words, no longer in flux. In the cognitivist account of the understanding, it is as a completed structure, having already accomplished itself as content in the movement of understanding. As understood by the cognitivist, there is no way to maintain the understanding as a possibility; as such the understanding is always already inauthentic in the Heideggerian sense. The temporal interpretation of understanding is significant in that it is possible to view the understanding as a pre-cognitive structure which is livingly enacted in the world always already involved in the interpretive temporal unfolding of a horizon.

The temporal horizon, in the account of the understanding is taken ecstatically in the sense that it is taken as primarily composed of a past present and a future. The understanding is for the most part a futural structure in that it is always already engaged in projecting its possibilities into the future. It is always ahead of itself in its projections. In “anticipation” the understanding is authentically projecting its possibilities as possibilities. Inauthentically, the understanding simply “awaits” the realization of itself in possibilities, which have been given to it in advance. The present, taken in resoluteness, is authentic in that it remains resolute in the face of the unrealized projections, or possibilities of the understanding. The present, taken inauthentically, makes present the ‘now’ as something present at hand. The past taken resolutely remains possible as a repetition, as something, which remains a possible projection into the future. Inauthentically, the past is forgotten and is closed, or settled the way things are settled in everydayness. In each case we have an understanding, which can close, or allow itself to be determined by the inauthenticity of the given ways of being. Or, it can maintain itself as an authentic possibility of itself in the sense that it can remain open to the projection of its own possibilities.

The understanding, as understood from the horizon of temporality, gives the understanding to itself as something to be understood. In other words as the understanding projects itself into the future and, in turn, faces itself as that towards which it is on the way. The understanding therefore encounters itself temporally as something to be understood.