Abstract

In this dissertation I discuss the significance an absence of ethics in Heidegger's thinking has for his treatment of time. Heidegger's understanding of time develops in a series of strategies that involve both the destructuring of traditional concepts of time and the development of a way of thinking that brings to expression its own temporality. The issue with regard to time for Heidegger is not conceptual. His concern is to let thinking dwell in and through its own temporality. Such dwelling is the ethos of thinking. Ethos, I argue, names the absence of ethics. In its concern for dwelling Heidegger's treatment of time occurs in the absence of ethics. ;In Part One I discuss Heidegger's treatment of time in Being and Time and "Time and Being." I show that the ordinary understanding of time, which is a determinative aspect of conceptual inquiry as such, is put into question at the beginning of Being and Time. The understanding of time that arises from this questioning guides the movement of Heidegger's thinking from his treatment of time as authentic temporality in Being and Time, to true time in "Time and Being." I show that "Time and Being" does not constitute a rejection of the Being and Time, but is rather a transformed continuation of the path of thinking begun in Being and Time. I discuss the role Heidegger's treatment of time plays in the movement of his thinking. ;In Part Two I consider the absence of ethics in Heidegger's thinking. I argue that authenticity and Ereignis are not ethical notions for Heidegger. Furthermore, I show that Heidegger does not fall prey to strategies of implicit self-justification. Finally, I show that the absence of ethics is an integral part of the non-conceptual treatment of time. These two arise together in a non-metaphysical path of thinking. ;I conclude with a series of observations about the significance Heidegger's treatment of time and ethos has for the question of Heidegger's difference from metaphysics