present [Vorhanden]. Since this taking care of time comes back to the time itself that has also been understood and "contemplates" it , it sees the nows (that are also somehow "there") in the horizon of the understanding of being by which this taking care is itself constantly [423] guided.9 The nows are thus in a way also present, that is, beings are encountered and also the now. Although it is not explicitly stated that the nows are present like things, still they are "seen". ontologically in the horizon of the idea of objective presence [Vorhandenheit]. The nows pass away, and e past ones constitute the past. The nows arrive, and the future ones define the "future." The vulgar interpretation of world time as now-time does not have the horizon available at all by which such things as world, significance, and datability can be made more accessible. These structures remain necessarily covered over, all the more so since the vulgar interpretation of time consolidates this covering over by the way :in which it conceptually develops its characterization of time.
The succession of nows is interpreted as something somehow objectively present; for it itself moves "in time." We say that in every now it is now, in every now it already disappears. The now is now in every now, thus constantly present as the same, even if :in every now another may be disappearing as it arrives. Yet it does show at the same time the constant presence of itself as this changing thing. Thus even Plato, who had this perspective of time as a succession of nows that come into being and pass away, had to call time the image of eternity: εἰκὼ δ' ἐπενόει κινητόν τινα αἰῶνος ποιῆσαι, καὶ διακοσμῶν ἅμα οὺρανὸν ποιει μένοντος αἰῶνοςἐν ἑνὶ κατ' ἀριθμὸν ἰοῦσαν ἀιώνιον εἰκόνα, τουτον δὴ χρόνον ὠνομᾴκαμεν.10
The succession of nows is uninterrupted and has no gaps. No matter how "far" we penetrate :in "dividing" the now, it is still always now. One regards the continuity of time in the horizon of something indissolubly present. Ontologically oriented toward something constantly present, one either looks for the problem of the continuity of time, or one leaves the aporia alone. Here the specific structure of world time must remain covered over, since it is spanned together with ecstatically founded datability. The spannedness of time is not understood in terms of the horizonal being stretched along of the ecstatic unity of temporality that has made itself public in taking care of time. The fact that it is always already now in every now, no matter how
8. Cf. § 21.
10. Cf. Timaeus 37d ["But he decided to make a kind of moving image of the eternal; and while setting the heavens in order, he made an eternal image, moving according to number—an image of that eternity which abides in oneness. It is to this image that we have given the name of 'time.'"]