Heidegger’s Primordial Temporality and Other Notions of Time

This paper examines the possible contribution of Heidegger’s notion of “primordial temporality” to elucidation of the general concept of time. It begins by surveying some possible motivations for adopting this sort of notion, with special emphasis on motivations arising from awareness of the problem of consciousness of time. It then addresses Heidegger’s claim that primordial temporality is the basic concept of time, and that other concepts of time, and specifically, what Heidegger calls the “ordinary” (vulgäre) notion of time, presuppose it. Some scholars contend that Heidegger does not present an adequate justification for this claim. Invoking affinities between Heidegger’s position and Brouwer’s intuitionism, the second half of the paper puts forward an argument for Heidegger’s claim that the ordinary notion of time presupposes primordial temporality.