[SydPhil] 2 Seminars on the Phenomenology of Time with Michael Eldred: 16th and 17th Sept.

[Dean Rickles]

Dear all,

You are invited to attend the following pair of seminars by Dr. Michael Eldred, visiting from Cologne.


Seminar on the Phenomenology of Time in the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney

Mon. 16th Sept. 2024 11:30-13:00 h HPS Common Room, F07 Carslaw and
Tue. 17th. Sept. 2024 11:30-13:00 h CG1A.GR.G19 Physics Road Learning Hub Seminar Room G19

The seminar attempts an introduction to the phenomenology of time, one of the simplest, and therefore most elusive phenomena taken on by philosophy from its Greek beginnings. The aim is to awaken a sensibility for the questionability of the multifacted phenomenon of time, not to raise and answer questions about it. Like other simple, elementary phenomena, we are all intimately familiar with time and have an implicit understanding of it. How to unfold this implicit, folded-in understanding into explicit, unfolded concepts?

Aristotle’s Physics is not a book on physics in the modern sense. It raises questions about phenomena that are taken as self-evident and skipped over by modern physics. Physics delves into the deeper nature of physical beings and is therefore ‘meta-physical’, or ontological. Physical beings are beings that can move (_kinounta_) or can be moved (_kinoumena_), which include kinds of beings that today we would classify as either natural or artificial. Hence the Physics could be characterized as an investigation of physical movement that asks even the simple question: What is movement (_kinaesis, metabolae_)? The kinds of movement in focus first become visible through Aristotle’s investigation itself. The phenomenon of time, in turn, is approached by asking what it has to do with movement. No explicit consideration of kinds of movement other than physical is given; the question is not even posed. The concept of time is developed — in the order of thinking through the phenomena — only as derivative of phenomena of physical movement that Aristotle has in view. Questions include: Can Aristotle’s conception of time be regarded as linear, continuous, one-dimensional? What does dimension mean in this context? What does time have to do with being itself? What does time have to do with space? Are space and time on a par in Aristotle’s thinking? What does time have to do with us as human beings? How does Aristotle conceive the (mode of) being of human beings?

Heidegger’s 1962 talk on ‘Time and Being’ is a very late attempt to explicate the phenomenon of time after philosophy has passed its zenith and entered the age of its degeneration in which its original questions and mode of questioning are no longer understood. The 1962 talk stands near the end of Heidegger’s career as a thinker, the opposite end to its initial stage that culminated in his famous 1927 monograph, Being and Time. The latter develops various concepts of time, starting with „vulgar time“ and going back step by step to „original time“. We encounter in the 1962 talk a conception of three-dimensional and even four-dimensional time that arises not by considering any kind of movement, but by asking first of all what being itself means. What does dimension signify in connection with three- and four-dimensional time? What does time have to do with the being of human beings? What does time have to do with truth (Unverborgenheit, unconcealedness)?


Best

Dean

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Prof. Dean Rickles
School of HPS
Faculty of Science
Co-Director, Centre for Time
University of Sydney,
NSW 2006, Australia
Work Phone: 61 2 9351 8552
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"Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law"
Douglas Hofstadter
-----------------------------------------------------
Prof. Dean Rickles
School of HPS
Faculty of Science
Co-Director, Centre for Time
University of Sydney,
NSW 2006, Australia
Work Phone: 61 2 9351 8552
-----------------------------------------------------
"Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law"
Douglas Hofstadter


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