Time, Temporality and the Opening up of Presence

Frangeskou seeks to develop Levinas’ ethical thought on temporality in order to establish the temporal grounds for an ethical—as opposed to Heidegger’s strictly ontological—interpretation of the 1st Critique. The chapter intends to explore the ontological conception of temporality as unveiled by Heidegger and then the ethical displacement of this temporality as initiated by Levinas. The entire exploration in this chapter is therefore unfolded as a successive commentary on the existential temporality of Dasein which opens up the time of presence, and the diachronic temporality of Being-for-the-Other which, in its displacement of the first opening, opens up the time of non-presence or absolute presence.