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The dialectical opposition of phenomenological time, and what Ricoeur calls cosmological time, might not be the most useful strategy to use in order to clarify what Newton referred to as “common or ordinary time”. We claim this, because it appears as if a more fruitful dialectical opposition would have been that between, a theoretical account such as that of Newtons and a more metaphysical account such as that provided by Kant. Ricoeur, in the context of his discussion of cosmological time, claims that cosmological time is to be identified with “instants”(P.96). This claim rests upon a misinterpretation of Aristotelian metaphysical theory, which is less concerned with “instants” or “nows”, and more concerned with an extensive metaphysical framework connected to the “before and after” structure of time. It ought also to be pointed out that, Kant too, would reject any analysis of the temporality of a boat sailing downstream into a series of “instants” or “nows”. For Kant, the boat at a previous instant was further upstream and at a subsequent instant was further downstream. Where the boat is at any particular instant is irrelevant to the concept of sailing downstream unless the statement is made in relation to the description “The boat is sailing downstream”. For both Kant and Aristotle, motion requires movement, if it is to be measured, and we know Aristotle rejected Zeno’s, attempts to prove that motion was impossible via the division of space into an infinite number of spaces which would then require an infinite number of “instants” or “nows” to transverse.
The Kantian Metaphysics of Morals claims that “anthropology”, or the empirical study of the phenomenal soul, is a condition of the execution of the moral law. However, the pragmatics of what an agent in fact does, in moral contexts, can be an empirical observational matter belonging in the context of exploration/discovery, which in its turn is related in various ways to the context of explanation/justification. Empirical contexts of exploration/discovery, are obviously important for both the disciplines of History and Sociology. It is in the relation between these two types of context that we encounter the important condition of the role that human powers play in both scientific and ethical situations. Aristotle would have, in these situations, referred extensively to the complex relation of the ideas of areté, epistemé diké and arché. Tragic literature has both its empirical and metaphysical aspects, and the Aristotelian notion of character is an important consideration in any attempt to define the scope and limits of human nature. The roles of Time and Death, would also be important elements in both the creation and appreciation of such tragic writings. It s, however, important to note that, in the case of tragedy and literature in general, the common or ordinary sense of time is presupposed and that furthermore, it is not out of the question that Aristotle’s technical definition of time(the measurement of motion in terms of before and after) is also presupposed.
It is not, however, clear how the phenomenology of internal time consciousness can support this external exercise of “measuring” the conditions and consequences of tragedy. We can say the same of History, namely, that it has a temporal structure in common with tragic literature, and both of these remind us of the temporal structure associated with the moral law, whose primary purpose it is to bring order into the chaos of the humanly created world.
The Phenomenology of Heidegger is, in many respects, more suited to the investigation of aporetic issues such as “What is Time?” “How ought we to deal with the issue of death?” “What is the role of tragedy in our lives?” “What kind of knowledge do we obtain from History?” Relating the investigations connected to the above aporetic issues to the understanding of Being, of course, provides us with a more helpful framework for the likelihood of a positive rational outcome. Ricoeur raises the question whether Heideggers phenomenological investigations are merely “anthropological” in what looks like a pejorative sense, and he also raises the question whether the existential analysis Heidegger provides, is focussed exclusively on the “present” at the expense of the temporal dimensions of the past and the future. Ricoeur answers this latter concern in the negative, and points out that, in fact, Heidegger’s account of Time is primarily focussed on what has been(the past) and what is coming to be(the future) The focus on the present we find in Heidegger, is a consequence of a holistic understanding of how the past-present-future continuum is organised. Heidegger’s account, by implication, refutes any characterisation of Time in terms of a series of instants or nows, but he might well accept that Time is related to events ordered in a series, in which the elements are conceptually related to each other. In such an account the present has intimate conceptual relations to the past and future.
Insofar as Time is connected to the initiation of an action as a result of a decision-process, the decision process is clearly the origin of a process that projects forward along a continuum until the point at which what has been decided has been done. Clearly, in this context both the decision process and the action-sequence are both active and not passive processes, and insofar as this is the case, what is required is the mobilisation of powers which include perception, imagination, understanding, and reasoning. The completed action, is thus the telos, and the formal account of this action is given as an answer to the questions: “What was done?” and “Why was it done?”. The ultimate telos of psuche, is a form of life entailing an ultimate death, which, to some extent, will weigh upon the consciousness of complex human forms of life. The “passive” perception of a boat sailing downstream, will not of course mobilise as many powers as planning the downfall of a king and executing such a plan.
The Heideggerian concepts of Dasein and Being-in-the-world, are helpful in many contexts of explanation/justification, including that of the boat sailing downstream, and the activity of planning to dethrone a king. In the former case Care for the fate of those braving the elements, is the same kind of Care we ought to share for those who have decided to shoulder responsibility for the fate of their communities. Ricoeur, however, claims that the problematic of Dasein:
“overturns the received notions coming from physics and psychology”(P.62)
Which required notions? Einsteins relativity theory merely speaks about a normal clock being attached to a system of coordinates, and presumably that clock(although appearing on the face of it to be a totality of instants), requires two hands in motion moving across its face, to register the passing of seconds, minutes, and hours. The clock, it must be noted, is a cyclical instrument, in contrast to the timing of the passing of days, weeks, months and years of the calendar. Both clock and calendar, however, function in accordance with the logical notions of “before and after”, in the recording of temporal phenomena. Clocks and Calendars are in fact the system of coordinates we use in everyday life, to orient ourselves in relation to the passing of events in the course of our Being-in-the-world. This is a system of coordinates that both the common man and the Historian use as the context of their temporally-related judgements. Is this what Ricoeur calls “objective time?”(P.62). If “objective” is contrasted with a psychological or subjective notion of internal time consciousness, then, there is a risk, that in such an adventure of reflection, we exclude reference to higher mental powers such as understanding, judgment and reason. Such a phenomenological position also requires that the future be described rather than explained or justified. Heidegger’s Phenomenology, on the contrary, does allow reference to a wider field of experience, whose temporality can be explained in the following manner:
“This phenomenon has the unity of a future which makes present in the process of having been: we designate it as temporality.”(Heidegger “Dasein and Temporality”, Being and Time)
Ricoeur acknowledges that in dealing with Dasein, we are dealing, not with the categories that apply to things, but rather what we have called “Existentials”(P.63) In a sense, this is correct ,if we bear in mind that Categories such as “The hypothetical” and “The Categorical” are both applicable to judgments about our human form of life. Ricoeur, in the name of Hermeneutic Phenomenology, wishes to introduce a distinction between understanding and the activity of interpreting. It is interpretation, he argues, that brings Time to our understanding of Language. Such interpretative activity, it is claimed, will unfold what he refers to as the “ecstatic unity” of the future, present, and past. Ricoeur agrees that Heideggers notion of “Care” is vital to the “possibility of Being-a-whole”.(P.64). It is important to note that the spirit of such an investigation is closely related to the spirit of the ancient Greeks. Dasein, Heidegger argues, is a being for whom its very being is a question or an issue for it. This question is responded to, by the emphasis upon Care and possible ways of Being-in-the-world, which are “authentic”, and these two factors testify to the presence of “conscience” and “resoluteness” in the human form of life we share together. Resoluteness brings us full circle back to the issue of Death and the way to deal with it. The best historical example of resoluteness in the face of death, is that of Socrates in his death cell, calming his distraught friends down in the face of the execution of his death sentence. Ricoeur notes the connection of resoluteness to the Stoical position, but accuses Heidegger of advancing a personal conception of authenticity, thus placing his work in a category together with the works of Pascal, Kierkegaard and Sartre. Our view is that Heidegger would oppose much of what is being claimed in these works, but he also would not agree with much of what has been said in the works of Plato, Aristotle and Kant. Sartre’s view of death as an interruption of our “potentiality for being”, is taken up, and Ricoeur asks whether it is not the case that both Sarte and Heideggers accounts would not resolve the aporias around the issues of historicality and cosmic time.(P.67) Ricoeur’s controversial claim, then, is that the Heideggerian idea of Being-towards-death is a conceptual overreaction to the aporias that arise from the dialectical relation of historicality and cosmological time.
Ricoeur claims that Heidegger is attempting to transcend the accounts of Time given by Augustine and Husserl. This, apparently, is especially manifest in Heideggers insistence upon the priority of the future, and its relation to a derivative past, leaving the present to “emerge” as the “time of concern”(P.70) generated by Care. The Aristotelian concept of actualisation also contains an interesting relation of the past, present, and future, and enables one to focus on the way in which potentiality is inherent in any interpretation of the “meaning” of present events–thus avoiding the problem of construing these events as present-at-hand and bracketing our essentially practical relation to the world. Modern Scientific theory may well force us to construe the events happening in the world, in terms of something happening “present-at-hand”, and this in turn may well then force us to “project” temporality onto such a scene through an appeal to an abstract totality of “instants” or “nows”. The more harmless consequences of such a position, is evidenced in Einsteins appeal to the phenomenon of time in the form of a clock, rather than any attempt to analyse the phenomenon, i.e. he develops a position which ends with attaching a clock to a system of coordinates in order to correctly situate events in a space-time continuum.
Ricoeur acknowledges a debt to Heidegger and the concept of historicality, which together with Care, provides us with the beginnings of an interesting practical account of Time. Such an account can be used in pure contexts of observation, such as watching a boat sail downstream. Here there is no appeal to any pure succession of instants or nows which are then merely counted. The “order” of events is much more complex, and better conceived of, in terms of the actualisation process referred to by Aristotle, which in turn, can then be connected systematically to the categories of Judgement Kant proposed. All this, of course, goes well beyond the mere “stretching along” the temporal continuum Ricouer refers to in his attempt to answer the question of the “Who” of Dasein.(P.73). He does, of course, also mention the important aspects of resoluteness, promising, and guilt in the context of this discussion, and this again appears to conjure up the actualising process of hylomorphism and the Critical Philosophy of Kant. Kant’s contribution is to complement the idea of resoluteness with that of Duty. For Kant, then, the “Who” of Dasein, is very much tied to the future outlined in his idea of a kingdom of ends, in which globalisation results in a world-community where we are all “cosmopolitan citizens”. For Kant, all peoples, all nations, are involved in the creation of a future in which all activities aim at the Good, and in which areté, epistemé, arché and diké will play an important role. Heidegger’s concept of being thrown into a ready-made world at birth, is also a helpful account, if the “meaning” of the past for those who find themselves in the future of that past, consists of living in the midst of a massive number of projects in the process of being actualised. To this extent the past exerts an inevitable influence upon the present, and also on the possibility we all have to realise our inherent potential. An early death is especially tragic in such circumstances because the “promise” of the future has been annihilated. Whether or not I can actualise my potentiality may well depend on the influence of the community and its projects. Heidegger refers to this community as “They”, and “they”, for example, may well eschew all peaceful attempts to achieve a world cosmopolitan society, and may furthermore see their relation to other communities through the spectacles of “us and them”, harbouring warlike attitudes to all who beg to differ on important issues such as race and ethnicity—as was in fact the case in 1929 in Heidegger’s Germany.
Ricoeur also refers to Heidegger’s idea of a “moment of vision”, which assists us in moving from being enveloped in the attitudes and platitudes which originate from the “They”, and toward an authentic form of existence, where one is no longer a prisoner of ones thrown-ness into the world. These reflections take us inevitably into the domain of the social and human sciences, which appear to base their case on a multitude of concrete facts that have largely been selected in a spirit of description, rather than with any intent to explain or justify. This former spirit, then, wishes to identify what is objective with what is presently verifiable, in accordance with scientific procedures dominated by observation, and the subsequent manipulation and measurement of variables.
Heidegger detects in the above discussion of objectivity in the social sciences, an epistemological commitment to what is present-at-hand and ready-to-hand: he sees a form of inquiry that ignores Dasein’s commerce with the world, and which , furthermore, involves both existence alongside the things of the world, and existence with other human beings, Science in general and social sciences in particular, concern themselves not with the way in which we “live” time, but rather with the way in which we “reckon with time” and quantify time.
Ricoeur believes that Aristotle connected Time with a soul that distinguishes between two instants and counts the intervals.(P.85). This account omits a key reference to “motion”, and “before and after”, which actually enables the philosopher to glimpse the essence of world-time, whether it be via a boat sailing downstream, or the death of Macbeth. It also omits key references to arché, which, when connected to time, becomes the transcendental principle that makes temporal experience possible. Heidegger suggests that the modern conception of cosmological time has its origins in the Aristotelian writings on Physics, but this is misleading given the importance that is placed on metaphysics in these writings, and given the fact that metaphysics of the hylomorphic kind is largely rejected by both modern Natural and Social Scientists. Ricoeur is doubtful about this Heideggerian diagnosis, but he too misconceives Aristotle’s position:
“the lesson we have drawn from our reading of the famous passage in Aristotle’s Physics is that there is no conceivable transition—either in one direction or the other—between indistinguishable, anonymous instants and the lived-through present.”(P.88)
Reading just the passage referred to, is not sufficient evidence for the accusation that Aristotelian “Nows” are “anonymous instants”. The suggestion by Aristotle, that the lived through present, is a future of a past actualised, is also evidence against the above interpretation. Physical concepts such as “stretching along”, have no place in the principle-regulated Aristotelian synthesis of past-present-future. Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis, however, is infinitely preferable to those analyses provided by Husserl and Augustine, but this too must be qualified by his somewhat confusing accounts of Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy.
Ricoeur mentions the scientific revision of the age of the world from 6 thousand to 6 billion years, and the resistance that needed to be overcome before acceptance of this so-called “fact” could be stablished. Aristotle, in spite of his belief in principles, also believed in the infinite apeiron, which aligns best with the steady-state scientific theory of an everlasting universe without beginning or end— a universe without limits but not without principles.
Ricoeur claims that ordinary time, like cosmological time, relies on a “picture” of point-like “nows” in a series. Time, according to this picture runs from one now to another, it is claimed, but reference to the “before-after” component is omitted, as is reference to actualisation processes. The principles governing ordinary time, insofar as Aristotle is concerned, are to be found in his work “Metaphysics”. Here he presents three principles: 1. That from which a thing changes.2. That toward which a thing changes. and 3. The thing that endures throughout the change. Change, for Aristotle then, is the arena for actualisation processes of various kinds: processes which are related to their own essence specifying principles. This, as we have noted, is not situated in a continuum of change stretching from a beginning point, but rather on an everlasting cycle that continues forever. The scientific “hypothesis” that the universe is 6 billion years old remains just that, until it is “proved” that “nothing” preceded the Being of the universe, i.e. that there was no space before the Universe began . Presumably this means that rejecting such a position entails maintaining that space just sprang into existence like Sartre’s partridges from pools of nothingness.
The Philosophical scientist, then, has no choice but to accept the Kantian claim, that Time is a transcendental condition of both inner and outer experience. Such a scientist ought also to accept the principles of change outlined above, and the metaphysics upon which hylomorphic theory is grounded: a theory that refers to 4 kinds of change, 4 causes of change and 3 media of change(space, time, matter). Philosophical science ought also to accept ordinary or common time as measured by clocks and calendars(with some minor adjustments), and feel no need to perform any kind of “reduction” upon ordinary temporal experience ordered in terms of before and after, and Care for origins and ends. The extent to which origins and ends are disguised in the discourse of “They”, is the extent to which we note that ordinary authenticity is an achievement of no small measure, requiring epistemé, areté, diké and arché.
Ricoeur ends with the conclusion that he believes phenomenology to be an important interlocutor in relation to the above questions. He also admits that the aporias connected to Time outrun the resources of phenomenological investigation.