Three recently published books, by Stavros Tombazos, Jonathan Martineau, and Harry Harootunian, join a now established body of literature that highlights the temporal aspects of Marx’s work. Their differences notwithstanding, these books are united by the conviction that, at its core, capitalism is an immense and complex organisation of time, and thus that the importance of Marx’s work is realised by its singular contribution to our understanding of this. Each book is centrally concerned with the historically specific character of (...) capital’s temporal order, such that each presents a new reading of the relationship between capitalism and historical time. (shrink)

This dissertation is an investigation of the questions of time, history, and facticity in Dilthey and Heidegger. It is an exploration of the contextual character of experience and the scope and limits of understanding and interpretation. In particular, this work considers their historical and temporal character and relation to facticity. Facticity is that which escapes and resists interpretation, narration, and understanding. In Heidegger's language, facticity indicates the "thrownness" and "uncanniness" of existence which throws the "subject" and its construction (...) of meaning into question. As such, facticity is a positive characteristic of the finitude of human existence. I offer a reconstruction of the question of history in the works of Dilthey and Heidegger through an analysis of "historicality" . The discussion of Dilthey attempts to clarify his project of a "critique of historical reason" and his grounding of the human sciences. The interpretation of Heidegger is based on Heidegger's "hermeneutics of factical life" as developed in his lecture courses of the early 1920's and his thinking of the "event"-character of being in his works of the 1930's. (shrink)

Although Nicholas of Cusa occasionally discussed how the universe must be understood as the unfolding of the absolutely infinite in time, he left open questions about any distinction between natural time and historical time, how either notion of time might depend upon the nature of divine providence, and how his understanding of divine providence relates to other traditional philosophical views. From texts in which Cusanus discussed these questions, this paper will attempt to make explicit how Cusanus (...) understood divine providence. The paper will also discuss how Nicholas of Cusa’s view of the question of providence might shed light on Renaissance philosophy’s contribution in the historical transition in Western philosophy from an overtly theological or eschatological understanding of historical time to a secularized or naturalized philosophy of history. (shrink)

In the field of comparative religion, many scholars believe that there are essentially two groups: the historical religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; and the mystical religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism. These, respectively, represent the basic spiritual attitude of the Western and Eastern worlds. Is it really the case that the Eastern world knows nothing about history, or is their idea of history different from that of the West? In this article, I will focus on (...) a Japanese philosopher, Keiji Nishitani, a representative of the Kyoto School, and examine his constructive engagement with the Buddhist and Christian ideas of historicity for the purpose of constructing “a proper view of history suitable for future mankind.” I will unfold this “proper” view of history in three parts: 1) time: linear or circular; 2) history and karma; 3) eschatology and nirvāṇa. (shrink)

This essay examines Wolfhart Pannenberg’s defense of metaphysics’ foundational importance for philosophy and theology. Among all the modern philosophers whose claims Pannenberg challenges, Martin Heidegger’s discourse against Western metaphysics receives the major portion of criticism. The first thing one concludes from this criticism is an affirmation of a wide intellectual gap that separates Pannenberg’s thought from Heidegger’s, as if each stands at the very opposite corner of the other’s school of thought. The questions this essay tackles are: is this seemingly (...) irreconcilable difference between Pannenberg and Heidegger fully justifiable? What if there is a reading of Panneberg’s and Heidegger’s view of metaphysics that can reveal deeper similarities between the two thinkers than the first reading of Pannenberg’s criticism of Heidegger allows us to see? It then answers these questions by showing that both thinkers actually share a common emphasis on the concepts of ‘time/history’, ‘self-disclosure’ and ‘anticipation’, and their reliance on these notions reveals that Heidegger’s and Pannenberg’s approaches to the phenomenon of understanding and to metaphysical ontology are not fully contradictory but rather hold noticeable hermeneutical similarities. (shrink)

In Time, Narrative, and History, David Carr argues against the narrativist claim that our lived experience does not possess the formal attributes of a story; this conclusion can be reinforced from a semiotic perspective. Our experience is mediated through temporal signs that are used again in the construction of stories. Since signs are social entities from the start, this approach avoids a problem of individualism specific to phenomenology, one which Carr takes care to resolve. A semiotic framework is (...) also explicit about a theme Carr handles implicitly: the status of representation. Representation is internal to signification, mediating our experience not just retrospectively but prospectively in the planning and execution of action. A model is presented in which the temporal organization of experience and action is formally coordinated with the temporal organization of narrative. The model is then applied to a historical event: John Batman's attempt in 1835 to purchase land from some Aboriginal tribes around what is now Melbourne. The meaning of this event is not located only in historical writing about it but in the semiotic constitution of the event itself. Changes of meaning emerge from relations between events as new events--in this case the Australian High Court's Mabo decision--align with old ones. Finally, a number of contrasts are indicated between this model and proposals made by Arthur C. Danto, Hayden White, F. R. Ankersmit, Fernand Braudel, and Paul Ricoeur. (shrink)

Werner Hamacher, one of the most important and original theorists working in literary criticism and continental philosophy, explores topics at the intersection of philosophy, literary studies and politics.

I first examine two classical images of time that can somehow be identified in the works of Rousseau, and next analyze how they function in his formulation of a theory of history. Finally, I show how such conceptions of time and history affect the question of political action. The first, more well known, is the image of time that devours everything; the second, that I will examine more thoroughly, is the image of time as (...) occasion.Pretendo examinar duas imagens clássicas do tempo que se pode de algum modo identificar na obra de Rousseau. Em seguida analisar como operam na formulação de sua teoria da história, para, finalmente, mostrar de que modo tais concepções do tempo e da história incidem sobre a questão da ação política. A primeira, mais conhecida, é a imagem do tempo que tudo devora; a outra, que examinarei mais detidamente, é a figura do tempo como ocasião. (shrink)

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is a popular-science book on cosmology (the study of the origin and evolution of the universe) by British physicist Stephen Hawking. It was first published in 1988. Hawking wrote the book for readers who have no prior knowledge of the universe and people who are interested in learning.

"For description and defense of the narrative configurations of everyday life, and of the practical and social character of those narratives, there is no better treatment than Time, Narrative, and History.... a clear, judicious, and truthful account, provocative from beginning to end." —Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology "... a superior work of philosophy that tells a unique and insightful story about narrative." —Quarterly Journal of Speech.

This article seeks to reconstruct and critically extend Jacques Derrida’s critique of Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. Derrida’s critique of Husserl is explored in three main areas: the phenomenology of language, the phenomenology of time, and the phenomenological constitution of ideal objects. In each case, Husserl’s analysis is shown to rest upon a one-sided determination of truth in terms of presence—whether it be the presence of expressive meaning to consciousness, the self-presence of the temporal instant, or the complete presence of (...) an ideal object through intuition. At every juncture, Derrida’s reasoning is deployed in order to demonstrate how presence is irreducibly bound up with absence and otherness and thus how the ideal of a phenomenological self-presence of consciousness is itself an abstraction from the contingency of history and our concrete embeddedness within a particular lifeworld. The article concludes with an appraisal of reason’s limits in a time of technological domination and the threat of global annihilation. Rather than a flight into irrationalism or skepticism, the author advocates a deepening of philosophical responsibility and an ethics of undecidability as essential for meeting the challenges of modernity. (shrink)

This book deals with the history of the problem whether or not time can fully exist without the mind. This has been a vital issue in the philosophy of time, with intriguing arguments and solutions, from Aristotle to the present.

Time and History in Hegelian Thought and Spirit examines a conspicuous feature of Hegel's major works: that they are progressive narratives. They advance from less to more perfect, abstract to concrete, indeterminate or empty to determinate. This is true, argues the author, of his lectures on aesthetics and on the history of philosophy, and it is also true of his most abstract work, the Science of Logic. In answer to the question of why is it so important (...) for Hegel to structure his various philosophical works as developmental narratives, this book defends the thesis that Hegel's motivation is in part metaphysical, intending his developmental accounts to reveal something significant about who we are as thinking, willing natures. He undertakes his study of past in order to demonstrate that there have been advances in the nature of human thought or reason itself and in our resulting freedom and his concern with our reason's development conveys his interest in how human reason is anchored in and shaped by its past. Ultimately, this book specifies the extent to which we can accurately attribute to Hegel the view that human reason and the freedom it affords us are indebted for their nature to this temporal order of nature and history. (shrink)

Hydrological landscapes played a significant role in the elaboration of Gaston Bachelard’s and Martin Heidegger’s historical epistemologies. More specifically, both philosophers relied on hydroelectric landscapes to explore nonlinear time and profound epistemological shifts in the history of knowledge. The landscapes they invoke are composed of hydroelectric dams, thunderstorms, and related landmarks like mountains, rivers, and lakes. Together, these varied yet connected elements offer rich environmental and conceptual terrains that I revisit to situate human knowledge formation within a much (...) older natural history, and to lay the groundwork for a deep time theory of knowledge. Such theories promote timefulness and geological consciousness by establishing less anthropocentric historical narratives – or what Dipesh Chakrabarty calls “planetary history” – on more suitable epistemological grounds. (shrink)

Theodore Kisiel's outstanding translation premits English-speaking readers to appreciate the central importance of this text in the development of Heidegger's thought.

This book has two main and connected themes - the conception and articulation of time in the Greek world and the creation of history, especially in the context of the Greek city. Both how time is expressed and how the past is presented have often been seen as reflections of society. By looking at the construction of the past through the medium of local historiography, where we can view these issues in the relatively restricted world of individual (...) city-states, we can gain a clearer insight into how different versions of the past and different constructions of time were offered to the community for approval. In this way, the citizens were able to negotiate time past and indeed their own history, and thereby to express their values and aspirations. (shrink)

A central figure in Victorian science, William Whewell held professorships in Mineralogy and Moral Philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge, before becoming Master of the college in 1841. His mathematical textbooks, such as A Treatise on Dynamics, were instrumental in bringing French analytical methods into British science. This three-volume history, first published in 1837, is one of Whewell's most famous works. Taking the 'acute, but fruitless, essays of Greek philosophy' as a starting point, it provides a history of the (...) physical sciences that culminates with the mechanics, astronomy, and chemistry of 'modern times'. Volume 2 focuses on the rise and development of modern mechanics in the seventeenth century. Whewell shows how Galileo's laws of motion exemplify a paradigmatic shift from 'formal' to 'physical' sciences - a new approach concerned with explaining causes rather than merely observing phenomena. It also discusses the implications for physical astronomy of Newton's discoveries. (shrink)

History of Modern Philosophy From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time by Richard Falckenberg In no other department is a thorough knowledge of history so important as in philosophy. Like historical science in general, philosophy is, on the one hand, in touch with exact inquiry, while, on the other, it has a certain relationship with art. With the former it has in common its methodical procedure and its cognitive aim; with the latter, its intuitive character and (...) the endeavor to compass the whole of reality with a glance. Metaphysical principles are less easily verified from experience than physical hypotheses, but also less easily refuted. Systems of philosophy, therefore, are not so dependent on our progressive knowledge of facts as the theories of natural science, and change less quickly; notwithstanding their mutual conflicts, and in spite of the talk about discarded standpoints, they possess in a measure the permanence of classical works of art, they retain for all time a certain relative validity. The thought of Plato, of Aristotle, and of the heroes of modern philosophy is ever proving anew its fructifying power. Nowhere do we find such instructive errors as in the sphere of philosophy; nowhere is the new so essentially a completion and development of the old, even though it deem itself the whole and assume a hostile attitude toward its predecessors; nowhere is the inquiry so much more important than the final result; nowhere the categories "true and false" so inadequate. (shrink)

As climate change becomes an increasingly important part of public discourse, the relationship between nature and time is changing. Nature can no longer considered to be a slow and immobile background to human history, and the future can no longer be viewed as open and detached from the past. Times of History, Times of Nature engages with this historical shift in temporal sensibilities through a combination of detailed case studies and synthesizing efforts. Focusing on the history (...) of knowledge, media theory, and environmental humanities, this volume explores the rich and nuanced notions of time and temporality that have emerged in response to climate change. (shrink)

Time and Transcendence provides a new theory of secularization in the Catholic context, a new interpretation of the origins of modern historical science, and a new reading of Heidegger's theories of time and history. The author shows how a secular sense of the past evolved in early modern French memoirs. Memoirs uncovered a level of personal experience that was then applied as an intuitive framework for the study of history. Modern history's scientific study of sources (...) is embedded in the imaginative sense of a personal past. (shrink)

Time Wars is for anyone who has ever wondered why, in a culture so obsessed with efficiency, we seem to have so little time we can call our own. A courageous, thought-provoking challenge to conventional wisdom.

After discussing Kant's interpretation of time and Heidegger's productive misreading of Kant, Hoy examines the work of Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, ...

This essay examines the link between time and history through the use of cyclic and linear concepts of time. While the former occurs in a cosmological context, the latter is found in familiar historical forms. The author argues for the existence of historical consciousness in early India, on the evidence of early texts.

The project of all philosophy may be to gain reconciliation with time, even if not every philosopher has dealt with time expressly. A confrontation with the passing of time and with human finitude runs through the history of philosophy as an ultimate concern. In this genealogy of the concept of temporality, David Hoy examines the emergence in a post-Kantian continental philosophy of a focus on the lived experience of the "time of our lives" rather than (...) on the time of the universe. The purpose is to see how phenomenological and poststructuralist philosophers have tried to locate the source of temporality, how they have analyzed time's passing, and how they have depicted our relation to time once it has been--in a Proustian sense--regained. Hoy engages with competing theoretical tactics for reconciling us to our fleeting temporality, drawing on work by Kant, Heidegger, Hegel, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Nietzsche, Gadamer, Sartre, Bourdieu, Foucault, Bergson, Deleuze, Žižek, and Derrida. Hoy considers four existential strategies for coping with the apparent flow of temporality, including Proust's passive and Walter Benjamin's active reconciliation through memory, Žižek's critique of poststructuralist politics, Foucault's confrontation with the temporality of power, and Deleuze's account of Aion and Chronos. He concludes by exploring whether a dual temporalization could be what constitutes the singular "time of our lives.". (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The author analyses some problems discussed in the article of Vadim Mezhuev. He discusses the ways in which historians deal with their own scientific problems in the light of philosophical problems of sciences. According to Yu. Nikiforov, a philosopher can always talk about the future which is yet to come; a historian sees the future through the present of the processes which she describes. The author argues that a reconstruction of the past is always based on the knowledge of the (...) present. (shrink)

Hunt asks a series of related questions about time in history. Why is time now again on the agenda, for historians and more generally in Western culture?

This ambitious book explores the relationship between time and history and shows how an appreciation of long-term time helps to make sense of the past. The book is devoted to a wide-ranging analysis of the way different societies have conceived and interpreted time, and it develops a theory of the threefold roles of continuity, gradual change, and revolution which together form a "braided" history. Linking the interpretative chapters are intriguing brief expositions on time travel, (...) time cycles, time lines, and time pieces, showing the different ways in which human history has been located in time. In its global approach the book is part of the new shift toward “big history,” in which traditional period divisions are challenged in favor of looking at the entire past of the world from start to end. The approach is thematic. The result is a view of world history in which outcomes are shown to be explicable, once they happen, but not necessarily predictable before they do. This book will inform the work of historians of all periods and at all levels, and contributes to the current reconsideration of traditional period divisions (such as Modernity and Postmodernity), which the author finds outmoded. (shrink)

The Time Is Out of Joint presents an examination of Shakespeare's distinctly modern confrontation with time and temporality, the difference between the truth of the fact, that of theory, and that of interpretation and revelatory truth, and finds that Shakespeare anticipated post-metaphysical philosophy and its central concerns at a time when modern metaphysics had not yet reached it speak. Visit our website for sample chapters!

First published in 1946, History of Western Philosophy went on to become the best-selling philosophy book of the twentieth century. A dazzlingly ambitious project, it remains unchallenged to this day as the ultimate introduction to Western philosophy. Providing a sophisticated overview of the ideas that have perplexed people from time immemorial, it is 'long on wit, intelligence and curmudgeonly scepticism', as the New York Times noted, and it is this, coupled with the sheer brilliance of its scholarship, that (...) has made Russell's History of Western Philosophy one of the most important philosophical works of all time. (shrink)