This chapter discusses how to think of an originary sense of time which is relevant for the ontology of temporal differentiation. Time in the ordinary sense does not help clarify this ontology; we can only begin with cosmological time and subjective time (which seem incompatible) and look for their common root. Cosmological time passes by evenly; in it we find only successive instants, not genuine presents. This insufficiency springs from the interpretation of temporal processes according to their supratemporal states of completion. Conversely, the subjective foundationalism of time explains the constitution of the present in terms of the temporalizing activities of the subject, yet in so doing it leaves incomprehensible vast spans of time far beyond the subject’s reach. Nor can it do justice to the autonomy and excess of time over the subject. The intentionalism of time refines subjectivism by distinguishing between temporal horizons and the content which emerges from within them, thus avoiding the predicaments of naïve subjectivism. Urged by the problem it faces, however, intentionalism gradually liberates the self-differentiation implied in temporal phenomena from the sphere of subjective consciousness, for otherwise the structure of time-consciousness as such would once again become a supratemporal form, leading to the dissolution of the temporality of time. The “evential” interpretation of time takes it from the cosmological view of time and argues that supratemporal “structures” of time in intentionalism can be overcome only if the excess of time is taken seriously. However, just like differential ontology, the evential interpretation tends to understand the events as impersonal and absolutely transcendent. In this way, it misses the immanence of differentiation and synthesis which we observe in temporal phenomena.