Time

Orientation is temporal in itself. As far as it always copes with new circumstances, new situations, and never-ending change, orientation also deals with time. Its function is thus to find its way with time, to keep up with the times. Orientation is always an orientation about time in time or an orientation for a time (chap. 1.2). Time in its most unlimited sense means that all things can change (including the sense of time). Precisely this is why everything is always (more or less) uncertain. In situations of orientation, time is experienced as time shortage and time pressure in finding, assessing, and selecting points of reference, clues, leads, and footholds that change in changing situations (chap. 3.2 and 6.2). Trying to fix time, we conceive of it by fixed terms that allow measuring it. This works. But apparently fixed terms can change over time as well. Thus, a fixed time is time and not time at the same time (if you say ‘now,’ now is just gone). As a result, time is paradoxical, and all that involves time becomes paradoxical, too.

XI-XIII, XV, 2, 8-9, 26-29, 49-57, 60, 63, 73-74, 76, 81, 94-95, 98-99, 107, 160, 164-165, 169, 184-185, 193, 195, 199, 211, 216, 227, 247-248, 253, 256, 260, 262, 267-271, 276, 281, 283

 

Glossary

Reinhard Mueller