Abstract
We can situate the question of when you are “present” through the difference between (1) the Aristotelian present “now” and (2) the Chrysippean argument that no aspect of time is ever exclusively present. Chrysippus’ position has ramifications for the socially normalized notion of “being present” which seems to require an exclusive or primary attention on a present moment. For Chrysippus the present comprises infinitely divisible past and future states. This exhibits conditional consistencies with a discontinuous mode of time in Bergson’s thesis. Socially represented time for Bergson comprises infinitely divided states that match the apparent discontinuities of external material objects. Our intuitively/internally lived time conversely is not divisible into discontinuous parts in Bergson’s view but involves co-implicated presents, pasts, and futures (duration). By recognizing that time and the material realm for the Stoics are infinitely divided continuums, I align features of Chrysippean time with Bergson’s sense of intuitive/internal time (duration). This discussion incorporates considerations for both Chrysippus and Bergson regarding how we individually and collectively “belong” to the present.
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Notes
- 1.
George Mead, who we will engage in a later chapter, contests the reading of a permanently and inalterably finalized past. When appraising the past, we should not, in Mead’s view, be concerned with what it was as a prior present (Mead 2002, 46). Mead is instead interested in how the relation of the past to a new present changes what the past “was” (36).
- 2.
Discussions around being “present” typically concern not only the interpersonal ethics of presentness but also the benefits to an individual of presentness. Desai (2014), Shapiro and Shapiro (2011), and Rice-Oxley (2017) provide examples in the mass media of the advisory that contrarily not being present will prevent us from fully experiencing our worlds. Related studies of the adverse effects of “not being present” have also permeated academic fields such as psychology and healthcare (Brown and Ryan 2003; Easter 2000; Morrow 2005). Pedagogical commentaries furthermore link an educator’s willingness to “be present with course material” to a capacity to critically engage such material and assist students (Greene 1984; McDonough 2015, 176–179).
- 3.
Alfred Pearson reports how Cleanthes’ prominence is attributable to him succeeding Zeno in becoming the second head of the Stoic school (Pearson in Zeno et al. 1891, 35). Diogenes Laërtius informs us that Cleanthes was “originally a boxer” (Diogenes Laërtius 1853, 7.1) before arriving in Athens and studying Stoic philosophy under Zeno. It was only after this that Cleanthes “devoted himself to philosophy” (7.1). His philosophical presence is so considerable that he inspired David Hume to later feature a character called “Cleanthes” in Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1998 [1779]).
- 4.
This account of the early history of the Stoic school is seemingly ubiquitous in modern Stoic scholarship. As with many Stoic teacher-student relationships, Cleanthes and Chrysippus share certain points of view. Ricardo Salles notes how they were joint proponents of the interpretation that each new conflagration perpetually restores the universe to its previous condition as “the everlasting recurrence of everything” (Salles 2009, 118). This is a position that differentiates both from other major Stoics (even if they departed from each other on the details of this conflagration).
- 5.
There are numerous aspects of the influence of Aristotle on Chrysippus. Outside the range of this chapter, for instance, is the Aristotle-Chrysippus relation that informs Stoic conceptions of logic. On this point, see Jonathan Barnes’ “Aristotle and Stoic Logic” (1999).
- 6.
See also the discussion in The Symposium regarding the circular relationships shared between the celestial bodies and the sexes (Plato 2008b, 190b) .
- 7.
Despite Aristotle’s impression of time’s “everywhereness,” God in fact is not the only thing that does not exist in time in his worldview. Things that change but are also “everlasting” or “always are” are “not in time” for Aristotle (Aristotle 1996, 4.12.221b3–7). Edward Hussey’s accompanying notes to his translation of Aristotle’s Physics provide a useful guide on this matter. Hussey explains there are things which are both “everlasting yet changeable” in the universe for Aristotle. This is despite everlasting “implying unchangeable” (Hussey in Aristotle 1993, 169). Such things include “the celestial spheres, which move; animal species, which increase and diminish in number” as well as “the earth, which changes its surface conformation” (169).
- 8.
This is not the only notable divergence between the schools. In considering, for instance, how each school frames philosophical expression, David Sedley reviews why the dialogue form is used by Platonic and Aristotelian schools but not by the Stoic tradition that stems from Zeno (Sedley 1999b, 149–152).
- 9.
For a further discussion on the ambiguities around whether time for the Stoics is closer to Aristotle’s or Plato’s conception, see Rist (1969, 273–278).
- 10.
We might open a discussion between Chrysippus’ perspective and the pre-Socratic Zeno of Elea’s paradoxes regarding motion (this Zeno should not be confused with the Stoic founder, Zeno of Citium). Aristotle’s Physics actually critiques Zeno’s “dichotomy paradox” in which walking from point a to point b firstly requires walking halfway to point b. Before getting halfway to point b though, one must walk a quarter of the way there, and before that an eighth of the way, and so on. Because of the infinite divisions of distance that this requires for motion, Zeno renders motion an impossibility (Aristotle 1996, 6.9.239b5–b9). Aristotle disagrees on the basis that movement over the fractional parts of the whole distance is not only possible but will each be achieved within a finite time. This is partly a result of his interpretation that such parts of distance are not infinite but finite, whereby “since these parts are finite … the time must be finite too” (7.7.237b23).
- 11.
Kidd notes in his commentary on this fragment that the context of Posidonius’ discussion is “Stobaeus’ doxography on ‘time’” (Kidd in Posidonius 1999, 157). We have just seen that Stobaeus’ work here reviews what time means for Chrysippus. This claim is based on the text where Posidonius posits that “he defines time like this: an interval [or extension] of movement, or a measure of quick and slow” (Posidonius 1999, Fragment 98; my emphasis). “He” in this context I am interpreting to refer to “Chrysippus.” The validation for this interpretation is that elsewhere Chrysippus is reported by Stobaeus as defining time in exactly the same terminology; “Chrysippus said time is the dimension of motion according to which the measure of speed and slowness is spoken of” (Stobaeus, SVF, 2.509, in L&S, 304; my emphasis). We analyze this specific feature of Chrysippean time later in this chapter, while being aware of its similarities with an Aristotelian assertion.
- 12.
Aristotle’s conception of the timeless now is in part a response to the Platonic position on the durationless “instant.” This concerns Plato’s argument in Parmenides about how we commonly interpret that transitions from one state to another occur in time. For Plato, anything that occurs in time is either in motion or at rest. A transition from motion to rest, or vice versa, cannot be either state exclusively, nor both states simultaneously. Accordingly, the instant of such transition is not in time (Plato 1996, 156c–d). While any further discussion of the intricate differences between Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of the instant or now go beyond our needs in this chapter, for a long-established discussion of Plato’s position, see Cornford (1939, 194–202). Alternatively, for an analysis of what durationless means for the Platonic instant, see Strang and Mills (1974, 73–75). Bowin (2008) provides an overview of Plato’s and Aristotle’s respective theses on the instant of change.
- 13.
This theory of the presence of the now has perhaps been most famously examined by Martin Heidegger. In Being and Time Heidegger criticizes the present-centrism of Aristotelian time by observing how in Physics “time shows itself for the vulgar understanding as a succession of constantly ‘present’ [‘vorhanden’] nows that pass away and arrive at the same time” (Heidegger 2010 (1927), 401). Heidegger believes that philosophy’s adoption of this “everyday interpretation of time” (402) produces an account of a permanently present-at-hand world; “the succession of nows is interpreted as something somehow objectively present” (402). Heidegger elsewhere launches a further attack on this position, taking aim at the Aristotelian reading of Being as “synonymous with permanence in presence” (Heidegger 1962 [1929], 249; author’s original emphasis). Aristotle in Heidegger’s view is susceptible to subscribing to the comprehension of Being’s total self-evidence through time, which “determines the ‘Being’ of time from the point of view of the now, i.e., from the character of time which in itself is constantly present and, hence, (in the ancient sense of the term) really is” (250; author’s original emphasis). Heidegger’s alternative to this perspective is to construct an awareness of time that avoids a permanent presence. In Margins of Philosophy Jacques Derrida later notably builds on Heidegger’s insights (Derrida 1982 (1972), 61). By positing an entirely different reading of Aristotle’s work in which the now is both a determining limitation of time and its “accident” (61), Derrida argues against any dominating role for presence.
- 14.
This notion of a durationless present instant re-emerges via Saint Augustine of Hippo. In contrast to the supposed non-existence of past-duration and future-duration, the present-instant seemingly exists but has no duration according to Augustine. If the present was more than an unextended instant it would no longer simply be present but rather “could be divided into past and future” (Augustine 1961, 11.15). Such duration would mark its passing into the non-existence of what has been or what will be. The passing of the present which takes it into the realm of non-existence is nevertheless crucial. If the present did not extend or pass it would be eternal not temporal. As Augustine states, “in eternity nothing moves into the past: all is present. Time, on the other hand, is never all present at once” (11.11).
- 15.
See Bergson’s Duration and Simultaneity: With Reference to Einstein’s Theory (1965 [1922]).
- 16.
In Being and Time Heidegger actually compares Bergson’s and Aristotle’s respective arguments. See where Heidegger laments that the “common understanding” of time “has persisted since Aristotle and beyond Bergson” (Heidegger 2010, 17). Heidegger responds to Bergson, as he does to Aristotle, by offering a model of time that is contrary to “Bergson’s thesis that time understood in the common way is really space” (18). My response to Heidegger however is that for Bergson our “common way” of understanding time is in fact twofold. This duality comprises our extensive, spatial representation of juxtaposed points and an intensive , indivisible, continuous flow/duration that we live. Even though Bergson concedes that we “find it extraordinarily difficult to think of duration in its original purity” (Bergson 1960, 106), he does not characterize it as outside common everyday experience. Whether Heidegger addresses this appropriately is much debated (Massey 2010; Protevi 1994). For further evidence of Heidegger’s position on Bergsonian spatial time, refer to his lengthy footnote (Heidegger 2010, 410) that links Hegelian, Aristotelian, and Bergsonian conceptions of time as space .
- 17.
Bergson correlates the Aristotelian numbering of time accordingly with one of the two modes (the quantitative mode) that he characterizes in Time and Free Will; “we must admit two kinds of multiplicity, two possible senses of the word ‘distinguish,’ two conceptions, the one qualitative and the other quantitative, of the difference between the same and other. Sometimes this multiplicity, this distinctness, this heterogeneity contains number only potentially, as Aristotle would have said” (Bergson 1960, 121).
- 18.
While not appropriate to be included in the Stoic-centric phase of this discussion, I direct interested readers to Seyppel (1956), Massey (2010), and Hill (2012). This is not to forget Bergson’s extended commentary in Creative Evolution in which he discusses Aristotelian and Platonic theories in terms of the metaphysics of the “intellect” (Bergson 1911 (1907), 330–356).
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Johncock, W. (2020). When Are You Present? Chrysippus and Henri Bergson on Continuous Time. In: Stoic Philosophy and Social Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43153-2_3
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