Time in "negative platonism'

Pavel Kouba

pp. 79-88

in: L'ubica Učník, Ivan Chvatík, Anita Williams (eds), The phenomenological critique of mathematisation and the question of responsibility, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

In his polemic against contemporary philosophies of time, Jan Patočka tries, within the framework of his project of "Negative Platonism', to sketch out a conception of temporality as a stance at the edge of an already completed past and a transcendent, "wholly other' future. The offered contribution seeks, firstly, to show the problematic character of this conception on the grounds that this stance, and thus also time itself, is exclusive to humankind; all other Being, animate as well as inanimate, being in time only in a mediated manner. Secondly, it seeks to point out an alternative view, assumed partly by Patočka himself in his explication of space. Finally, it indicates the more general problem arising out of philosophy's separation of the future from the past, of time from space and of the thing from the world.

Cited authors

Patočka Jan

Plato