Heidegger's "temporal idealism"

(an exchange from a forum)
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I am currently re-reading Blattner’s Heidegger’s Temporal Idealism. Among the books on SZ I am familiar with, I believe this to be the best. This is despite my disagreement with Blattner’s major point. In fact, the advantage that makes this book all but unique in Heidegger studies is that it has a point at all, whereas most others that I have across are either unquestioningly following Heidegger’s pronouncements, doing a kind of pious hermeneutics of his thought, as if he were a Church Father, or tracing the genesis of his idioms, as if he were a poet. At best, this or that particular point made by Heidegger is critically dealt with.
Blattner differs in that he (A) points out the thesis which he believes to be pivotal to Heidegger whole magnum opus, and (B) puts this thesis into question, actually claiming that Heidegger fails to demonstrate it.
So we have Blattner’s reconstruction of Heidegger’s thesis (let’s designate it THB), and Blattner’s own thesis (let’s designate it TB).
TB, in its turn, has two parts:
(a) Heidegger claims to have demonstrated THB, but (b) in fact he fails to do this.
Part (b) is the one with which I intuitively disagree. THB, on the other hand, seems to me prima facie correct.
Succintly put, it states that, for Heidegger, time in the mode we know it (“ordinary time”), which is sequential, originates form another mode of time (“originary time”), which is non-sequential.
This thesis, Blattner claims, is maintained by Heidegger not only in SZ but, also, in Basic Problems, and, to some extent, in earlier lecture courses.
Now, although, intuitively, THB seems to me correct (i.e., I believe Heidegger is, indeed, a "temporal idealist"), I am not sure that, agreeing with it, I invest the locutions “mode of...”, “sequential”, and “originates”, employed by Blattner, with the same respective meanings as he does.
To test TB (which is the purpose of my re-rereading Blattner’s book) I will thus have to answer the following questions:
(1) what does Heidegger mean by sequential “time”, and in what sense is it for him “sequential”?
(2) what is that on which the sequence of time for him depends, and in what sense that can also be possibly called “time”?
(3) what is precisely the character of this "dependence"?
Should there be a sufficient interest in this topic (demonstrated by a stimulating feedback ), I will be posting here my further reflections on it, as I proceed.
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I think you should post your thoughts regardless of the feedback. I'm certaintly interested but am not sure if you have a solid position on this issue or if you're still trying to clarify it. Please post any definite ideas you have about this so that we might respond more appropriately... we might otherwise misconstrue the meaning of your questions.

I am having a difficult time trying to describe sequential time without resorting to the typical Heideggerian terminology ('a series of nows', 'linear time', an experience of time as being 'present at hand' ) In the simplest language, sequential time seems to be a kind of reified time, in which each "moment" follows as a consequence of a prior one. But this seems TOO simple.

By your second question, are you asking what original time is?
Or are you asking why/how a sequence of moments originates from H's ideal "temporality" (always anticipating, always already being in etc???)? And where does 'world time' fit in? It's not quite sequential or original time but has more to do with an appropriate time to do something, right?

When you ask how that on which sequential time depends can be called time, are you implying that it is in some way inappropriate to call it time?
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I do not have any position so far, only some "fore-conceptions" and "fore-sights"
Blattner is extremely provocative: he claims that early H.'s whole project is a failure. One cannot be authentically a Heideggerian without taking a stand on this.
So, I am beginning to work through Bl.'s argument.
It may turn out, in the end, that he is actually right. I am open to this possibility.

So far I am not clear about how exactly Bl. construes sequential time in H. (but I am still only on p. 110 of 310 ).
My major question at this point is: the sequence of what is time thus understood? In other words: what are the elements of the "sequence"?

I see two possible answers to this question:
(1)
"nows" (="moments", or "spans" of time);
(2)
"dates" (="whens", not fruits ; in particular, those of the positions of the sun and/or the phases of the moon).

According to (1), time itself is a succession, a "flux". Such is, indeed, an "ordinary" (=popular) view. It is, of course, as absurd as it is naive, for a flux (and a change in general) is possible only in time.

Time itself cannot possibly be in time. It is thus not itself a succession.
Yet it still can be called "sequential" in the sense that is an immutable a priori form of any possible succession (in particular, that of "whens").

E.g., we say "today is July 13th", then "today is July 14th", both statements being true.
If sequentiality is taken in the sense (1), this means that one "substance" of today kind replaced another one of the same kind.
But if sequentiality is taken in the sense (2), the assumption is that "today" (=a spanned "now") is an unchanging form, or slot, one content of which, namely, "July 14th", replaced another one, namely "July 13th".

Does this distinction make sense?
(I will address your other questions later)
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I didn't even see that issue before!
Yes, the distinction is clear, I think.

But, if (2) is correct, and time is an unchanging form, even with variations of content, wouldn't "time" be an empty concept? In this case, the ordinary understanding of time is echoing that of Being (in the sense laid out by H at the opening of SZ).

I know we haven't gotten to Blattner's argument yet and that we're just laying the groundwork for it, but since sequential time is the ordinary conception of time, a lot more would need to be said to deem H's work "a failure".
That there is a conceptual error inherent in "a series of nows" or that the notion of time as an ideal form ("a series of whens") lacks any meaning only validates H's position since he claims that the conception of time ("sequential" time) is derivitive. There is almost an implicit assumption that such a conception must be flawed or, at the very least, incomplete.

But, I suppose it could raise problems in determing what non-sequential time is. Can you please explain in what sense H's idea of original time is "ideal"? It seems to me like there are at least a few ways to conceive idealism.

Also, not to detract from the main issue of your post, but have you ever read Stanley Rosen's The Question of Being: A Reversal of Heidegger? (I'm not sure he always understands Heidegger's project, but it is also very interesting challenge to Heidegger). Also, The Irony of Heidegger, which I have never read (because it was too expensive and not yet in the library), is supposed to call Heidegger's work into question.
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Of course, for Kant (and H. in this period is, arguably, a Kantian) any concept as such (i.e. without intuitions) is, famously, "empty".
Time, however, is not a concept (let alone, an empirical one), but an a priori condition of the possibility of all (sensible) experience (in particular, that of change).
H., if my fore-sight is correct, goes further by raising (and answering) the question about the being of this possibility. He shows, how exactly this "empty form" of time exists.

As both I and Bl. see it, for H. the "understanding" (or, more accurately, "interpretation") of time as sequential is not so much "flawed" as it is derivative.
(Of course, H. does famously say that in ontology every derivation implies degeneration.... )
It is precisely the derivation of time's sequentiality that, Bl. claims, H. fails to demonstrate.
But, if sequentiality, being an essential feature of "ordinary" time, cannot be shown to derive from Dasein's existence, then one have no grounds to claim, as H. does, that all modes of times (including the "world time", which, on Bl.'s reading of SZ, is also sequential, just as the universal, or ordinary, time is) depend on Dasein (which claim constitutes the "temporal idealism" championed, on Bl.'s reading, by H.).

Rosen's book you mentioned has been sitting on my desk for quite a while, but I have not been able to make myself to read it. My impression is that it is more about Rosen than about Heidegger.
I.e., Rosen seems to be criticizing H., on his, rather than on H.'s, own grounds. This is what makes it much less interesting to me.
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OK. I think I get it. When you first posted this, I was especially interested in what you meant by your second and third questions:

(2) what is that on which the sequence of time for him depends...
(3) what is precisely the character of this "dependence"?

Now, I think I see what you were getting at. Why sequentiality and not something else? How exactly is sequentiality grounded in original time, and what does it say about original time?

I like what you said about time- that it is the a priori condition for the possibility of change. But, I thought this pertained only to original time, not sequential time. I was under the impression that a key difference between sequential time and original time was that time becomes conceptualized (and thus always misconceptualized) in the former.

Please post further updates on Blattner's position.

Rosen is a little self-absorbed, I think, but I find his grandiosity extremely entertaining He has a caustic writing style, often misunderstands H's intentions and seems to me to be a cranky, disgruntled man. But, every once in a while, he says something very thought provoking...
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Interestingly, as I went on reading, I have almost immediately come across Bl.'s dealing with an objection to his thesis implied precisely by my distinction between sequentiality (1) and (2).
The thesis, I will repeat, is that the "originary time" is not sequential in the sense the "ordinary time" is, namely, in the sense that "the future succeeds the present, which in turn succeeds the past" (p. 92) .
The objection is that the three dimensions of the "originary time" (or, rather, "temporality") are, for H. , the "extases" directed towards things, respectively, future, present, and past. And when H. states (SZ, H. 350) that "temporalizing does not mean a 'succession'", he specifies right away that it is the succession of the extases that he has in mind. However, the sequentiality even of the "ordinary time" does not imply that, say, one's anticipation of things future "succeeds" somehow one's encountering of things present. Thus, the sequentiality H. denies to the originary temporality is not that which one would normally ascribe to the "ordinary time".
Bl.'s response to this is that the respective "schemata", towards which the extases are directed, also do not succeed each other (even though H. does not mention this explicitly).
E.g., as I am swimming towards a buoy, whereas my "looking forward" to reaching it is invariably there until I actually reach it, my present distance from it constantly gets succeeded by a future shorter one.
This "looking forward" towards reaching the buoy, however, is not what H. means by the originary futural extasis. The horizontal schema of the latter, defined as its "toward-which", is, for H., "for-the-sake-of-itself" (SZ, H. 365), where "itself" means a certain possibility (whether authentic of not) of Dasein's being.
Say, I am swimming now, towards that buoy, for the sake of being a swimmer (whether in das Man's eyes or in my own unique sense). My directedness here and now towards the goal of reaching the buoy is motivated by (and thus depends upon) my directedness to the "goal" of being a swimmer.
Unlike the buoy towards which I am swimming, however, the goal of being a swimmer can never possibly be finally reached. To be a swimmer, I am to swim again and again. The possibility of being a swimmer thus, unlike the possibility of reaching the buoy I am swimming towards, cannot possibly be actualized. I.e., it is not exhausted, as a possibility, by any actualization of it.
It is thus a kind of "thing" future that cannot, in principle, "succeed" that which I am presently doing in order to reach it, namely, swimming to that buoy.