The separation of mental and (or even “versus”) physical time is usual for European tradition of philosophy. It corresponds to the opposition of “object” (with physical time) and “subject” (with mental time). Nevertheless, even in European philosophy, both times can be unified as in transcendental subject (Kant, Husserl) as in phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger).
The thesis is: The sense of the question “What is now?” can be listen in two complementary contexts (melodies) assisting each other.
According to the one, which is properly that of “mental time” in narrow sense, the present should be relation and transition between quite different temporal media: that of the past and that of future.
The past as a temporal medium can be featured by its ordering, and even well-ordering in mathematical sense. All past moments constitute a single series of disjunctive points in time thus being just well-ordered even in set-theory meaning. It needs only memory to be conserved accordingly.
On the contrary, future is absolutely uncertain and therefore unorderable in principle. It must always surprise for its essence consists in this.
The present is a thin line of transition and reconciliation between those temporal elements and the corresponding mental capabilities: memory and imagination. Its essence is both choice and consciousness.
The choice is what can agree the well-ordered past and fundamentally unorderable future even an exact and rigorous mathematical meaning: indeed, the present needs the well-ordering theorem (principle) equivalent to the axiom of choice for relating the well-ordered to the unorderable.
Thus physical time can be understood as opposite to mental time as far as the former is a disjunctive series if the past, the present, and future while the corresponding mental capabilities in the latter are unified and resolved into each other as memory, consciousness, and imagination within the mental “now” of consciousness.
According to the other, which is that of transcendental or phenomenological time in European philosophical tradition, the past not less than future is only within the present as its way (modus) of being, both symbolizing two contradictory, inconsistent, but complementary viewpoints to it: correspondingly completeness, finiteness and incompleteness, infinity. The past as well as future is only the one face of the twofaced Janus of the present.
Then memory and imagination are the two fundamental modi of consciousness and its being. Unifying the two complementary contexts sketched above, one can hear the melody of the question “What is now?” quietly and initially.
No comments:
Post a Comment