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Victor Molchanov
HISTORY AND SPACE.
DESTRUCTION OF TEMPORAL 
HISTORICITY
The ultimate reason for studying history
is to become conscious of the possibilities 
of human existence.
Rudolf Bultmann
1. History’s path to space
There are two main rivals in claiming to be the ground of human experi-
ence, life, and history – space and time. Any understanding of history assumes 
categories of change, present, past, and future. Usually one believes that any 
change is connected with time; and present, past, and future are its modes. 
Thus, the category of time explicitly or implicitly becomes fundamental for 
both, the historical science, as well as the philosophy of history. This logic re-
quires, however, examination, and first of all because time isn’t something to 
explain but something that itself needs clarification. 
The term “time” is often used where philosophers and scientists of various 
specialties – physicists, biologists, historians, etc. – try to clarify the ultimate 
principles of their conceptual framework. One speaks of physical, biological, 
psychological, historical, social and other times. 
In such a situation it is necessary to investigate not only the structural role 
of the concept of time in the already finished theories and doctrines, but also 
how “time” enters into philosophical and scientific discourse. Otherwise, the 
distance between time research and Hans Christian Andersen’s known fairy 
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tale where everyone was compelled to “see”, and praise the nonexistent, will be 
minimal. Certainly, time exists – but only as a function, as a tool for the corre-
lation of movements and spaces. The so-called objective time is determined by 
people on the basis of the movement of our planet. It is unlikely that someone 
will challenge the notion that time does not exist as a substance flowing sepa-
rately from subjects and processes or penetrating them. However, the identifi-
cation of movement and time, the imaginary establishment of the indissoluble 
connection between them, using the expression “time measurement”, urges 
the assumption of the existence of a certain mysterious fluid named “time”. 
It is hardly possible to avoid these identifications and names in ordinary life; 
for the modern man a watch (now it is an iPhone) is a god as officials of the 
country of Lilliput established already in the 17th century, having found an 
engine in Gulliver’s pocket with which he verified fast each of his steps. But a 
watch isn’t time, and in a watch, there is no time, and we do not measure time 
by chronometers (language misleads us here), but one spatial movement is 
measured by another, for example by a coincidence of the watch hand with a 
definite point. 
In a sense, space and time must change their “places”. Usually one considers 
space as the coexistence of objects and time – as their sequence. Such a view 
should be called into question; the matter is just the opposite: time carries out 
the synchronization function; predominantly time is defined as the establish-
ing of simultaneity, i.e., coexistence. On the contrary, however, the sequence 
which, as a rule, is considered as entirely temporal relation is one of the main 
spatial relations of movement. �Trace“,  as well as  “one after another”, doesn’t 
comprise of any temporal relations. The sequence can be represented as tem-
poral, i.e., the relation of earlier-later can be measured by chronometers, but 
the relation of earlier-later is reduced to the relation of first/second sequence 
and to the spatial relation of the following. 
Historians recognize explicitly or implicitly that the present has to be the 
starting point of their research. However, the question is: is the primary char-
acteristic of the present time or space?
The term “spatial turn” has within historical science recently been adopted 
as the turning from the fundamental category of time to space, to geography. 
The turn from time to space within historical science has marked, however, 
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neither a new status of the problem of space nor a deeper understanding of 
history and historical science. Both fundamental concepts (space and time) 
are accepted as self-evident or are borrowed from these or those philosophical 
doctrines. Perhaps nobody would deny that a historical reality – any event, any 
process, any transformation, etc. – is spatial in principle. Every historical event 
is directly or indirectly attached to a certain place, a certain district, a land-
scape, to water resources, to subsoil and minerals, etc. Life of any community 
and all individuals is also connected with definite spaces and places, even if 
this is a community of nomads or travelers including astronauts. 
However, the problem of human space has not yet been put forth in this 
spatial turn; the word “space” is used rather as a metaphor in such expressions 
as economic, geographical, political, informational, etc., spaces. What is space 
in its non-metaphorical and non-physical dimension? What is the primary 
human space of surrounding world?
In phenomenological philosophy the problematic of history is explicitly as-
sociated with time and temporality, and this connection is viewed as being pri-
mary and necessary. In the establishment of this connection, when it is viewed 
abstractly, there is nothing unusual; the unusual is the interpretation of time 
which is considered as the basis of the historicity of consciousness (Husserl) and 
the historicity of being (Heidegger). The understanding of time differs signifi-
cantly in the founders of phenomenology; the common is the priority of time 
in relation to space; it reaches in both philosophers its culmination: the spatial 
extent is deduced by Husserl from the temporal, the spatiality of being-in-the-
world is derived by Heidegger from the primary temporality. Just as Husserl, 
Heidegger tries to present time experience as primary and independent. Howev-
er, one cannot find in Being and Time any procedure of an introduction of time. 
Self-reference and independence of the temporal is presupposed from the very 
beginning onwards. Unlike Husserl, Heidegger merely postulates it: “Temporal-
ity ‘is’ not an entity at all. It is not, but it temporalizes itself.” (Heidegger 1962: 
377) [“Die Zeitlichkeit ‘ist’ überhaupt kein Seiendes. Sie ist nicht, sondern zeitigt 
sich.” (Heidegger 1977: 434)] English translators follow Heidegger’s phonetic 
game and change the ordinary meaning of the verb “zeitigen” – “produce”, “call 
forth”, “appear itself ”, etc. – what results in a tautology. Heidegger’s suggestive 
phonetic row is noteworthy: Zeigen, Zeichen, zeitigen, Zeit. 
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The insufficiency of the argument is common to both conceptions of time: if 
one considers time as something non-existent, but somehow being manifested, 
it does not hence follow that time itself has to be the primary instance. Tempo-
rality can depend on another non-entity. Indeed, time does not exist as an entity, 
but another question is, does it reveal itself or indicate something else?
Both philosophical conceptions are manifest a teleological and historicist 
attitude in one way or another: the “crisis of European sciences” has brought to 
life the teleological “spiritual history of Europe”, “the anonymity of existence” 
the Heideggerian “fateful historicity”.
The paradox is that Heidegger’s new understanding of space undermines 
his attempt of the general and final temporalization of all human actions and 
states. In this connection, the question arises: is history, historicity, and the sci-
ence of history possible on the basis of the historicity of consciousness (Hus-
serl) and of Dasein (Heidegger), which in their turn are based on temporality? 
Or is rather true that it is possible on the basis of mobile hierarchy of the spa-
tiality of the world and being-in-the-world? Is the mediator between history as 
deeds and history as the description of deeds time or space? What is the basic 
object of description in history? 
2. Historicity: time or space as a basis?
The explication of the problem of history and historicity in Heidegger stems 
from the following presupposition: temporality is the condition of possibility 
for the Care. Heidegger reminds us that Dasein not only has death, but also 
birth and therefore the extension between birth and death. This extension can-
not be understood as a simple sequence of experiences “in time”. Otherwise 
only experiences which take place in the now-point would be valid, and in this 
case human life would consist, as Heidegger believes, in jumps on the line of 
now-points. It would be irrelevant to our life-experience that it appears as a 
continual process.
Nevertheless, this is a look from without. To be sure, our life does not con-
sist in jumps on the line from one point to another. However, every morning 
we “jump” into the next day and the motion of our body in life-world situa-
tion can take us away from one meaningful situation to another (sometimes to 
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the meaningless). For example, we take a book from the shelf. Physically and 
physiologically one can represent this movement as continual. However, we do 
not pay attention to this continuation in the real situation. What matters for 
us is only the beginning point of our wish to take a book and the fulfillment of 
our intention. Our experiences correspond to the present meaning situations, 
to our manifold and definite (discrete) concerns and cares, which can relate to 
past and future, but are experienced in the present space of meanings and sig-
nificances. Usually we call this present space “present time” and the problem of 
description of the complex hierarchy of meaning moves into the background.
Heidegger recognizes only one jump – from anonymity to the authentical 
Being and from the vulgar time to the genuine one. His strategy here is as fol-
lows: he connects ordinary or vulgar time to the image of jumps on the line 
and opposes it to the existential understanding of time, in which all three time 
directions interpenetrate. In doing so he uses language that reminds us of Her-
aclitus of Ephesus who was, as we know, called “the obscure”: “Factical Dasein 
exists as born; and, as born, it is already dying, in the sense of Being-towards-
death.” (Heidegger 1962: 426) [“Das faktische Dasein existiert gebürtig,1 und 
gebürtig stirbt es auch schon im Sinne des Seines zum Tode.« (Heidegger 177: 
495)] 
Here one image of time is replaced through another one. The line with 
jumps is replaced through the interpenetrating and further through extatikon. 
It is evident that all these images are spatial as all images are. 
Heidegger’s main thesis concerning historicity is as follows: “In analysing 
the historicality of Dasein we shall try to show that this entity is not ‘temporal’ 
because it ‘stands in history’, but that, on the contrary, it exists historically and 
can so exist only because it is temporal in the very basis of its Being.” (Heide-
gger 1962: 428) [“Die Analyse der Geschichtlichkeit des Daseins versucht zu 
zeigen, daß dieses Seiende nicht ‘zeitlich’ ist, weil es ‘in der Geschichte steht’, 
sondern daß es umgekehrt geschichtlich nur existiert und existieren kann, 
weil es im Grunde seines Seins zeitlich ist.” (Heidegger 1977: 498)] 
1 English translation of “gebürtig” as “born” does not do justice to the original. The 
phrase becomes understandable and trivial. 
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However, Heidegger does not manage to prove this thesis of temporality; 
he does not even try to do so. All his main concepts have been introduced in 
the first part of the book (in the first division of the part one, strictly speaking), 
where the temporality was not yet introduced at all. Neither the anxiety, nor 
the resoluteness and the Care need in their primary explication the “temporal-
ity of human life”. 
The exposition of the problem of history is fulfilled in a spatial language: “It 
(Dasein) stretches itself along in such a way that its own Being is constituted 
in advance as a stretching-along”; “[t]he specific movement in which Dasein 
is stretched along and stretches itself along, we call its historizing.” (Heidegger 
1962: 426, 427) [“Dasein <…> erstreckt sich selbst dergestalt, daß im vorn-
hinein sein eigenes Sein als Erstreckung konstituiert ist”; “<d>ie spezifische 
Bewegtheit des erstreckten Sicherstreckens nennen wir das Geschehen des Da-
seins”. (Heidegger 1977: 495)]  It relates also to all main Heidegger’s concepts. 
Hardly anyone can avoid the spatiality of language which makes evident that 
purely temporal language is impossible.
Even well-known temporal distinctions – the past, present, future – are 
inherently spatial – not only linguistically, but essentially. The past refers to 
meaningful spaces and situations, which are gone or have passed and have been 
replaced with the actually meaningful spaces, and among the passed the space 
of birth can be singled out. In the same way, the future is nothing else as com-
ing spaces, i.e., meaningful situations, and among them, the ultimate space of 
death has its different and specific meaning. This boundary space of death can 
determine the unity of our life, but it remains spatial, as our present and past 
also do. The present is a hierarchical set of actual and potentially meaningful 
spaces the interrelation of which can be measured by an objective, i.e., spatial 
time. The unit of measure of the present and, if one will, the unit of measure 
of the meaning or sense is the space between a sunrise and a sunset, i.e., a day, 
the necessary primary cycle of life. From it there arise weeks, months, years, 
etc., which as the movable hierarchy of activities, aims, communications, etc., 
can also be called the present. In the present, and in a certain space of the pre-
sent, we distinguish the present from the past, the present from the future, the 
future from the past. Time definitions are only names designating the relations 
of spaces and movements. Time as a function is always local; it belongs to a 
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definite place; it is conventional and can be changed for practical needs. Even 
if one assumes that something such as a stream of consciousness occurs, it is 
necessary to take into account that this stream is an assumption and a meta-
phor, as Husserl himself recognized it. 
It seems paradoxical to deprive human life and history of time, but life and 
history are not deprived of functioning time, but rather of a mythical tem-
porality allegedly penetrating our world. It seems so paradoxical because of 
usual synonymy of time and process or historical development. Nevertheless, 
there is only objective time (based on the Earth movement) which belongs 
to history and to which history belongs, and there is no other historical time 
than chronological one. The model of infinite objective time flowing from the 
past through the present to the future was constructed according to the un-
derstanding of history as progress, but not vice versa. This objective or chron-
ological time, however, cannot offer the basis neither for historicity nor for 
the historical science. Historicity reveals itself rather in variable hierarchies of 
spaces and human worlds. 
The concept of history as of a permanent process was criticized by Hannah 
Arendt: “It is […] in the nature of the very image in which history is usually 
conceived, as process or stream or development, that everything comprehend-
ed by it can change into anything else, that distinctions become meaningless 
because they become obsolete, submerged, as it were, by the historical stream, 
the moment they have appeared.” And: “Compared with these theories, the 
distinctions between tyrannical, authoritarian, and totalitarian systems which 
I have proposed are unhistorical, if one understands by history not the his-
torical space in which certain forms of government appear as recognizable 
entities, but the historical process in which everything can always change into 
something else.” (Arendt 1968: 101, 103)
Heidegger did not consider history as a process or development; however, 
he professed another kind of historicism – the historicism of common fate, of 
nation’s decisive actions. Time does not flow, it must grow ripe, it springs and 
culminates in resoluteness.
In the exposition of the ordinary (“vulgar”) understanding of history, Hei-
degger singles out four main meanings of the term, excluding from this list 
history as science and history as the object of science: 1) the past; 2) deriva-
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tion from the latter; 3) the totality of those entities which change in time as 
distinguished from nature, which likewise operates “in time”; 4) transferred by 
tradition. Heidegger asserts and puts the following questions: “The four signi-
fications are connected in that they relate to man as a subject of ‘events’. How 
is the historizing character of such events to be denied? […] Does Dasein first 
become historical by getting intertwined with events and circumstances? Or is 
the Being of Dasein constituted first of all by historizing (Geschehen), so that 
anything like circumstances, events, and vicissitudes is ontologically possible 
only because Dasein is historical in its Being?” (Heidegger 1962: 431) [“Die 
vier Bedeutungen haben dadurch einen Zusammenhang, daß sie auf den Men-
schen als das ‘Subjekt’ der Ereignisse sich beziehen. <…> Wird das Dasein erst 
geschichtlich durch eine Verflechtung mit Umständen und Begebenheiten? 
Oder wird durch das Geschehen allererst das Sein des Daseins konstituiert, so 
daß, nur weil Dasein in seinem Sein geschichtlich ist, so etwas wie Umstände, 
Begebenheiten und Geschicke ontologisch möglich sind?” (Heidegger 1977: 
501–502)] 
Heidegger’s affirmative answer to the last question – “What is primarily his-
torical is Dasein” (Heidegger 1962: 433) – coupled with his thesis that the pre-
rogative of the sense origin and the sense giving belongs to Dasein – “Hence 
only Dasein can be meaningful and meaningless” (Heidegger 1962: 193) – one 
can evaluate as the residual of subjectivism and anthropologism which he at-
tempts to overcome through the concept of world and space. 
From these four concepts of history Heidegger chooses the concept of the 
past which he considers upon the example of a museum exhibit. A certain 
object, for example a tool, is present and at the same time refers to the past. 
What makes it historical, belonging to history? What is the past? After all, the 
equipment is available, and occasionally it could still be used according to its 
proper functions. Independent on its using or not using it is not as it was be-
fore, though physically it changed fast unnoticeably. 
What, then, is past in this equipment? What is “past”? Heidegger’s answer 
to these two questions is as follows: “Nothing else than that world within which 
they belong to a context of equipment and were encountered as ready-to-hand 
and used by concernful Dasein who was in-the-world. That world is no longer.” 
(Heidegger 1962: 432) [“Die Welt ist nicht mehr.” (Heidegger 1977: 503)]
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One needs to consider here if Heidegger’s hesitation is but an ambiguity in his 
explicating of historicity: to recognize primary historicity of the world is one thing 
and to recognize the dependence of it on the historicity of Dasein based on tempo-
rality is another. The latter is connected with Heidegger’s attempt to elevate tempo-
rality to the ultimate principle of analysis delayed for the second part of the book. 
Concerning the Care it means: the Care must be structurally expressed as unity of 
three directions of time. 
Indeed, we can represent the Care through temporal modi, but its allegedly 
pure temporal directions are nothing else as spatial determinations: the ahead-
of-itself, Being-already-in, Being-alongside (das Sich vorweg, das Schon-sein-in, 
das Sein-bei). Space and spatiality means here, of course, not so much physical 
relations (but also them), but the relation of meanings. We-are-ahead-of-ourselves 
means: our future determines our present (and past). This in turn means: our pro-
jects and anticipations change our present meaning-situation or meaning-space. 
Analogically one can describe the present and the past. What for there is still time?
3. Space of meaning and/or space of significance?
Main Heidegger’s innovation and great achievement is the concept (the ex-
istential) of world and connected with it the concept of space.
Heidegger’s world as the connection of references or assignments loses all 
features of the aggregate of things and absolves space of its mathematical char-
acter: “The space which is thus disclosed with the worldhood of the world still 
lacks the pure multiplicity of the three dimensions.” (Heidegger 1962: 145). 
[“Der so mit der Weltlichkeit der Welt erschlossene Raum hat noch nichts von 
der reinen Mannigfaltigkeit der drei Dimensionen.” (Heidegger 1977: 147–
148)] This is the first step toward world and space without any intuited repre-
sentations according to the pattern of a perceived thing, a container of things 
or an order of them. However, the question arises: can world and space remain 
phenomena in phenomenological and especially in Heidegger’s sense if they 
lose their intuitive character and become a set of interconnected functions of 
referring? Can the functioning of references show itself-in-itself? Following 
the references, we run the risk of being dissolved in the world completely: eve-
ry reference points to another one as a guide for action. 
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From without the world can surely be observed as a sum of functions, how-
ever, the world also loses its phenomenality: in the first case we do not encoun-
ter the world, but rather the nearest actual references; in the second we deal 
with the world as an object of observation. 
Heidegger tries to diminish the difference between meaning and sign when 
playing with the word “bedeuten” and “Bedeutsamkeit”. He coordinates the 
meaning of the verb and the meaning of the noun when he avoids the term 
“Bedeutung”: “Die Verweisung, die wir im Auge haben als Begegnisstrukturmo-
ment der Welt, bezeichnen wir nun genauer als ‘bedeuten’. Die so bestimmte 
Begegnisstruktur in Verweisungen als bedeuten nennen wir die ‘Bedeutsamkeit’.” 
(Heidegger 1994: 274) In English “bedeuten” can be translated both as “to mean” 
and as “to signify”, and, correspondingly, “Bedeutsamkeit” both as meaningful-
ness and as significance. The first and misleading variant has been chosen by 
T. Kiesel in the translation of Heidegger’s Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeit-
begriffs: “The reference which we have in mind as a part of the structure of en-
counter belonging to world, we shall now more accurately designate as ‘to mean’ 
[bedeuten]. The structure of encounter thus specified in references as meaning 
we shall call ‘meaningfulness’ [Bedeutsamkeit].” (Heidegger 1985, 201) The Eng-
lish as well as the Russian (E. Borisov) translator transformed the verb into a 
noun being more royalist than the king himself: meaning must correspond to 
meaningfulness. Of course, “to mean” and “to signify” (“meaning” and “signifi-
cance”) can be synonymous, but in Heidegger’s context Bedeutsamkeit correlates 
first with “importance” or “momentousness”. J. Macquarrie’s and E. Robinson’s 
translation does not follow this game with the word’s roots. We read in the note: 
“‘Bedeutsamkeit’ has always been translated as ‘significance’, which, however, has 
also been used occasionally for ‘Bedeutung’.” (Heidegger 1962: 506).
Heidegger attempts to dissolve meaning (Bedeutung) in significance (Be-
deutsamkeit) and to make the latter a representative for the multitude of refer-
ences, in which the world is destined to appear. A reference (Verweisung) as the 
main characteristic of the world has a peculiar relation to sign. In Prolegomena 
he says: “A sign is a kind of reference, and so is a symbol, symptom, trace, doc-
ument, testimony, expression, relic.” (Heidegger 1994: 202) [“Zeichen ist eine 
Art von Verweisung, Symbol, Symptom, Spur, Dokument, Zeugnis, Ausdruck, 
Überrest.”  (Heidegger 1994: 275)]
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In Being and Time a sign is also a kind of reference and tool for indicating. 
This would be trivial, if there would not exist an equivocation in the word “zei-
gen” which was used above in the definition of phenomenon in the meaning 
“to show”, and now in the meaning “to indicate”. English translators are com-
pelled to use the both words: “But signs, in the first instance, are themselves 
items of equipment, whose specific character as equipment consists in showing 
or indicating.” (Heidegger 1962: 108)
However, there is a difference between showing and indicating. Sign (as 
indication) and meaning (meaningful expression), i.e., what Husserl differen-
tiates thoroughly in LU, stand as equal items in Heidegger’s enumeration of 
the kinds of reference. Thus, the world comes to light as a labile system of 
significant references without any foundation in a hierarchy of meanings. How 
is it possible in this case to transfer something from one world to another (for 
example from the world of art to the world of sport)? How is it possible to view 
any world at all unlike the ability to act in this world? What is the meaning of 
the world or any situation in the world as distinct from the significance of any 
activity and of any object belonging to the situation? It is evident that every set 
of references cannot be self-sufficient. It is always based on the set or, better, on 
the hierarchy of meanings, which determine the social order.
Heidegger’s example is noteworthy in this aspect: “As an example of a sign 
we have chosen one which we shall use again in a later analysis, though in an-
other regard. Motor cars are sometimes fitted up with an adjustable red arrow, 
whose position indicates the direction the vehicle will take – at an intersection, 
for instance. The position of the arrow is controlled by the driver. This sign is 
item of equipment which is ready-to-hand for the driver in his concern with 
driving, and not for him alone: those who are not travelling with him – and 
they in particular – also make use of it, either by giving way on the proper 
side or by stopping.” (Heidegger 1962: 108) [“Als Exemplar für Zeichen wählen 
wir ein solches, das in einer späteren Analyse in anderer Hinsicht exempla-
risch fungieren soll. An den Kraftwagen ist neuerdings ein roter, drehbarer 
Pfeil angebracht, dessen Stellung jeweils, zum Beispiel an einer Wegkreuzung, 
zeigt, welchen Weg der Wagen nehmen wird. Die Pfeilstellung wird durch den 
Wagenführer geregelt. Dieses Zeichen ist ein Zeug, das nicht nur im Besorgen 
(Lenken) des Wagenführers zuhanden ist. Auch die nicht Mitfahrenden – und 
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gerade sie – machen von diesem Zeug Gebrauch und zwar in der Weise des 
Ausweichens nach der entsprechenden Seite oder des Stehenbleibens.” (Hei-
degger 1977: 147–148)] In other words, the pedestrians must scatter before 
the threatening arrow. The meaning of this situation consists rather in social 
and cultural relations between drivers and foot passengers in Germany in the 
twenties than in their mutual activity at an intersection which really belongs 
to the sphere of significant references. Now pedestrians have priority to pass 
in many countries, even in Russia since quite recently. The same concerns also 
the favorite Heidegger’s tool, i.e., the hammer. A nail refers to a hammer: this 
is a universal practical situation. However, the meaning of the situation can be 
different: a hammering of a carpenter has another social and cultural meaning 
than that of a man who does it occasionally. 
A difference between meaning and significance is not an alternative. It is 
a difference between two layers of the human world and two main structures 
of the human space. They are interrelated, but in principle different: a space of 
meaning is a space of phenomena; a space of significance is a space of func-
tioning references. The first is open and it opens various worlds and spaces; the 
second is closed as Heidegger correctly asserts. A space of meaning is a space 
of differentiations and differences; a space of references is a space of identifica-
tions and identified objects. 
Heidegger puts forward very important and at first sight a paradoxical the-
sis: “Space is not in the subject, nor is the world in space. Space is rather ‘in’ the 
world in so far as space has been disclosed by that Being-in-the-world which 
is constitutive for Dasein.” (Heidegger 1962: 146) [“Der Raum ist weder im 
Subjekt, noch ist die Welt im Raum. Der Raum ist vielmehr ‘in’ der Welt, sofern 
das für das Dasein konstitutive In-der-Welt-sein Raum erschlossen hat.” (Hei-
degger 1977: 149)] 
The primary characteristic of the worldly space are de-severance and di-
rectionality (Ent-fernung and Ausrichtung). Factually, Heidegger’s Ent-fernung, 
when avoiding the linguistic game which is also possible in Russian language, 
means attainability and correspondingly Ausrichtung means orientation. Hei-
degger attempts to differentiate de-severance (Entfernung) (as concerning 
activity) and an objective distance. He believes that objective space and its 
characteristics arise later than primary needs to make something closer. The 
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question is: what is an objective space? Does it necessarily mean the scientific 
one: physical or geometrical? 
Heidegger describes the world and space of human cares as such. But he 
does not take into account that human cares intend their fulfilment or a re-
sult. Care for care is rather an exception to the rule. The ancient Atlas kept the 
vault of heaven. It would be strange if man must keep the roof of his house 
instead of “objective” walls. Heidegger himself noticed that we need objective 
characteristics for the building of a house, but he does not devote attention to 
two senses of the term “objective”, one of which is not identical with the term 
“scientific” or “physical”. 
All Heidegger’s examples of spatiality bear the trace of an objective attitude. 
Heidegger cannot avoid the preposition “in” in inverted commas that allegedly 
transfers the descriptive discourse in a metaphorical one. However, we have 
here not a metaphor, but an expression of objective attitude which is a nec-
essary counterpart of any concern activity. De-severance transforms itself in 
distance, and vice versa. The same is valid also for orientation and for the Care 
in the world: a result of any care can become independent on this care and any 
independent entity can again become the subject of a care. The phenomenon 
of space is essentially twofold: it shows and realizes in itself both objective 
(and particularly physical) dimension and primary dimension of our immedi-
ate concern. The difference between objective characteristics and the concern 
activity is the first main characteristic of the phenomenon of space. The second 
one is the difference between hierarchy of meanings and significances. Each 
of the members of these differences can come to the fore and be moved to the 
background. One can suppose that meaning is manifold in principle. Meaning 
is not a mental atom or an ideal object as Husserl believed. It is nothing other 
than a set of differentiations. Its simplest form is the difference between object 
and its property.
4. Fate, differentiation, and space
Heidegger ascribes to Dasein what cannot be ascribed to the world (even 
in his understanding): the ahead-of-itself, return to itself, destiny, resoluteness, 
freedom to death, etc. It is noteworthy that historicity of the world is oriented 
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toward the past (at least such an example was chosen) and the historicity of 
Dasein into the future or from the future. Dasein designates now not so much 
the individual existence as the existence of a community, of a people (Volk). 
The difference between the authenticity and the non-authenticity in the con-
text of historicity appears as following: “But if fateful Dasein, as Being-in-the-
world, exists essentially in Being-with-Others, its historizing is co-historizing 
and is determinative for it as destiny [Geschick]. This is how we designate the 
historizing of the community, of a people. Destiny is not something that puts 
itself together out of individual fates, any more than Being-with-one-another 
can be conceived as the occurring together of several Subjects. Our fates have 
already been guided in advance, in our Being-with-one-another in the same 
world and in our resoluteness for definite possibilities. Only in communicat-
ing and in struggling does the power of destiny become free. Dasein’s fateful 
destiny in and with its ‘generation’ goes to make up the authentic historizing 
of Dasein.” (Heidegger 1962: 436) [“Wenn aber das schicksalhafte Dasein als 
In-der-Welt-sein wesenhaft im Mitsein mit Anderen existiert, ist sein Gesche-
hen ein Mitgeschehen und bestimmt als Geschick. Damit bezeichnen wir das 
Geschehen der Gemeinschaft, des Volkes. Das Geschick setzt sich nicht aus 
einzelnen Schicksalen zusammen, sowenig als das Miteinandersein als ein 
Zusammenvorkommen mehrerer Subjekte begriffen werden kann. Im Mitein-
andersein in derselben Welt und in der Entschlossenheit für bestimmte Mögli-
chkeiten sind die Schicksale im vornhinein geleitet. In der Mitteilung und im 
Kampf wird die Macht des Geschickes erst frei. Das Schicksalhafte Geschick 
des Daseins in und mit seiner ‘Generation’ macht das volle, eigentliche Ge-
schehen des Daseins aus.” (Heidegger 1977: 508)] 
It seems that the whole book has been written for the sake of these words. 
The reader has to pass the way from the question of Being to the common fate 
of Dasein as Volk. Das Selbst (the Self) plays here a role of the guiding thread. 
It must be saved from “das Man” and find its proper place in communicating 
and struggle. In Heidegger two last words are separate, but essentially, they 
designate a unity: the struggling community. 
How is it possible to unite people into an indivisible unity or extremely well-
knit community? The main obstacle on this way is subjectivism. Husserl at-
tempts to overcome this enemy through radical, transcendental subjectivism, 
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Heidegger through radical individualization. Formally these attempts are simi-
lar, but they differ from each other essentially. Husserl’s task is to reveal in the in-
dividual empirical consciousness a transcendental dimension as the constitutive 
instance for a common world. In Heidegger a fateful community turns out to 
be the constitutive source for itself where every subject and destiny is abolished 
and retained (Hegel’s aufgehoben). In Husserl truth is opened and established by 
independent persons in monadic community; in Heidegger only Being and the 
epoch can open the truth or conceal it. 
Heidegger brings together as much as possible the historicity of Dasein, of 
Being-in-the-world and of the world itself: “The historizing of history is the 
historizing of Being-in-the-world. Dasein’s historicality is essentially the his-
toricality of the world, which, on the basis of ecstatico-horizontal temporality, 
belongs to the temporalizing of that temporality.” (Heidegger 1962: 440) [“Ge-
schehen der Geschichte ist Geschehen des In-der-Welt-seins. Geschichtlichkeit 
des Daseins ist wesenhaft Geschichtlichkeit von Welt, die auf dem Grunde der 
ekstatisch-horizontalen Zeitlichkeit zu deren Zeitigung gehört.” (Heidegger 
1977: 513)] As much the thesis that historicity (historicality) belongs to Da-
sein, to Being-in-the-world and to the world, is true, the attempt to ground the 
historicity on temporality is, however, doubtful. However much, we multiply 
temporalizations, we can come at best to the conclusion that Dasein, Being-
in-the-world and the world itself are essentially changeable and variable and 
connected with the past, present and future. “Time”, “past”, “future” remain 
only names which replace the corresponding spatial relations as relations of 
meanings. Historicity means properly the internal unity of the future, past and 
present which are spatial characteristics. The introduced temporality is a su-
perfluous essence. It cannot serve for the description of this unity.
All Heidegger’s examples of the historicity of “the world-historical” – of 
equipments, buildings, institutions, and Nature itself show the spatial character 
of historicity. And the point is not only that these ‘items’ are spatial in physical or 
geographical sense, but their variable spatiality consists in a certain hierarchy of 
meaning. Nature is indeed historical “as a countryside, as an area that has been 
colonized and exploited, as a battlefield, or as a site of a cult” (Heidegger 1962: 
440). Geographical spaces are inseparable here from the meaningful ones. Time, 
except the chronological, is ineffective in such a description.
To most of the concepts of time, including Husserl’s and Heidegger’s, could 
be applied the ancient Chinese rule, namely “the rectification of names”: where 
the immanent or existential time is considered, we are dealing with a trans-
formation of hierarchy of meaning and significance. Taken “in itself ”, the ec-
static temporality or a flow of consciousness is nothing other than a mythology 
which rather interferes with description than help it. 
By means of the world-concept Heidegger tries to resolve the dilemma 
formulated by him – between history as the interconnected change of objects 
and the “inner” history of the “soul” (Heidegger 1962: 440). On the basis of 
the world and Being-in-the-world one can approximate the solution of this 
dilemma. However, it cannot be solved through ecstatic temporality which 
turns historicity into an irrational force defining destiny of (German) peo-
ple. Historicity of space and world requires adequate concepts. Space disap-
pears in the fateful community; what remains is only the existential time in 
which people unite themselves without reflexion and deliberate perceptions. 
Heidegger is perfectly right in refusing to believe in percipere and percipii 
as the basic way of relating to the world. However, he goes over directly to 
indications or references as main structures of space and world. Heidegger’s 
concepts of world as a set of references and space as directions and localities 
open a new dimension in understanding of human life. Nevertheless, these 
concepts must be revised due to the uncertainty of their application. A work-
shop of handicraft man would not be different from any other type of human 
activity represented as a system of mutual indicating, for example, from bu-
reaucratic machinery. 
To restore the human character to space and world (these concepts stand 
close to each other) it is not necessary to return to the concept of perception, 
which allegedly is the main constitutive mode of consciousness. I attempt to 
legitimate the concept of judgment, which is the real constitutive background 
of human spaces and worlds. Every human space as a space of meaning and 
significance is a relation of judgments. They underline perceptions, on the 
one hand, and signs or indications, on the other hand. The sphere of judg-
ments in a broad sense comprises not only of questions, assumptions, beliefs, 
conjectures, but also of gaze and glance, gesture, the expression of joy or sor-
row, which are also joined with perceptions and consequently with possible 
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and actual bodily practical motions, as well as with systems of accepted signs. 
Moreover, one can consider bodily motions, especially hand’s goal-directed 
motions as primary judgments.2
Every space is directly or indirectly communicative and intersubjective, 
and to some extent indefinite. The unity and the integration of different hu-
man spaces make them stable and processual, traditional and contingent, and 
in this sense historical.  
What is human world as distinguished from human space? The difference 
is conventional. It depends on the chosen termini and one of the variants is 
the identity of them. However, Heidegger’s thesis is relevant for the critique of 
naturalism: space is really in the world and not inversely.
I try to develop another understanding of human space and world than we 
find in Heidegger, however, it stands close to the latter and hardly would be 
possible without it. Concerning the thesis, which is formally true, it means: if 
every human space is a relation of judgments of relatively independent human 
beings, then every human world is nothing more than a changeable hierarchy 
of meanings which presuppose a hierarchy of distinctions, to be more precise, 
of differencednesses (borders of regions or contexts). In its turn the differenc-
ednesses correlate to the differentiations (“acts”) and the differenced (objects). 
Thus, the correlation between the differentiation, the differenced, and the dif-
ferencedness constitutes the world “inside” of which various spaces are consti-
tuted. Thus, we have three elementary non-mathematical dimensions of space 
and world. 
The essential unity of world and space in the above-mentioned sense is 
based on the essential unity of differences and judgments. Not all differences 
are judgments, but all judgments are differences. Insofar as space belongs to 
the world, judgments belong to the sphere of differences.3 The latter can be-
come clear in every simple example: “This table is brown.” This means that we 
distinguish the color of this table from another. At the same time, there are 
differences (I call them differencednesses) which determine the regions of the 
2 See in greater detail: Victor Molchanov, “L’a priori corporel: jugement et équilibre”, 
Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, Tome 139, 3 (2014), 333–346.
3 The understanding of judgment as differentiation can be found in such different 
thinkers as Locke or Hölderlin. See: Locke 1916: 271–272; Hölderlin 1970: 346–365.
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world – between living and inanimate, sound and light or color, movement 
and rest, love and hate, war and peace, etc., which can be transformed into a 
living space, into a peaceful or a warlike space, and into many other spaces of 
the human world.4 
The changeability of the world (and space) can be illustrated with the fol-
lowing example: every movement of our body is a set of differentiations; it 
changes the hierarchy of meanings of our surrounding world. World as a vari-
able hierarchy of differentiations, distinctions and borders is open to all trans-
formations; it overcomes the isolation of a handicraftsman workshop and it 
restores the phenomenal character of world (and space) which has been lost 
in the functioning of references or assignments. The phenomenality of space 
(and world), as well as any phenomenality at all, consists not so much in its 
self-givenness as in its fulfillment or realization.
In such a world there are no self-identical and isolated objects and mean-
ings or once and for all defined hierarchies of significance. The correlation of 
proliferating differentiations in performance (primary experience) and hierar-
chy of differences makes possible the correlation of “subjective” and “objective” 
dimensions of world and space, of subjective and objective history: history as 
knowledge and history as action. 
History as activity or actions is a continuous formation and transforma-
tion, distribution and redistribution of spaces, meaningful and significant for 
various societies, communities, and individuals. History as a science deals 
with manifold changes of meaningful and significant worlds and spaces form-
ing changeable spaces of the life-world. However, a pure description of these 
processes is hardly possible. This, at least, becomes clear in the modern era. 
If for Cicero “History is the witness of the times, the light of truth, the life of 
memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity”, so for the modern 
thinker and poet “History is the most dangerous product that the chemistry of 
the intellect has invented. Its properties are well known. It engenders dreams, it 
intoxicates the people, it begets false memories, it exaggerates their reactions, 
4 I would like to stress again that it is a terminological question. One can identify 
human worlds and human spaces and define space as hierarchy of differences and 
judgments. 
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keeps their old wounds open, disturbs their sleeps, leads them to delusions of 
grandeur or of persecution, and makes nations bitter, arrogant, insufferable 
and vain. History can justify anything. It can teach nothing with restraint, for 
it contains everything  and gives examples of everything.” (Valéry 1963: 136)  
Certainly, history as a cognitive description cannot be objective. Neverthe-
less, history (better yet: the historian) is confronted with the non-theoretical 
dilemma and choice: either to serve politics and museums or to search for 
the events and processes, in which freedom of cooperation and dignity of 
man find their mutual expression. A difference between aggressive and non-
aggressive types of space could be one of the relevant starting points of such 
investigations.
It would be superfluous to give examples from the military or colonial his-
tory. Life of any person and community is nothing other than mastering, devel-
opment and loss of diverse meaningful and significant spaces and worlds – from 
birth to death. History of “sciences and arts”, as well as any history, can be repre-
sented chronologically and as a chain of causes and effects, however, every such 
representation presupposes corresponding meaningful and significant spaces 
which can be radically transformed without any noticeable physical or geo-
graphical transformation. Antique gods resettled from temples in the modern 
museums, sometimes even without any change of their location. The temple of 
St. Sofia was turned first into a mosque, and then into a museum. As a matter of 
fact, such peaceful transformations do not happen often. As a rule, architectural 
spaces are fields of struggle and means of control and suppression.  
Contemporary art has changed the idea of an object of art and at the same 
time of the art space. Self-multiplying sign systems and configurations of im-
ages (first of all mathematics and art) are two main sources of virtual reality 
– of various virtual spaces which have been broadened immensely in the 20th 
century due to internet and ideological rhetoric. The virtual spaces penetrate 
the traditional spaces of human communication forcing them out.
Spaces and worlds as hierarchies of meanings and values can be deformed 
into the meaningless, absurd, and aggressive. The main means for this are 
again judgments! Any perception itself cannot transform even the perceived 
space; for that it requires first of all a set of explicit or implicit judgments in a 
broader sense including persuasions, imperatives, actions, etc.
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In aggressive spaces time as rhythm dominates subordinating to itself not 
only will and feelings, but also the orientation of intelligence. The most expres-
sive examples of aggressive spaces in the 20th century – concentration camps 
in fascist Germany and the Archipelago GULAG in the USSR. Not only penal 
institutions and others “disciplinary spaces” can be characterized as aggres-
sive, but partly also cinema and theater (a director and actors seek to capture 
the public), sport venues, city transport in rush hours, mass media, especially 
television and internet, and other things which arrest person’s attention. 
A progress in the constitution and an increase in number of non-aggressive 
spaces where the freedom of cooperation is possible, a person’s will is not sup-
pressed, and human dignity is not violated could be believed to be one of the 
criteria for the progress in history. How such progress is possible in the era of 
globalization, consumer society, and hybrid warfare – this question remains 
open.
Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah (1968): Between Past and Future, Penguin Classics.
Heidegger, Martin (1962): Being and Time, transl. by J. Macquarrie and E. 
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--- (1977): Sein und Zeit. Gesamtausgabe. Bd. 2, Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio 
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--- (1994): Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs. Gesamtausgabe. Bd. 
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Hölderlin, Friedrich (1970): “Urteil und Sein”, in: Hölderlin: Sämtliche 
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