Die Zeit und das Ereignis des Gastes

This text, an implicit critique of a metaphysical understanding of eternity as a nunc stans as well as a critique of a perception of time as a simply progressing chronos without alterity, responds to Anton Friedrich Koch’s idea of A-time which is a non-chronological and primordial time in which past, present and future interpenetrate. Referring to Heidegger's concept of being-toward-death and Hans-Dieter Bahr’s thoughts on the phenomenon of the guest, this text wants to show that the figure of the guest points to a conception of eternity in the sense of A-time. For Heidegger, death denies our claims to a complete biographical unity and a last localization of the self. The text argues that this impossibility might provide important hints for a thought of alterity and that adding the dimension of alterity to Heidegger's thoughts might allow for a concept of eternity whose function is not merely limiting. The dimension of alterity is introduced through the phenomenon of the guest. The most important aspect of the guest is that she/he is someone who ought to not be identified as an absolute foreigner nor as belonging to one's own. The guest thus opens up a gap within the space in which the self attempts to make a claim to its own validity. The text argues that this is the gift of the guest, as we thereby not only become hosts, but guests of the guest and are confronted with the desire of the other and the narrative related to it. Returning to Heidegger, the text argues that it might be more appropriate to conceive of being not as being-toward-death, but being-as-a-guest. Returning to the concept of A-time, it argues that a universal narrative of hospitality can be thought of as the founding event of being and as preceding every moment. As this universal narrative incorporates „that which will have been“, the myth of an eternal past, it integrates past, present and future.