DOCSLIB.ORG

§ 1 Autoimmunity of Time: Derrida and Kant

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
§ 1 Autoimmunity of Time: Derrida and Kant § } Autoimmunity of Time: Derrida and Kant In Jacques Derrida’s major book on democracy, Rogues, there is a short but crucial discussion of the elections in Algeria in }uu . The elections were projected to give power to a majority that wanted to change the constitution and undercut the process of democratization in Algeria. To avoid such a result, the state and the leading party decided to suspend the elections. They thus suspended democracy in the name of democracy, abolishing the very principle of what they claimed to protect. Derrida’s discussion is not concerned with judging whether it was right or wrong to suspend the elections in Algeria. Rather, Derrida dwells on the Algerian elections as an example of what he calls the “autoimmu- nity” of democracy. Democracy is autoimmune because it is threatened not only by external enemies but also by internal forces that can corrupt its principles. For example, it is always possible that a democratic elec- tion will give power to a nondemocratic regime. Derrida reminds us that “fascist and Nazi totalitarianisms came into power or ascended to power through formally normal and formally democratic electoral processes.”1 The immune-system of democracy—the strategies it employs to protect itself—may thus be forced to attack itself in order to survive. The effects of such autoimmunity may be positive or negative, but in either case they reinforce that democracy is necessarily divided within itself. The prin- ciples that protect democracy may protect those who attack the principles of democracy. Inversely, the attack on the principles of democracy may be a way of protecting the principles of democracy. There is no way to finally decide whether it is legitimate for democracy to attack or to refrain from 0J }k Autoimmunity of Time attacking itself, since either one of these strategies may turn against it at any moment. In Derrida’s analysis the autoimmunity of democracy is not a deplor- able fact that we could or should seek to overcome. Rather, Derrida emphasizes that there can be no democratic ideal that is exempt from autoimmunity, since the very concept of democracy is autoimmune. In order to be democratic, democracy must be open to critique and to the outcome of unpredictable elections. But for the same reason, democracy is essentially open to what may alter or destroy it. There is thus a double bind at the core of democracy. It must both protect itself against its own threat and be threatened by its own protection. Derrida does not limit autoimmunity to the problem of democracy. On the contrary, he underscores that autoimmunity is a condition for life in general.2 As Derrida puts it in Specters of Marx, “life does not go without death, and that death is not beyond, outside of life, unless one inscribes the beyond in the inside, in the essence of the living” (}k}/ k). The coimplication of life and death spells out an autoimmunity at the heart of life as such. Even if all external threats are evaded, life still bears the cause of its own destruction within itself. The vulnerability of life is thus without limit, since the source of attack is also located within what is to be defended. If autoimmunity remains difficult to think, it is because it violates the principle of noncontradiction. This principle is the foundation of what I will call the philosophical logic of identity. Its canonical formulation is found in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where Aristotle asserts that “the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject” (}¤¤gb).3 The temporal qualification is important here. Aristotle does not exclude that the same subject can have contradictory attributes at different times (e.g., a body can be in motion at one juncture and in repose at another), but it cannot have contradictory attributes at the same time. The principle of noncontradiction thus prescribes that what is must be identical to itself—that its originary form must be an indivisible unity. If we follow the philosophical logic of identity, autoimmunity is incon- ceivable. What is indivisibly identical to itself has no need to immunize itself against itself. It may be threatened by what is other than itself, but it cannot turn against itself. Accordingly, an immune reaction is supposed to defend the body against foreign antigens. The identity of the body Derrida and Kant }g is necessary in order to distinguish between what is “good” and what is “bad” for the organism, what will kill it and what will enable it to survive. Thus, if there is no indivisible identity, every immune system runs the risk of being autoimmune, since there can be no guarantee that it will be in the service of maintaining health. What is attacked as an enemy of the body may turn out to be an essential part of the body, and what is welcomed as beneficial to the body may turn out to destroy the body from within. A first question, then, is how we can revise the philosophical logic of identity in order to defend what Derrida calls the “illogical logic” of au- toimmunity. In the second part of Rogues Derrida points out that the ultimate cause of autoimmunity “is located in the very structure of the present and of life, in the temporalization of what Husserl called the Liv- ing Present (die lebendige Gegenwart). The Living Present is produced only by altering and dissimulating itself. I do not have the time, precisely, to pursue this path here, but I would like to note its necessity” (} /}u). While Derrida did not have the time to develop this argument in what was to become one of his last lectures, I have sought to provide consider- able space for it in this book. The link between time and autoimmunity is at the center of my exposition, since I believe that autoimmunity brings out the most provocative implications of deconstructive logic and that the problem of time opens the most consistent way to defend the rigor of that logic. I will argue that Derrida’s deconstruction of the logic of identity pro- ceeds from a notion of temporality that informs his work from begin- ning to end. As Derrida points out in Speech and Phenomena, “what is ultimately at stake, what is at bottom decisive [is] the concept of time” (/¤). The concept of time plays a dual role in the history of metaphys- ics, which is why it is so decisive for Derrida’s deconstruction. On the one hand, time is thought on the basis of the present and in conformity with the philosophical logic of identity. The presence of the present is thus the principle of identity from which all modifications of time are derived. The past is understood as what has been present, and the future as what will be present. On the other hand, time is incompatible with presence in itself. The temporal can never be in itself but is always divided between being no longer and being not yet. Thus, although “the present is that from which we believe we are able to think time,” this understanding of time in fact effaces “the inverse necessity: to think the present from time } Autoimmunity of Time as différance.”4 It is the proposition that time is différance that I wish to develop. Such a deconstruction cannot consist in constructing another concept of time. Rather, the traditional concept of time as succession pro- vides the resources to deconstruct the logic of identity.5 In “Ousia and Grammè,” Derrida pursues the link between the prob- lem of temporality and the logic of identity by analyzing the treatment of time in the fourth book of Aristotle’s Physics. Aristotle points out that there would be no time if there were only one single now ( }[b). Rather, there must be at least two nows—“an earlier one before and a later one after” ( }ua)—in order for there to be time. Time is thus defined as suc- cession, where each now is always superseded by another now. In think- ing succession, however, Aristotle realizes that it contradicts his concept of identity as presence in itself. A self-present, indivisible now could never even begin to give way to another now, since what is indivisible cannot be altered. This observation leads Aristotle to an impasse, since his logic of identity cannot account for the succession that constitutes time. Derrida articulates the problem as follows: Let us consider the sequence of nows. The preceding now, it is said, must be destroyed by the following now. But, Aristotle then points out, it cannot be destroyed “in itself” (en heautoi- ), that is, at the moment when it is (now, in act). No more can it be destroyed in an other now (en alloi- ): for then it would not be destroyed as now, itself; and, as a now which has been, it is . inacces- sible to the action of the following now. (g/g) Hence, as long as one holds on to the idea of an indivisible now—or more succinctly: as long as one holds on to the concept of identity as presence in itself—it is impossible to think succession. The now cannot first be present in itself and then be affected by its own disappearance, since this would require that the now began to pass away after it had ceased to be. Rather, the now must disappear in its very event. The succession of time requires not only that each now is superseded by another now, but also that this alteration is at work from the beginning.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Kant's Theoretical Conception Of
    KANT’S THEORETICAL CONCEPTION OF GOD Yaron Noam Hoffer Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, September 2017 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee _________________________________________ Allen W. Wood, Ph.D. (Chair) _________________________________________ Sandra L. Shapshay, Ph.D. _________________________________________ Timothy O'Connor, Ph.D. _________________________________________ Michel Chaouli, Ph.D 15 September, 2017 ii Copyright © 2017 Yaron Noam Hoffer iii To Mor, who let me make her ends mine and made my ends hers iv Acknowledgments God has never been an important part of my life, growing up in a secular environment. Ironically, only through Kant, the ‘all-destroyer’ of rational theology and champion of enlightenment, I developed an interest in God. I was drawn to Kant’s philosophy since the beginning of my undergraduate studies, thinking that he got something right in many topics, or at least introduced fruitful ways of dealing with them. Early in my Graduate studies I was struck by Kant’s moral argument justifying belief in God’s existence. While I can’t say I was convinced, it somehow resonated with my cautious but inextricable optimism. My appreciation for this argument led me to have a closer look at Kant’s discussion of rational theology and especially his pre-critical writings. From there it was a short step to rediscover early modern metaphysics in general and embark upon the current project. This journey could not have been completed without the intellectual, emotional, and material support I was very fortunate to receive from my teachers, colleagues, friends, and family.
    [Show full text]
  • HEIDEGGER's TRANSCENDENTALISM Author(S): DANIEL DAHLSTROM Source: Research in Phenomenology, Vol
    HEIDEGGER'S TRANSCENDENTALISM Author(s): DANIEL DAHLSTROM Source: Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 35 (2005), pp. 29-54 Published by: Brill Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24721815 Accessed: 23-01-2018 19:34 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Brill is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Research in Phenomenology This content downloaded from 142.58.129.109 on Tue, 23 Jan 2018 19:34:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms HEIDEGGER S TRANSCENDENTALISM by DANIEL DAHLSTROM Boston University Abstract This paper attempts to marshall some of the evidence of the transcendental character of Heidegger's later thinking, despite his repudiation of any form of transcendental think ing, including that of his own earlier project of fundamental ontology. The transcen dental significance of that early project is first outlined through comparison and contrast with the diverse transcendental turns in the philosophies of Kant and Husserl. The paper then turns to Heidegger's account of the historical source of the notion of tran scendence in Plato's thinking, its legacy in various forms of transcendental philosophy, and his reasons for attempting to think in a post-transcendental way.
    [Show full text]
  • Schelling's Organic Form of Philosophy
    1 Life as the Schema of Freedom Schelling’s Organic Form of Philosophy ? Subjectivism and the Annihilation of Nature In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the German philosopher F. W. J. Schelling. One major reason for this renewed atten- tion lies in the symphonic power of this thinker’s work, the expanse and complexity of which provides a robust alternative to the anemic theorizing one encounters in contemporary academic philosophy. Too far-reaching to fi t into the categories of either German Idealism or Romanticism, Schelling’s oeuvre is an example of an organic philosophy which, rooted in nature, strives to support the continuous creation of meaning within a unifying and integrated framework. Realizing that the negative force of critique can never satisfy the curiosity of the human spirit, he insists that philosophy must itself be as capable of continuous development as life itself. Advancing such an ambitious project led Schelling to break away from the conceptual current of modern subjectivism to develop a way of doing philosophy fi rmly planted in the sensual world of human experience and nature. For it was only from such an organic standpoint that he believed he would be able to overcome and integrate the dualisms that necessarily follow from modernity’s standpoint of the subject, posited as the otherworldly source of order and form required to regulate the chaotic fl ux of life. As Kant realized, the ideal of unity is the condition of possibility of employing reason systematically. For Schelling, however, Kant failed to pursue the logic of his reasoning to its necessary conclusion, thereby denying continuity between the virtual world of pure reason and the existing reality of nature.
    [Show full text]
  • The Epistemic Configuration of Hume's Economic Thought
    The epistemic configuration of Hume’s economic thought Iara Vigo de Lima1 Abstract: Eugene Rotwein wrote in his ‘Introduction’ to David Hume Writings on Economics that works on Hume’s economics have been primarily ‘internal’ stu- dies. Beyond exploring Hume’s insights for understanding economic phenomena, they have investigated either the relations between his philosophical thought and his economic analysis or emphasised their psychological and historical elements. The perspective in this paper is ‘external’, dealing with Hume’s economic thought according to Michel Foucault’s approach to history. Foucault sees the ‘interiority’ of thought as a doubling of what is outside of thought. It is in this sense that Fou- cault investigates Hume’s context according to the concept of ‘episteme’, defining this as a set of relations that determines the ways of thinking. Foucault located Hume within the ‘classical episteme’ and I explore here his characterisation of that moment in order to understand the historical conditions of possibility of Hume’s economic thinking Keywords: Foucault; Hume; economic thinking. 1 Associate Professor at the Department of Economics of the Federal University of Parana, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] Revista de Economia, v. 37, n. 1 (ano 35), p. 93-119, jan./abr. 2011. Editora UFPR 93 liMA, I. V. The epistemic configuration of Hume’s economic thought. A Configuração Epistêmica do Pensamento Econômico de Hume Resumo: Eugene Rotwein escreveu em sua ‘Introdução’ ao David Hume Writings on Economics que trabalhos sobre a economia de Hume têm sido primordialmente estudos ‘internos’. Além de constituírem uma exploração das idéias de Hume sobre o entendimento dos fenômenos econômicos, tais estudos têm tanto investigado as relações entre o seu pensamento filosófico e suas análises econômicas, quanto enfatizado seus elementos psicológicos e históricos.
    [Show full text]
  • Was Kant a Spinozist?
    Forthcoming in Kantian Review (July 2016) The Relation between God and the World in the Pre-Critical Kant: Was Kant a Spinozist? NOAM HOFFER Indiana University Bloomington Email: [email protected] Abstract Andrew Chignell and Omri Boehm have recently argued that Kant’s pre-Critical proof for the existence of God entails a Spinozistic conception of God and hence substance monism. The basis for this reading is the assumption common in the literature that God grounds possibilities by exemplifying them. In this article I take issue with this assumption and argue for an alternative Leibnizian reading, according to which possibilities are grounded in essences united in God’s mind (later also described as Platonic ideas intuited by God). I show that this view about the distinction between God’s cognition of essences as the ground of possibility and the actual world is not only explicitly stated by Kant, but is also consistent with his metaphysical picture of teleology in nature and causality during the pre-Critical period. Finally, I suggest that the distinction between the conceptual order of essences embodied in the idea of God and the order of the objects of experience plays a role in the transition into the Critical system, where it is transformed into the distinction between the intelligible and the sensible worlds. Keywords: God, Only Possible Argument, possibility, Leibniz, essences, Platonic ideas Introduction It has been recently suggested by several authors that Kant’s pre-Critical proof for the existence of God (presented mainly in The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the 1 Existence of God from 17631) entails a Spinozistic conception of God.2 Such a conception consists in substance monism – the view that there is only one substance, God, and that all other things are modes of the one substance.
    [Show full text]
  • Heidegger's Appropriation of Kant
    [THIS PENULTIMATE VERSION MAY DIFFER IN MINOR WAYS FROM THE PUBLISHED VERSION. PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE FROM THIS WITHOUT MY PERMISSION] Heidegger's Appropriation of Kant Being and Time, Heidegger praises Kant as “the first and only person who has gone any stretch of the way towards investigating the dimension of temporality or has even let himself be drawn hither by the coercion of the phenomena themselves” (SZ: 23).1 Kant was, before Husserl (and perhaps, in Heidegger's mind, more than him), a true phenomenologist in the sense that the need to curtail the pretension of dogmatic metaphysics to overstep the boundaries of sensible experience led him to focus on phenomena and the conditions of their disclosure: thus, the “question of the inner possibility of such knowledge of the super-sensible , however, is presented as thrown back upon the more general question of the inner possibility of a general making-manifest(Offenbarmachen) of beings (Seiende) as such” (GA 3: 10, emphasis supplied). So Kant shouldn’t be read as an epistemologist (contrary to Descartes, for example), but as an ontologist2: “Kant's inquiry is concerned with what determines nature as such -- occurrent beings as such -- and with how this ontological determinability is possible” (GA 25: 75). Heidegger sees this investigation into the “ontological determinability” of entities as an a priori form of inquiry: “what is already opened up and projected in advance ie the horizon of ontological determinability . is what in a certain sense is “earlier” than a being and is called a priori” (GA 25: 37). This a priori character of ontological determinability forms the main link between Kant's critical project and fundamental ontology, itself characterised as a form of transcendental philosophy: “transcendental knowledge is a knowledge which investigates the possibility of an understanding of being, a pre-ontological understanding of being.
    [Show full text]
  • Vrije Universiteit Brussel the Deduction of Time and Space in J.G
    Vrije Universiteit Brussel The deduction of time and space in J.G. Fichte’s Theory of the Co-Constitution of Subject and Object Acosta, Emiliano Published in: International Journal of Computing Anticipatory Systems Publication date: 2014 Document Version: Accepted author manuscript Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Acosta, E. (2014). The deduction of time and space in J.G. Fichte’s Theory of the Co-Constitution of Subject and Object. International Journal of Computing Anticipatory Systems, 26, 69-78. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 23. Sep. 2021 The Deduction of Time and Space in J.G. Fichte's of the Constitution of Subject and Object Emiliano Acosta Centre for Critical Philosophy, Ghent University Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) Blandijnberg 2 (r.2.10), 9000 Ghent, Belgium. [email protected] Abstract The aim of the present paper is to expose in its fundamental moments Fichte’s deduction of time and space as pure forms of the intuition and, therefore, as condition of possibility of a theory of anticipations of perception.
    [Show full text]
  • HTT Introduction
    1 The Transcendental Turn Sebastian Gardner Kant's influence on the history of philosophy is vast and protean. The transcendental turn denotes one of its most important forms, defined by the notion that Kant's deepest insight should not be identified with any specific epistemological or metaphysical doctrine, but rather concerns the fundamental standpoint and terms of reference of philosophical enquiry. To take the transcendental turn is not to endorse any of Kant's specific teachings, but to accept that the Copernican revolution announced in the Preface of the Critique of Pure Reason sets philosophy on a new footing and constitutes the proper starting point of philosophical reflection. The question of what precisely defines the transcendental standpoint has both historical and systematic aspects. It can be asked, on the one hand, what different construals have been put on Kant's Copernican revolution and what different historical forms the transcendental project has assumed, and on the other, how transcendental philosophy, in abstraction from its historical instances, should be defined and practised. Though separable, the two questions are best taken together. In so far as historical interest has a critical dimension, it will constantly broach systematic issues, just as any convincing account of the nature of transcendental philosophy will need to take account of the historical development. The present volume examines the history of the transcendental turn with the dual aim of elucidating the thought of individual philosophers, and of bringing into clearer view the existence of a transcendental tradition, intertwined with but distinguishable from other, more configurations in late modern philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • As a Foreign Language: Rereading Deleuze and Derrida
    Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics 12(1), 29-46 The Becoming-Philosophy as a Foreign Language: Rereading Deleuze and Derrida Immanuel Kim University of California, Riverside Kim, I. (2008). The becoming-philsophy as a foreign language: Rereading Deleuze and Derrida. Journal of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics, 12(1), 29-46. This paper will revisit French theorists, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida, on the notion of the future of philosophy. Although their approaches to the future (devenir [to become] for Deleuze and á venir [to come] for Derrida) of philosophy may differ, I will argue that their differences allow for a space of congruence and continuity in the not only the field of philosophy but in every academic field. The question of the future of philosophy needs to be addressed because of the “crisis” that each academic department seems to face with every new faculty appointment, influx in student registration, applying for funding, etc. Each and every department in the university context seems to have the need to “justify” and validate the purpose of that discipline. I am not proposing another theory for theory’s sake, but a call to deeply reconsider and re-evaluate the philosophy of and in each department. After all, faculty members who are not even “involved” in the philosophy department still possess a PhD. Key Words: Deleuze, Derrida, philosophy 1 An Attempt to Find a Place for Philosophy Where does [philosophy] find today its most appropriate place? (Derrida, 2002, p.3) Where would we begin to reread these two thinkers? From what point should we begin? Would a rereading proffer an ethical reading of their respective philosophies? What can these thinkers offer to the field of linguistics? What relationship does philosophy (especially with these French thinkers) have with applied linguistics? What are the pragmatics of philosophy in the field research of applied linguistics? I will attempt to find a “place” where philosophy can enter even in the field of linguistics in order to iterate the importance of pragmatic research.
    [Show full text]
  • Deleuze's Rethinking of the Notion of Sense
    Deleuze’s Rethinking of the Notion of Sense Daniela Voss Abstract Drawing on Deleuze’s early works of the 1960s, this article investigates the ways in which Deleuze challenges our traditional linguistic notion of sense and notion of truth. Using Frege’s account of sense and truth, this article presents our common understanding of sense and truth as two separate dimensions of the proposition where sense subsists only in a formal relation to the other. It then goes on to examine the Kantian account, which makes sense the superior transcendental condition of possibility of truth. Although both accounts define sense as merely the form of possibility of truth, a huge divide cuts across a simple formal logic of sense and a transcendental logic: transcendental logic discovered a certain genetic productivity of sense, such that a proposition always has the kind of truth that it merits according to its sense. In pursuit of this genetic productivity of sense, Deleuze applies different models of explanation: a Nietzschean genealogical model of the genetic power of sense, and in The Logic of Sense a structural model combined with elements of Stoic philosophy. This article follows Deleuze in setting up a new and very complex notion of sense, which he radically distinguishes from what he terms ‘signification’, that is, an extrinsic, linguistic or logical, condition of possibility. Rather, sense has to be conceived as both the effect and the intrinsic genetic element of an extra-propositional sense-producing machine. Keywords: Deleuze, Frege, Kant, Nietzsche, signification, sense, effect, event, incorporeals Deleuze Studies 7.1 (2013): 1–25 DOI: 10.3366/dls.2013.0092 © Edinburgh University Press www.euppublishing.com/dls 2 Daniela Voss I.
    [Show full text]
  • “Being and Power” Revisited Hubert L
    “Being and Power” Revisited Hubert L. Dreyfus At the heart of Heidegger's thought is the notion of being, and the same could be said of power in the works of Foucault. The history of being gives Heidegger a perspective from which to understand how in our modern world things have been turned into objects. Foucault transforms Heidegger's focus on things to a focus on selves and how they became subjects.1 And, just as Heidegger offers a history of being, culminating in the technological understanding of being, in order to help us understand and overcome our current way of dealing with things as objects and resources, Foucault analyzes several regimes of power, culminating in bio-power, in order to help us free ourselves from understanding ourselves as desiring subjects and disciplined bodies. These rough parallels suggest that it might be illuminating to see how far the comparison of Heidegger's "Being" with Foucault's "Power" can be pushed. Do these terms designate equivalent functions? Do Heidegger's epochs in his history of being match Foucault's regimes in his genealogy of power? To what extent do their interpretations of our history lead these thinkers to criticize our current cultural condition in similar ways? What does each see as the danger? How does each envisage resistance? And, of course, we must also ask whether these thinkers differ in any important ways? After all, Heidegger's early support of National Socialism and later recommendation of political passivity seem totally opposed to Foucault's emphasis on social freedom and his political activism.
    [Show full text]
  • Kant, Gödel and Relativity1
    1 Kant, Gödel and Relativity1 Mauro Dorato Dept. of Philosophy Università di Roma Tre Via Ostiense 234 00146, Rome, Italy tel. +39-06-54577523; fax +39-06-54577540 e-mail: [email protected] Forthcoming in P. Gardenfors, K. Kijania-Placek and J. Wolenski (eds.), Proceedings of the invited papers for the 11th International Congress of the Logic Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Synthese Library, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2002, pp.329-346. Abstract Since the onset of logical positivism, the general wisdom of the philosophy of science has it that the kantian philosophy of (space and) time has been superseded by the theory of relativity, in the same sense in which the latter has replaced Newton’s theory of absolute space and time. On the wake of Cassirer and Gödel, in this paper I raise doubts on this commonplace. I first suggest some conditions that are necessary to defend the ideality of time in the sense of Kant, and I then bring to bear some contemporary physical theories on such conditions. 1 What is “the problem of time”? Time is absolutely central in our inner experience, but at least since the foundation of modern physics, it also plays an important role in the description of the outer world. To the extent that there is a physical and a mental time, one can safely surmise that the problem of trying to establish whether and how they are related is one of the most fundamental issues in the philosophy of time. Are physical and mental time in conflict, or we can regard the former as some sort of appropriate extension to the outer world of the main features of the latter? These questions, important as they are, already presuppose, however, that there are two sides of the problem, namely that there is, at a fundamental level of description, a physical time.
    [Show full text]