Plato in Search of a Language for Time

• Applicant: Dr. Anna Pavani
• Subject Area: History of Philosophy
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 470200179

With the single exception of the Presocratics, whose work has come down to us only in fragmentary form, Plato can rightly be said to have initiated a philosophical and scientific "Auseinandersetzung" with the still elusive phenomenon of time. Most attempts to reconstruct a Platonic theory of time, in antiquity as well as in more recent scholarly literature, rely almost exclusively on a relatively compact and notoriously difficult passage of the "Timaeus", in which time is defined as a moving image of eternity (Tim. 37d5–7). In this project, I aim to show that what Plato can teach us about time extends far beyond this one famous passage from the "Timaeus". By combining a genuinely systematic philosophical approach with philological rigor, my research goal is twofold. On the one hand, I aim to show that what Plato has to say about time goes far beyond the definition we find in the "Timaeus". To make this clear, I shall examine two temporal notions that come to the fore in the "Parmenides": the well-known and still much disputed "exaiphnês" and the less studied "nun". I contend that both notions can best be understood by comparison with Aristotle’s homonymous notions in the "Physics" and with a wide-ranging array of extremely diverse temporal notions introduced by both Plato and Aristotle. On the other hand, I aim to show that for Plato our conceptualization of time is inextricably connected to the way we speak about it. Speaking about what always changes is particularly challenging, as the puzzle of change addressed in the "Parmenides" illustrates; addressing properly what always stays the same proves no less problematic. This is an issue the Presocratics had already made us aware of, as shown by Parmenides’ prescription to stick exclusively to the present tense – the same tense which both Plato and Aristotle employ in their formulation of ontological and logical principles, thus paving the way for the “present of general truth” we still use today. For our way of speaking about time not only discloses an intrinsic difficulty; it also reveals a fundamental misconception, which we need to overcome by persisting in the search for an adequate language. As Timaeus claims in the eponymous dialogue, in order to conceptualize time adequately, a target we are still far from having hit, we ought to speak about it appropriately. Plato’s own proposal can be rightly considered the first step in this direction.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position