Time and Metaphysics: Kant and McTaggart on the Reality of Time
-
Matthew Rukgaber
Abstract
The paper examines Kant’s theory of time in light of McTaggart’s argument that time is unreal. First, it presents McTaggart’s theory of time and his argument that a contradiction inevitably emerges in time’s analysis, leading either to an infinite regress of times or the denial that time is real. The paper then shows that Kant rejects the absolute notion of time, the idea that there are eternal coordinates that are experienced by us as being in time. It argues against subjectivist or psychological interpretations of Kant’s theory of time. The main argument is that Kant’s notion of a priori intuition, rather than being the flow of mental states in consciousness, is the subject’s self-intuition as being temporally present, and, moreover, that the present acts as a temporal metric, specifying a first-person perspective in the world and designating a temporal simple.
© 2019 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Contents
- Transcendental idealism and metaphysics: Kant’s commitment to things as they are in themselves
- Kant and the Understanding’s Role in Imaginative Synthesis
- Pure Reason’s Enlightenment: Transcendental Reflection in Kant’s first Critique
- Kant on the Soul’s Intensity
- The Aeneas Argument: Personality and Immortality in Kant’s Third Paralogism
- Kant’s Epistemological Reorientation of Ontology
- Kant’s conception of self as subject and its embodiment
- Time and Metaphysics: Kant and McTaggart on the Reality of Time
- List of Contributors
- Note to the STUDI KANTIANI, XXII, 2009
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Contents
- Transcendental idealism and metaphysics: Kant’s commitment to things as they are in themselves
- Kant and the Understanding’s Role in Imaginative Synthesis
- Pure Reason’s Enlightenment: Transcendental Reflection in Kant’s first Critique
- Kant on the Soul’s Intensity
- The Aeneas Argument: Personality and Immortality in Kant’s Third Paralogism
- Kant’s Epistemological Reorientation of Ontology
- Kant’s conception of self as subject and its embodiment
- Time and Metaphysics: Kant and McTaggart on the Reality of Time
- List of Contributors
- Note to the STUDI KANTIANI, XXII, 2009
