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The Anatomy of the Present

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2019

Abstract

The categories that determine the present - duration and change - are deeply ambiguous: duration means the opposite of change (duration of substance), as well as duration of the change itself. Change means therefore both change which is continuous and change which is sudden.

The present is thus constituted by duration in a dual, differing sense. Even the Platonic-Aristotelian conceptual apparatus allows a more complex construal than what is offered by M.

Heidegger's critique. In "The Refutation of Idealism" Kant construes duration as the indivisibility of inner and outer experience.

The structure of the present so understood casts doubt on the traditional identification of time with inner experience and of space with outer experience. The proper concept of the present needs to be thought as a specific interlacing of time and space.