On time

From: Paul H.Dillon (illonph@pacbell.net)
Date: Sun May 13 2001 - 14:34:24 PDT


Ricardo,

I have always been fascinated with the question of time and not so long ago
on xmca we time in relation to Jay Lemke's paper, during the course of which
we also peered briefly at Bergson's distinction of lived time v. linear
time. Heidegger's deconstruction of Aristotelian time in Fundamental
Problems of Phenomenology is, in my opinion, one of the most lucid
demonstrations of the peculiarity of the "Western" concept of time that
Aristotle delineated most explicitly but which is nevertheless implicit in
any attempt to posit an "objective" time; including that of modern physics.

Time in any event is not a "truth". It is a dimension of experience that is
acknowledged in all cultures and as such a constitutive element of human
experience although the way it is reflectively posited varies. Two
modalities are mpw generally acknowledged as a result of Mircea Eliade's
discussion of "sacred" and "profane" time which has degenerated into
"circular" v. "linear" time for many. There's no reason to believe that
these categories accomodate all the ways that people have of accounting for
time as something objectively existent. I find it more illuminating to look
at the experience of time rather than the secondary models.

Marx's doctoral dissertation discussion of Epicurus' concept of time
(available on the Marxist Internet Archive) is quite good and succinct. For
example:

"Time, in contrast, the change of the finite to the extent that change is
posited as change, is just as much the real form which separates appearance
from essence, and posits it as appearance, while leading it back into
essence. Composition expresses merely the materiality of the atoms as well
as of nature emerging from them. Time, in contrast, is in the world of
appearance what the concept of the atom is in the world of essence, namely,
the abstraction, destruction and reduction of all determined being into
being-for-itself."

Which could be considered a very technical way of describing the essence of
time as "all things must pass", being-in-itself, that which doesn't change,
what has happened doesn't change.

  Also:

"Indeed, time being the abstract form of sensation, according to the atomism
of Epicurean consciousness the necessity arises for it to be fixed as a
nature having a separate existence within nature. The changeability of the
sensuous world, its change as change, this reflection of appearance in
itself which constitutes the concept of time, has its separate existence in
conscious sensuousness. Human sensuousness is therefore embodied time, the
existing reflection of the sensuous world in itself."

This is most interesting for two reasons (1) the idea that sensousness is
embodied time and (2) the way in which time is attributed an appearance
which in fact it doesn't possess; time really never appears, time is
determined to exist as that which continuously negates appearance; all
things pass, all appearance is change. This posited reflection of time as
objectively appearing has its parallel in the positing of the ego
itself--something which even Kant commented on in his discussion of time in
the Transcendental Aesthetic (Critique of Pure Reason.) I've experienced
the similarity also in the state of total absorbtion in which could be
equally described as "having lost/forgotten myself" and "time seemed to
stop". .

There is a quite interesting collection of studies on the different cultural
concepts of time published by UNESCO in 1975 originally as "Les cultures et
le temp" (contains essays by Paul Ricoeur and Aron Gurevitch) which was
translated into Spanish (Las Culturas y el Tiempo, Editorial Sigueme 1979)
but I'm not sure if it was translated into English. I find such studies
much more enlightening than such publications as the National Geographics
"The Mystery of Time" which sets up the instrumentalist time system of
modern physics as "the objective truth" about time.

Paul H. Dillon



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