Aristotelian Time
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Dionysios A. Anapolitanos
Abstract
In this paper we offer a critical account of Aristotelian theory of time. After a brief presentation of the main views of Aristotle on the infinite, we focus the attention to the status of points with respect to the potentiality-actuality distinction. Then we address Aristotle’s views on time on the basis of the Aristotelian notion of continuity. We construe the “nows” as potentialities awaiting to be actualized. We show that it is the intervention of an agent (soul), who, through finitely many unitary mental acts of noticing or perceiving, guarantees the actualization of particular “nows”, constructs or brings into existence time intervals and through their comparison measures them, so producing what Aristotle calls time.
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Article
- Propensities and Possibilities
- Powerful Qualities or Pure Powers?
- Aristotelian Time
- Time, Leeway, and the Laws of Nature: Why Humean Compatibilists Cannot Be Eternalists
- Persistence Conditions and Identity
- Persistence, Temporal Extension, and Transdurantism
- More Work for Hybrid Persistence
- Why We Shouldn’t Pity Schrödinger’s Kitty: Revisiting David Lewis’ Worry About Quantum Immortality in a Branching Multiverse
- Book Review
- Robert Lockie: Free Will and Epistemology. A Defence of the Transcendental Argument for Freedom
- Conference Review
- The Possibility of Metaphysics. Between Inductive, Analytic, and Transcendental Arguments, Duesseldorf, 31 January – 01 February, 2019
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Article
- Propensities and Possibilities
- Powerful Qualities or Pure Powers?
- Aristotelian Time
- Time, Leeway, and the Laws of Nature: Why Humean Compatibilists Cannot Be Eternalists
- Persistence Conditions and Identity
- Persistence, Temporal Extension, and Transdurantism
- More Work for Hybrid Persistence
- Why We Shouldn’t Pity Schrödinger’s Kitty: Revisiting David Lewis’ Worry About Quantum Immortality in a Branching Multiverse
- Book Review
- Robert Lockie: Free Will and Epistemology. A Defence of the Transcendental Argument for Freedom
- Conference Review
- The Possibility of Metaphysics. Between Inductive, Analytic, and Transcendental Arguments, Duesseldorf, 31 January – 01 February, 2019
