Stephen Backhouse
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199604722
- eISBN:
- 9780191729324
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604722.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Philosophy of Religion
Kierkegaard frequently defined his project by virtue of opposition to the work of Martensen and Grundtvig, This chapter identifies the key ‘philosophical tools’ that underlie the Kierkegaardian ...
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Kierkegaard frequently defined his project by virtue of opposition to the work of Martensen and Grundtvig, This chapter identifies the key ‘philosophical tools’ that underlie the Kierkegaardian critique. Drawing chiefly from Philosophical Fragments, Concept of Anxiety and Practice in Christianity, the chapter analyses ‘the moment’ (Øieblikket) and ‘the leap’ that leads to ‘contemporaneity’ (Samtidigheden). Together these notions represent what Kierkegaard meant by authentic existence, and what he understands as true Christianity distinct from the habitual religion of Christendom. As a ‘moment’ or a ‘moment of vision’ Øieblikket refers to both a temporal/historical relation and also to an orientation and way of being. Likewise, Samtidigheden has clear temporal connotations, but is also the means by which humans relate to God in Christ. For Kierkegaard, Øieblikket and Samtidigheden together allow the individual to exist authentically, regardless of the historical or cultural context.Less
Kierkegaard frequently defined his project by virtue of opposition to the work of Martensen and Grundtvig, This chapter identifies the key ‘philosophical tools’ that underlie the Kierkegaardian critique. Drawing chiefly from Philosophical Fragments, Concept of Anxiety and Practice in Christianity, the chapter analyses ‘the moment’ (Øieblikket) and ‘the leap’ that leads to ‘contemporaneity’ (Samtidigheden). Together these notions represent what Kierkegaard meant by authentic existence, and what he understands as true Christianity distinct from the habitual religion of Christendom. As a ‘moment’ or a ‘moment of vision’ Øieblikket refers to both a temporal/historical relation and also to an orientation and way of being. Likewise, Samtidigheden has clear temporal connotations, but is also the means by which humans relate to God in Christ. For Kierkegaard, Øieblikket and Samtidigheden together allow the individual to exist authentically, regardless of the historical or cultural context.
Mark Currie
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748624249
- eISBN:
- 9780748652037
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624249.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book brings together ideas about time from narrative theory and philosophy. It argues that literary criticism and narratology have approached narrative primarily as a form of retrospect, and ...
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This book brings together ideas about time from narrative theory and philosophy. It argues that literary criticism and narratology have approached narrative primarily as a form of retrospect, and demonstrates through a series of arguments and readings that anticipation and other forms of projection into the future offer new analytical perspectives to narrative criticism and theory. The book offers an account of ‘prolepsis’ or ‘flashforward’ in the contemporary novel that retrieves it from the realm of experimentation and places it at the heart of a contemporary mode of being, both personal and collective, which experiences the present as the object of a future memory. With reference to some of the most important recent developments in the philosophy of time, it aims to define a set of questions about tense and temporal reference in narrative that make it possible to reconsider the function of stories in contemporary culture. The text also reopens traditional questions about the difference between literature and philosophy in relation to knowledge of time. In the context of these questions, it offers analyses of a range of contemporary fiction by writers such as Ali Smith, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Graham Swift.Less
This book brings together ideas about time from narrative theory and philosophy. It argues that literary criticism and narratology have approached narrative primarily as a form of retrospect, and demonstrates through a series of arguments and readings that anticipation and other forms of projection into the future offer new analytical perspectives to narrative criticism and theory. The book offers an account of ‘prolepsis’ or ‘flashforward’ in the contemporary novel that retrieves it from the realm of experimentation and places it at the heart of a contemporary mode of being, both personal and collective, which experiences the present as the object of a future memory. With reference to some of the most important recent developments in the philosophy of time, it aims to define a set of questions about tense and temporal reference in narrative that make it possible to reconsider the function of stories in contemporary culture. The text also reopens traditional questions about the difference between literature and philosophy in relation to knowledge of time. In the context of these questions, it offers analyses of a range of contemporary fiction by writers such as Ali Smith, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Graham Swift.
Adrian Bardon
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199976454
- eISBN:
- 9780199346165
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199976454.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology, Philosophy of Science
A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time is a concise introduction to the the history, philosophy, and science of the study of time, from the pre-Socratic philosophers through Einstein ...
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A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time is a concise introduction to the the history, philosophy, and science of the study of time, from the pre-Socratic philosophers through Einstein and beyond. Its treatment is roughly chronological, starting with the classical philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides, and proceeding, in the first four chapters, through the history of Western philosophy and science up through the twentieth century. The remaining four chapters draw on both historical and contemporary sources in examining key puzzles about time. Using illustrations and a minimum of technical language, A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time efficiently covers subjects such as time and change, the experience of time, physical and metaphysical approaches to the nature of time, the direction of time, time-travel, time and freedom of the will, and scientific and philosophical approaches to eternity and the beginning of time. The author argues that the history of the philosophy of time is a history of substantive progress in understanding time.Less
A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time is a concise introduction to the the history, philosophy, and science of the study of time, from the pre-Socratic philosophers through Einstein and beyond. Its treatment is roughly chronological, starting with the classical philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides, and proceeding, in the first four chapters, through the history of Western philosophy and science up through the twentieth century. The remaining four chapters draw on both historical and contemporary sources in examining key puzzles about time. Using illustrations and a minimum of technical language, A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time efficiently covers subjects such as time and change, the experience of time, physical and metaphysical approaches to the nature of time, the direction of time, time-travel, time and freedom of the will, and scientific and philosophical approaches to eternity and the beginning of time. The author argues that the history of the philosophy of time is a history of substantive progress in understanding time.
Ronald Bruzina
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300092097
- eISBN:
- 9780300130157
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300092097.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter delves deeper into the understanding of time; since we already have an implicit but nonetheless definite understanding of time, an understanding that can only arise in the situation of ...
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This chapter delves deeper into the understanding of time; since we already have an implicit but nonetheless definite understanding of time, an understanding that can only arise in the situation of being-in-the-world, and since any such time-understanding first makes the question of the essence of time possible, the question is whether and how one can reach “an ‘explanation’ of time that would transcend world-knowledge,” in an overcoming of the mundane level on which problems are posed and resolved. While the overall problem of a phenomenology and philosophy of time can be stated in general terms, dealing with the problem cannot remain on the level of general conceptual statement; it must be done in concrete investigation and in the critical, interpretive reconsideration of both the method and conceptualities at work in that investigation.Less
This chapter delves deeper into the understanding of time; since we already have an implicit but nonetheless definite understanding of time, an understanding that can only arise in the situation of being-in-the-world, and since any such time-understanding first makes the question of the essence of time possible, the question is whether and how one can reach “an ‘explanation’ of time that would transcend world-knowledge,” in an overcoming of the mundane level on which problems are posed and resolved. While the overall problem of a phenomenology and philosophy of time can be stated in general terms, dealing with the problem cannot remain on the level of general conceptual statement; it must be done in concrete investigation and in the critical, interpretive reconsideration of both the method and conceptualities at work in that investigation.
Benedict Taylor
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780190206055
- eISBN:
- 9780190206079
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190206055.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition, Philosophy of Music
This extended chapter, consisting of three interrelated parts, forms the philosophical heart of the book. The first section completes the exposition of the historical state of musical temporality ...
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This extended chapter, consisting of three interrelated parts, forms the philosophical heart of the book. The first section completes the exposition of the historical state of musical temporality initiated in the first chapter, outlining how music, by the early nineteenth century, came to be heard as the most temporal of the arts. This is followed by a philosophical explication of just why music was considered uniquely capable of uncovering the aporias of temporality, setting up the philosophical basis for the remaining four chapters. A key contention is the idea that music may have been as useful for philosophers as a means to illustrate conceptions of time as much as philosophy may be useful for understanding music. This thesis is developed in the final section, which argues that music may provide, if not a conclusive philosophical solution, at least the most powerful aesthetic reconciliation of intractable problems in the philosophy of time.Less
This extended chapter, consisting of three interrelated parts, forms the philosophical heart of the book. The first section completes the exposition of the historical state of musical temporality initiated in the first chapter, outlining how music, by the early nineteenth century, came to be heard as the most temporal of the arts. This is followed by a philosophical explication of just why music was considered uniquely capable of uncovering the aporias of temporality, setting up the philosophical basis for the remaining four chapters. A key contention is the idea that music may have been as useful for philosophers as a means to illustrate conceptions of time as much as philosophy may be useful for understanding music. This thesis is developed in the final section, which argues that music may provide, if not a conclusive philosophical solution, at least the most powerful aesthetic reconciliation of intractable problems in the philosophy of time.
Elliot R. Wolfson
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230877
- eISBN:
- 9780823235612
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230877.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter engages in a patient reconstruction of the philosophy of time by turning to a text by the medieval kabbalist Abraham Abulafia that explicitly treats the ...
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This chapter engages in a patient reconstruction of the philosophy of time by turning to a text by the medieval kabbalist Abraham Abulafia that explicitly treats the influence of the divine overflow. In Abulafia's mystical system, based primarily on associating an ontological equality between Hebrew words and phrases that have the identical numerical value, the kabbalist in meditational practice receives an intellectual influx from the Tetragrammaton, which allows the mystic to intuit that opposites are indeed one. Yet despite the rhetoric of union that is omnipresent in Abulafia's work, the chapter shows that this is not a quasi-Hegelian totalizing move in which all opposites are dissolved in the unity of the divine. Instead, the unity of opposites must include the unity of the static and the dynamic; for Abulafia, the divine is always temporalized. History is the divine life: there is no static nature to the divine being, but only historical becoming. The influx that the mystic receives thereby maintains the contingency of history and produces influence in Wyschogrod's sense. In this way, the category of influence allows scholars to uncover the intimacy of the postmodern and the classical.Less
This chapter engages in a patient reconstruction of the philosophy of time by turning to a text by the medieval kabbalist Abraham Abulafia that explicitly treats the influence of the divine overflow. In Abulafia's mystical system, based primarily on associating an ontological equality between Hebrew words and phrases that have the identical numerical value, the kabbalist in meditational practice receives an intellectual influx from the Tetragrammaton, which allows the mystic to intuit that opposites are indeed one. Yet despite the rhetoric of union that is omnipresent in Abulafia's work, the chapter shows that this is not a quasi-Hegelian totalizing move in which all opposites are dissolved in the unity of the divine. Instead, the unity of opposites must include the unity of the static and the dynamic; for Abulafia, the divine is always temporalized. History is the divine life: there is no static nature to the divine being, but only historical becoming. The influx that the mystic receives thereby maintains the contingency of history and produces influence in Wyschogrod's sense. In this way, the category of influence allows scholars to uncover the intimacy of the postmodern and the classical.
Mark Currie
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748624249
- eISBN:
- 9780748652037
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624249.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter turns back to philosophy in order to establish a set of connections between temporality and self-consciousness. It also illustrates the inseparability of a problematic of ...
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This chapter turns back to philosophy in order to establish a set of connections between temporality and self-consciousness. It also illustrates the inseparability of a problematic of self-consciousness from the philosophy of time. Heidegger's notion of authenticity adds an interesting dimension to the hermeneutic circle of reading and being. The study of narrative has much to learn from the philosophy of time, but this is one of the places where the direction of teaching is the other way around. There are three types of distance that cooperate throughout the narrative. The first is distance from God, the second is distance from truth and the third is temporal distance. Augustine's relocation of the past, the present and the future is of course based on the argument that neither the past and future, nor the present, can exist, in the sense of being present to consciousness.Less
This chapter turns back to philosophy in order to establish a set of connections between temporality and self-consciousness. It also illustrates the inseparability of a problematic of self-consciousness from the philosophy of time. Heidegger's notion of authenticity adds an interesting dimension to the hermeneutic circle of reading and being. The study of narrative has much to learn from the philosophy of time, but this is one of the places where the direction of teaching is the other way around. There are three types of distance that cooperate throughout the narrative. The first is distance from God, the second is distance from truth and the third is temporal distance. Augustine's relocation of the past, the present and the future is of course based on the argument that neither the past and future, nor the present, can exist, in the sense of being present to consciousness.
Tamara Levitz
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199730162
- eISBN:
- 9780199932467
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199730162.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Chapter 8 examines Persephone’s rebirth and return to the underworld with the goal of understanding what its emancipatory promise and historicity—or relationship to the past, present, and ...
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Chapter 8 examines Persephone’s rebirth and return to the underworld with the goal of understanding what its emancipatory promise and historicity—or relationship to the past, present, and future—tells us about the politics of modernist neoclassicism. Gide introduces the cardboard figure of Triptolemus as a symbol of renewal he associates with the Soviet Union, and with Orpheus’s “backward glance” and the anxious politics of his pédérastie. Rubinstein, Copeau, and Stravinsky, in contrast, think of Persephone’s rebirth in terms of the resurrection of Christ. Stravinsky interprets resurrection from Suvchinsky’s Eurasianist perspective as related to the notion of cyclical history, and to the political idea of Russia resurrecting as a theocracy after the Bolshevik revolution. In his music he realizes the temporal idea of the simultaneity of past, present, and future by composing music that functions as a “vitalist” sculpture, and that can be compared to Aby Warburg’s notion of the Pathosformel. The chapter ends with reflections on how Perséphone failed on the night of its premiere, and the heterogeneity of interpretations it elicited.Less
Chapter 8 examines Persephone’s rebirth and return to the underworld with the goal of understanding what its emancipatory promise and historicity—or relationship to the past, present, and future—tells us about the politics of modernist neoclassicism. Gide introduces the cardboard figure of Triptolemus as a symbol of renewal he associates with the Soviet Union, and with Orpheus’s “backward glance” and the anxious politics of his pédérastie. Rubinstein, Copeau, and Stravinsky, in contrast, think of Persephone’s rebirth in terms of the resurrection of Christ. Stravinsky interprets resurrection from Suvchinsky’s Eurasianist perspective as related to the notion of cyclical history, and to the political idea of Russia resurrecting as a theocracy after the Bolshevik revolution. In his music he realizes the temporal idea of the simultaneity of past, present, and future by composing music that functions as a “vitalist” sculpture, and that can be compared to Aby Warburg’s notion of the Pathosformel. The chapter ends with reflections on how Perséphone failed on the night of its premiere, and the heterogeneity of interpretations it elicited.
Adrian Bardon
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199976454
- eISBN:
- 9780199346165
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199976454.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology, Philosophy of Science
This book concerns the philosophy of time. One might well wonder how a philosophical approach to time different from a scientific, psychological, sociological, literary, or other approach to the ...
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This book concerns the philosophy of time. One might well wonder how a philosophical approach to time different from a scientific, psychological, sociological, literary, or other approach to the subject. Answering this question requires that we briefly examine what philosophy is.Less
This book concerns the philosophy of time. One might well wonder how a philosophical approach to time different from a scientific, psychological, sociological, literary, or other approach to the subject. Answering this question requires that we briefly examine what philosophy is.
Mark Currie
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748624249
- eISBN:
- 9780748652037
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624249.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter addresses the question of inner and outer time, and turns attention on the Augustinian foundations of modern philosophies of time, and an analysis of the narrative aspects of Augustine's ...
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This chapter addresses the question of inner and outer time, and turns attention on the Augustinian foundations of modern philosophies of time, and an analysis of the narrative aspects of Augustine's Confessions. A consideration of the relationship between time, consciousness and self-consciousness is also presented. The representation of memory does nothing to question the forward movement of time. Ursula Heise considers a huge range of factors that affect the ‘experience of time’, and encompasses a range of ideas about time and history, but the philosophy of time is simply missing. Jacques Derrida's impossible object – the internal pocket that is larger than the whole – offers a model for the relationship between subjective time and objective time in general, and a framework for the relationship between the fictional theme of time and the temporal logic of storytelling.Less
This chapter addresses the question of inner and outer time, and turns attention on the Augustinian foundations of modern philosophies of time, and an analysis of the narrative aspects of Augustine's Confessions. A consideration of the relationship between time, consciousness and self-consciousness is also presented. The representation of memory does nothing to question the forward movement of time. Ursula Heise considers a huge range of factors that affect the ‘experience of time’, and encompasses a range of ideas about time and history, but the philosophy of time is simply missing. Jacques Derrida's impossible object – the internal pocket that is larger than the whole – offers a model for the relationship between subjective time and objective time in general, and a framework for the relationship between the fictional theme of time and the temporal logic of storytelling.
David Wittenberg
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823249961
- eISBN:
- 9780823252503
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823249961.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
The Introduction begins the theoretical discussion of time travel and narrative theory with interpretations of three representative texts from the late 1960s: Robert Silverberg's Up the Line, Michael ...
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The Introduction begins the theoretical discussion of time travel and narrative theory with interpretations of three representative texts from the late 1960s: Robert Silverberg's Up the Line, Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man, and Larry Niven's “All the Myriad Ways.” In each case, time travel narrative exhibits essential problems of narrative theory, historiography, and the philosophy of time, all in the guise of literal plot events and mechanical devices. The Introduction concludes with a discussion of the contemporary context of time travel studies in literary criticism, media and film studies, philosophy, and physics. Finally, the structure of the book as a whole is briefly described, laying out what Wittenberg identifies as three historical phases of time travel fiction: the “evolutionary utopian travel” or “macrologue” phase (approximately 1880s to 1905), the “paradox” phase (approximately early 1920s to 1940s), and the “multiverse/filmic” phase (approximately mid-twentieth century to the present). Overall, Wittenberg argues that time travel fictions are simultaneously a minor or idiosyncratic subgenre of popular literature, and a paradigmatic instance of narrative structure and literary form—in short, a “narratological laboratory” for studying and testing fundamental principles of storytelling.Less
The Introduction begins the theoretical discussion of time travel and narrative theory with interpretations of three representative texts from the late 1960s: Robert Silverberg's Up the Line, Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man, and Larry Niven's “All the Myriad Ways.” In each case, time travel narrative exhibits essential problems of narrative theory, historiography, and the philosophy of time, all in the guise of literal plot events and mechanical devices. The Introduction concludes with a discussion of the contemporary context of time travel studies in literary criticism, media and film studies, philosophy, and physics. Finally, the structure of the book as a whole is briefly described, laying out what Wittenberg identifies as three historical phases of time travel fiction: the “evolutionary utopian travel” or “macrologue” phase (approximately 1880s to 1905), the “paradox” phase (approximately early 1920s to 1940s), and the “multiverse/filmic” phase (approximately mid-twentieth century to the present). Overall, Wittenberg argues that time travel fictions are simultaneously a minor or idiosyncratic subgenre of popular literature, and a paradigmatic instance of narrative structure and literary form—in short, a “narratological laboratory” for studying and testing fundamental principles of storytelling.
Jeffrey A. Bell and Claire Colebrook (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748636082
- eISBN:
- 9780748671748
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748636082.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter explores the expression of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's untimely within a Deleuzian philosophy of history. Gilles Deleuze's use of the untimely appeared to be not only a departure but a ...
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This chapter explores the expression of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's untimely within a Deleuzian philosophy of history. Gilles Deleuze's use of the untimely appeared to be not only a departure but a productive misappropriation of Nietzsche, and as such a creation that might itself suggest a new time to come. It then investigates how Nietzsche diagnosed European degradation in the advent of ‘modern historical cultivation’ and ‘history as an objective science’. Nietzsche reports three types of history that form relations either in the service or disservice of life: monumental history, antiquarian history and critical history. Deleuze's interaction with Nietzsche's analysis of history and the untimely is explained. A philosophy of history should emerge in Deleuze that is not only more than a critique of facile historicism, but also a crucial part of his general philosophy of time.Less
This chapter explores the expression of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's untimely within a Deleuzian philosophy of history. Gilles Deleuze's use of the untimely appeared to be not only a departure but a productive misappropriation of Nietzsche, and as such a creation that might itself suggest a new time to come. It then investigates how Nietzsche diagnosed European degradation in the advent of ‘modern historical cultivation’ and ‘history as an objective science’. Nietzsche reports three types of history that form relations either in the service or disservice of life: monumental history, antiquarian history and critical history. Deleuze's interaction with Nietzsche's analysis of history and the untimely is explained. A philosophy of history should emerge in Deleuze that is not only more than a critique of facile historicism, but also a crucial part of his general philosophy of time.
Mark Currie
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748624249
- eISBN:
- 9780748652037
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624249.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter provides an analytical framework for the concept of prolepsis designed to take the term forward from Genette's influential account in such a way that it is capable of accounting for ...
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This chapter provides an analytical framework for the concept of prolepsis designed to take the term forward from Genette's influential account in such a way that it is capable of accounting for effects formerly considered as metafictional. Prolepsis, for Genette, is a moment in a narrative in which the chronological order of story events is disturbed and the narrator narrates future events out of turn. The complications in the definition of prolepsis are reported. Performative prolepsis produces the future in the act of envisaging it, so that the possible transforms itself into the actual. The relationship of Prolepsis 1 and Prolepsis 3 is the axis between time and self-consciousness, since storytelling is not just self-distance but temporal self-distance; and, on this subject, narratology has much to learn from the philosophy of time.Less
This chapter provides an analytical framework for the concept of prolepsis designed to take the term forward from Genette's influential account in such a way that it is capable of accounting for effects formerly considered as metafictional. Prolepsis, for Genette, is a moment in a narrative in which the chronological order of story events is disturbed and the narrator narrates future events out of turn. The complications in the definition of prolepsis are reported. Performative prolepsis produces the future in the act of envisaging it, so that the possible transforms itself into the actual. The relationship of Prolepsis 1 and Prolepsis 3 is the axis between time and self-consciousness, since storytelling is not just self-distance but temporal self-distance; and, on this subject, narratology has much to learn from the philosophy of time.
Katrin Ettenhuber
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199609109
- eISBN:
- 9780191729553
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199609109.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The Conclusion summarizes the main ideas of the book, focusing on Donne's engagement with the Augustinian theology of charity. In Donne’s, as in Augustine's writing, charity is a Christian virtue, ...
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The Conclusion summarizes the main ideas of the book, focusing on Donne's engagement with the Augustinian theology of charity. In Donne’s, as in Augustine's writing, charity is a Christian virtue, but it is also a potent polemical weapon and a complex habit of thought, which encompasses doctrinal, epistemological, and moral dimensions. The Conclusion also outlines the chronological and thematic development of Donne's Augustinian reading in the sermons preached between 1615 and 1631, stressing the importance of the period 1624/5, when Donne's recovery from a near-fatal illness encouraged him to rethink his relationship with Augustine's texts. The Conclusion re-situates Donne's Augustinianism in the wider context of Renaissance scholarship and re-emphasizes the role of Augustine's thought in Donne's philosophy of time. Her study highlights, for the first time, the depth of Donne's reflections on human and providential history: Augustine's texts help him negotiate the linearity of fallen time and enable glimpses of God's eternal love in the resurrection.Less
The Conclusion summarizes the main ideas of the book, focusing on Donne's engagement with the Augustinian theology of charity. In Donne’s, as in Augustine's writing, charity is a Christian virtue, but it is also a potent polemical weapon and a complex habit of thought, which encompasses doctrinal, epistemological, and moral dimensions. The Conclusion also outlines the chronological and thematic development of Donne's Augustinian reading in the sermons preached between 1615 and 1631, stressing the importance of the period 1624/5, when Donne's recovery from a near-fatal illness encouraged him to rethink his relationship with Augustine's texts. The Conclusion re-situates Donne's Augustinianism in the wider context of Renaissance scholarship and re-emphasizes the role of Augustine's thought in Donne's philosophy of time. Her study highlights, for the first time, the depth of Donne's reflections on human and providential history: Augustine's texts help him negotiate the linearity of fallen time and enable glimpses of God's eternal love in the resurrection.
Matthew H. Slater
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262014090
- eISBN:
- 9780262265799
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262014090.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
The hard questions regarding identity, explicitly or implicitly, involve questions of time, therefore inheriting the complexities involved in the discussion of the concept of time. This book begins ...
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The hard questions regarding identity, explicitly or implicitly, involve questions of time, therefore inheriting the complexities involved in the discussion of the concept of time. This book begins the discussion of the philosophy of time by posing the question of whether time exists or not. In ancient times, the reality of time was presupposed even if the concept did not have a clear-cut definition. Ironically, it was during the time when physicists seemed to gain a better scientific understanding of time that philosophers began questioning the reality of time. The discussion of identity begins with Locke’s notion that the identity of a person consists in nothing but memories and conscious experience, which are independent of the body.Less
The hard questions regarding identity, explicitly or implicitly, involve questions of time, therefore inheriting the complexities involved in the discussion of the concept of time. This book begins the discussion of the philosophy of time by posing the question of whether time exists or not. In ancient times, the reality of time was presupposed even if the concept did not have a clear-cut definition. Ironically, it was during the time when physicists seemed to gain a better scientific understanding of time that philosophers began questioning the reality of time. The discussion of identity begins with Locke’s notion that the identity of a person consists in nothing but memories and conscious experience, which are independent of the body.
Robert S. Lehman
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780804799041
- eISBN:
- 9781503600140
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804799041.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Impossible Modernism reveals in the modernism of T.S. Eliot and Walter Benjamin a shared project: both authors sought to resist the forms of narrating events that had been codified by academic ...
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Impossible Modernism reveals in the modernism of T.S. Eliot and Walter Benjamin a shared project: both authors sought to resist the forms of narrating events that had been codified by academic historians during the nineteenth century; and both sought to re-envision the possibilities of historical representation by turning to specifically literary devices. Tracing the fraught relationship between poetry and history back to Aristotle’s Poetics and forward to Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations, the book begins by establishing the coordinates of the intellectual-historical problem that Eliot and Benjamin would inherit. Turning to Eliot and Benjamin, it discovers in their major works—Eliot’s poetic experiments from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to The Waste Land, and Benjamin’s critical writings from “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy” to The Arcades Project—alternative models for imagining the shape of historical time and the possibility of historical change, models derived from literary forms such as lyric, satire, anecdote, allegory, and myth. The book thus cuts across debates over the autonomy of the aesthetic, the political investment of modernism, and the relative merits of formalist or historicist reading practices so as to develop an original understanding of the familiar incitement to “make it new.”Less
Impossible Modernism reveals in the modernism of T.S. Eliot and Walter Benjamin a shared project: both authors sought to resist the forms of narrating events that had been codified by academic historians during the nineteenth century; and both sought to re-envision the possibilities of historical representation by turning to specifically literary devices. Tracing the fraught relationship between poetry and history back to Aristotle’s Poetics and forward to Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations, the book begins by establishing the coordinates of the intellectual-historical problem that Eliot and Benjamin would inherit. Turning to Eliot and Benjamin, it discovers in their major works—Eliot’s poetic experiments from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to The Waste Land, and Benjamin’s critical writings from “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy” to The Arcades Project—alternative models for imagining the shape of historical time and the possibility of historical change, models derived from literary forms such as lyric, satire, anecdote, allegory, and myth. The book thus cuts across debates over the autonomy of the aesthetic, the political investment of modernism, and the relative merits of formalist or historicist reading practices so as to develop an original understanding of the familiar incitement to “make it new.”
David Wittenberg
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823249961
- eISBN:
- 9780823252503
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823249961.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This book argues that time travel fiction is a narrative “laboratory,” a setting for thought experiments in which essential theoretical questions about storytelling—and, by extension, about the ...
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This book argues that time travel fiction is a narrative “laboratory,” a setting for thought experiments in which essential theoretical questions about storytelling—and, by extension, about the philosophy of temporality, history, and subjectivity—are represented in the form of literal devices and plots. Drawing on physics, philosophy, narrative theory, psychoanalysis, and film theory, the book links innovations in time travel fiction to specific shifts in the popularization of science, from evolutionary biology in the late 1800s, through relativity and quantum physics in the mid–20th century, to more recent multiverse cosmologies. Wittenberg shows how awareness of these scientific models leads to surprising innovations in the literary “time machine,” which evolves from a vehicle for sociopolitical commentary into a psychological and narratological device capable of exploring with great sophistication the temporal structure and significance of subjects, viewpoints, and historical events. The book covers work by well-known time travel writers such as Wells, Heinlein, Delany, and Harlan Ellison, as well as pulp writers of the 1920s through the 1940s, popular and avant-garde postwar science fiction, television such as The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, and current cinema. Literature, film, and TV are read alongside theoretical work ranging from Einstein, Schrödinger, and Hawking to Gérard Genette, David Lewis, and Gilles Deleuze. Wittenberg argues that even the most mainstream audiences of popular time travel fiction and cinema are vigorously engaged with many of the same questions about temporality, identity, and history that concern literary theorists, media and film scholars, and philosophers.Less
This book argues that time travel fiction is a narrative “laboratory,” a setting for thought experiments in which essential theoretical questions about storytelling—and, by extension, about the philosophy of temporality, history, and subjectivity—are represented in the form of literal devices and plots. Drawing on physics, philosophy, narrative theory, psychoanalysis, and film theory, the book links innovations in time travel fiction to specific shifts in the popularization of science, from evolutionary biology in the late 1800s, through relativity and quantum physics in the mid–20th century, to more recent multiverse cosmologies. Wittenberg shows how awareness of these scientific models leads to surprising innovations in the literary “time machine,” which evolves from a vehicle for sociopolitical commentary into a psychological and narratological device capable of exploring with great sophistication the temporal structure and significance of subjects, viewpoints, and historical events. The book covers work by well-known time travel writers such as Wells, Heinlein, Delany, and Harlan Ellison, as well as pulp writers of the 1920s through the 1940s, popular and avant-garde postwar science fiction, television such as The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, and current cinema. Literature, film, and TV are read alongside theoretical work ranging from Einstein, Schrödinger, and Hawking to Gérard Genette, David Lewis, and Gilles Deleuze. Wittenberg argues that even the most mainstream audiences of popular time travel fiction and cinema are vigorously engaged with many of the same questions about temporality, identity, and history that concern literary theorists, media and film scholars, and philosophers.
Hud Hudson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198712695
- eISBN:
- 9780191781025
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198712695.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
Frequently, alleged irreconcilable conflicts between science and religion are instead misdescribed battles concerning negotiable philosophical assumptions—conflicts between metaphysics and ...
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Frequently, alleged irreconcilable conflicts between science and religion are instead misdescribed battles concerning negotiable philosophical assumptions—conflicts between metaphysics and metaphysics. This book provides a two-stage illustration of this claim with respect to the putative inconsistency between the doctrines of The Fall and Original Sin and the deliverances of contemporary science. The tension in question emerges through a study of the many forms the religious doctrines have assumed over the centuries and through a review of some well-established scientific lessons on the origin and history of the universe and of human persons. The first stage: after surveying various paths of retreat that involve reinterpreting and impoverishing Original Sin and minimizing and dehistoricizing The Fall, one version of moderate realism about the doctrines is articulated, critically evaluated, and found both consistent with contemporary science and suitable to play a crucial role in the theist’s confrontation with the Problem of Evil. The second stage: recent work in the philosophy of time and in the philosophy of religion provides intriguing support for a Hypertime Hypothesis (a species of multiverse hypothesis), distinctive for positing a series of successive hypertimes, each of which hosts a spacetime block. After arguing that the Hypertime Hypothesis is a genuine epistemic possibility and critically discussing its impact on a number of debates in metaphysics and philosophy of religion, Hudson reveals a strategy for unabashed, extreme literalism concerning The Fall and Original Sin is revealed that nevertheless has the extraordinary and delightful feature of being thoroughly consistent with the reigning scientific orthodoxy.Less
Frequently, alleged irreconcilable conflicts between science and religion are instead misdescribed battles concerning negotiable philosophical assumptions—conflicts between metaphysics and metaphysics. This book provides a two-stage illustration of this claim with respect to the putative inconsistency between the doctrines of The Fall and Original Sin and the deliverances of contemporary science. The tension in question emerges through a study of the many forms the religious doctrines have assumed over the centuries and through a review of some well-established scientific lessons on the origin and history of the universe and of human persons. The first stage: after surveying various paths of retreat that involve reinterpreting and impoverishing Original Sin and minimizing and dehistoricizing The Fall, one version of moderate realism about the doctrines is articulated, critically evaluated, and found both consistent with contemporary science and suitable to play a crucial role in the theist’s confrontation with the Problem of Evil. The second stage: recent work in the philosophy of time and in the philosophy of religion provides intriguing support for a Hypertime Hypothesis (a species of multiverse hypothesis), distinctive for positing a series of successive hypertimes, each of which hosts a spacetime block. After arguing that the Hypertime Hypothesis is a genuine epistemic possibility and critically discussing its impact on a number of debates in metaphysics and philosophy of religion, Hudson reveals a strategy for unabashed, extreme literalism concerning The Fall and Original Sin is revealed that nevertheless has the extraordinary and delightful feature of being thoroughly consistent with the reigning scientific orthodoxy.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226886015
- eISBN:
- 9780226886039
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226886039.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This book began by suggesting that time would be understood in Hippocratic, not Aristotelian terms. Hippocratic time is in principle strictly limited, because as human time it is in short supply. The ...
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This book began by suggesting that time would be understood in Hippocratic, not Aristotelian terms. Hippocratic time is in principle strictly limited, because as human time it is in short supply. The preceding chapters illustrated this view of time by many examples. This epilogue presents additional information regarding an explicit theory of time, which has up to this point been discussed only in an abbreviated form and from varying points of view. This information is to be gained above all from language and the history of language, and has heretofore attracted little if any attention from authorities on the philosophy of time.Less
This book began by suggesting that time would be understood in Hippocratic, not Aristotelian terms. Hippocratic time is in principle strictly limited, because as human time it is in short supply. The preceding chapters illustrated this view of time by many examples. This epilogue presents additional information regarding an explicit theory of time, which has up to this point been discussed only in an abbreviated form and from varying points of view. This information is to be gained above all from language and the history of language, and has heretofore attracted little if any attention from authorities on the philosophy of time.
Patrick Todd and Neal A. Tognazzini
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199311293
- eISBN:
- 9780190454517
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199311293.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Fischer, Todd, and Tognazzini “reread” Nelson Pike’s seminal article, “Divine Foreknowledge and Voluntary Action,” in light of the discussions of this paper (and related issues) in the approximately ...
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Fischer, Todd, and Tognazzini “reread” Nelson Pike’s seminal article, “Divine Foreknowledge and Voluntary Action,” in light of the discussions of this paper (and related issues) in the approximately fifty years since its publication. Nelson Pike presented a powerful version of the argument for incompatibilism about God’s foreknowledge and human freedom—a version that exhibits it as a valid argument that does not commit any obvious modal fallacy. Various ways of responding to Pike’s argument for incompatibilism are explored, and links between the evaluation of the argument and recent work in philosophy of time (including issues surrounding eternalism and presentism) are noted. Special attention is given to Open Theism as a reply to Pike’s argument.Less
Fischer, Todd, and Tognazzini “reread” Nelson Pike’s seminal article, “Divine Foreknowledge and Voluntary Action,” in light of the discussions of this paper (and related issues) in the approximately fifty years since its publication. Nelson Pike presented a powerful version of the argument for incompatibilism about God’s foreknowledge and human freedom—a version that exhibits it as a valid argument that does not commit any obvious modal fallacy. Various ways of responding to Pike’s argument for incompatibilism are explored, and links between the evaluation of the argument and recent work in philosophy of time (including issues surrounding eternalism and presentism) are noted. Special attention is given to Open Theism as a reply to Pike’s argument.
