The question of time: concerning the ontological primacy of present over the past and the future

Abstract

The article raises the question of time in one specifi c aspect. Temporal problems were elaborated in the context of the question of eternity over a long period of medieval philosophical and theological speculation. In this case time is derivative if one believes that eternity exists, because in the ontological sense time lacks its primacy with respect to the being of God. The eternity and immutability of the Creator imply that the last One is only in “now”. It was concluded that the present was the initial mode of time, as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas have mentioned. After Heidegger the situation changed: now the future has such constitutive primacy as the present had before. The existence of Dasein and the structure of temporality have their constituents thanks to the ecstasies of the future. Heidegger’s treatment of the future follows from the role, which the Existenzial of care plays in fundamental ontology. Nevertheless, in Sartre’s theory of temporality, the future does not play so constitutive a role as it did in the ontology of Dasein. The Present is a co-presence: things are co-present for mind, which unites them by way of the synthesis of the unity of co-presence. Consciousness is a unity-center of being. It has definiteness as a result of the synthesis of the three temporal phases. The present is thought in meaning of the unity-phase of past and future, and without the present-ekstasis the absolute constitution of time would be impossible. This is close to the idea of “true present” that belongs to the thought of H. Sedlmayr. In the “true present” the modes of the past and the future are united. The periodic intervention of true time places us in true temporality.