Abstract

Nietzsches aphorism "Was sagt dein Gewissen? — 'Du sollst der werden, der du bist' "(Gay Science, p. 270) draws our attention to several modifications of living time: an abstract, a teleological, an existential and a mystic modification of time. The abstracttime (succession of moments) underlies the impression of contradiction the statement creates. The teleological explanation: you have to become what you potentially are (living time as development), seems obvious, but neutralizes the essential paradox of the statement. The source of the statement, Nietzsche's conscience, refers to an existential time, that bears upon a more original movement of life than development, that of becoming authentic (Einkehr). The existential time in turn conditions a mystic movement of fulfillment. Each of these times is distinghuised for its modification of the present (andthe interacting of past, future and present) too: present as the abstract moment, present as continuity, present as the opening up of the lifespan between birth and death (existential Augenblick) and present as the fulfilment of life with eternal being (mystic Augenblick). This study confirms its hermeneutic guide, Heidegger's thought of the bondbetween being and time: through time we are not tied so much to the transition of becoming as to the openness of being. This openness is manifest in the modifications of the width of present, the fundamental phenomenon that Nietzsche neglects in his ontologicalconcept of time