溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
How Do the Past and the Not-Yet Exist?
If the past is no longer and the future not yet, is what exists only an ungraspable present?
A present of things past, a present of things present, a present of things future.
Augustine's solution of the "three presents" was a decisive turn moving time from the objective world into the subjective mind. Aristotle saw time as the number of motion, an objective measure within the world; Augustine asked back whether time holds at all without a mind to measure it. This line of interiorization passed to Husserl in the modern age, refined into the flow of consciousness where the now retains what just passed (retention) and draws forward what is to come (protention). From the other side, physics treated time as a coordinate indifferent to mind. Whether time belongs to the world or the mind split off from the question of the three presents.
For us, quick to miss the now between past regret and future worry, this question — that what exists is only the present within the mind — touches daily life.
Augustine digs into the paradox of time.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Augustine digs into the paradox of time. The past is gone and no longer is; the future is not yet and is not. Then only the present exists — yet the present, the moment we grasp it, has already slid into the past. He resolves the impasse thus: there are not three separate times, but a present of the past (memory), a present of the present (attention), and a present of the future (expectation), all within the mind. I sense this insight moved time into the work of the soul. Upon the ungraspable now, I too move between memory and expectation.
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