Plato in Search of a Language for Time
Final Report Abstract
Except the so-called Presocratics, whose thought has come down to us only in fragmentary form, it is Plato who can rightly be said to have initiated a philosophical "Auseinandersetzung" with the still elusive phenomenon of time. What is time? How do we experience and how do we measure it? Is there anything that eludes 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 from what has been considered as Plato’s cosmology, namely the "Timaeus." There, time is defined as a moving image of eternity (Tim. 37d5–7). In order to show that what Plato has to say about time goes far beyond the definition we find in the "Timaeus," I devoted two studies to two temporal notions that come to the fore in another late dialogue, namely the "Parmenides"; I mean the well-known and still much disputed exaiphnês and the less studied nun. I also showed how the two temporal notions interact without molding in one single model supposed to account for change as such, as most scholars hold. I underlined the specificities of the Platonic notions by comparison with Aristotle’s homonymous notions in the "Physics" and by focusing on the specific language with which they are introduced in the dialogue. For, and this is the most characteristic approach of my research, I showed that for Plato our conceptualization of both time and of what eschews time, is inextricably linked to the way we speak about it. Speaking about what always changes is particularly challenging, as both the “Timaeus” and the “Parmenides” witness; addressing properly what always stays the same proves no less problematic, since it is far from clear what the present tense chosen as the only way to approach immutability conveys. Yet, I showed that Proclus already provided us with a good solution to distinguish two kinds of present. As far as the present tense and the tensed language is concerned, I showed that “Timaeus” and the “Parmenides” seem to, but in fact do not, contradict one another. Both dialogues show that our way of speaking about (a)temporality discloses an intrinsic difficulty. However, it also reveals a fundamental misconception which we need to overcome by persisting in the search for an adequate language, which is a target we are still far from having reached. In all its complexity, Plato’s own attempt to determine how to conceive and address temporality and its counterpart by means of our language can be rightly still considered the first big step in this direction.
Publications
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German translation of De Ideis. Quaestio 15, Pars Prima of the Summa Theologiae by Thomas Aquinas
Pavani, Anna & Bonini, Francesca
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Bibliographical Note of Time for the Ancients. Measurement, Theory, Experience by P. N. Singer. In: SIPS. Système d’information en philosophie des sciences (2022).
Pavani, Anna
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On Plato’s Late Dialectic: The Methods of Collection and Division. Ancient Greek Dialectic and Its Reception, 189-210. De Gruyter.
Pavani, Anna
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Chapter Overview. In: Now, Exaiphnês, and the Present Moment in Ancient Philosophy. History of Philosophy and Logical Analysis. Special Issue (26.2) 2024, 181–183.
Sattler, Barbara M. & Pavani, Anna
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Now, Exaiphnês, and the Present Moment in Ancient Philosophy. History of Philosophy and Logical Analysis. Special Issue (26.2), 2024.
Sattler, Barbara M. & Pavani, Anna
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Pathei mathos. Note sulla dialettica emozionante dei dialoghi platonici. In: Poikilia delle emozioni: la complessità dei pathê in Platone. Laura Candiotto and Alessandro Stavru (eds.), Pistoia: Petite Plaisance Editrice 2024, 59–78.
Pavani, Anna
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On Tim. 37e1-38b5. Proclus on the (Tensed) Language of Time. The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition, 1-23.
Pavani, Anna
