On Time

This volume brings together seven essays discussing aspects of time in the history of philosophy, going back to Plato, Plotinus and Augustine through to Spinoza, Kant, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Husserl, Levinas and Ricoeur. As such, the discussion is on a relatively technical level covering themes such as being and eternity, the time of the body, self and time, time and imagination, and internal time. One especially interesting theme is the relationship between time and the self. The editor points out that time is the ground of history and an enquiry into time also constitutes a questioning of the character of (and intentionality in) one's own existence, for instance in terms of anxiety and ultimately death. For Heidegger, the self is on the one hand time itself and yet not in time, corresponding to finite and infinite knowing. Our identity and memory through time is vital to the underlying notion of the self and the extent to which it persists beyond the death of the body.