One presupposition commands all others of every narrative work; the temporal character of human

experience.

Time + NarrativePaul Ricoeur

Diagramed Statements of Time

Katy Foley | RISD MLA Thesis, 2009.

Time becomes human time to the extent that it is organized after the manner of a narrative.

Narrative, in turn is meaningful to the extent that it portrays the features of temporal experience.

What then is time? For what can be measured is only what, in some way exists.

The measurement of time.The being or non-being of time.

Augustine’s Aporias

we shall see

But, it is precisely in separating the analysis of time from its backdrop of eternity that its aporetical features can be brought out.

Time has no being since the future is not yet, the past is no longer, and the present does not remain.

And yet we do speak of time as having being. We say that things to come will be, that things past were, and that things present are passing away. Even passing away is not nothing.

On the one hand, the skeptical argument leans toward non-being, while on the other hand a guarded confidence in the everyday use of language forces us to say that, in some way, which we do not yet know how to account for, time exists.

To have taken placeTo occurTo be

No longerNot yetNot always

What then is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.

What we measure is only the past and the future.

It is of the future that we say that it shortens and of the past that it lengthens. But how can anything that does not exist be long or short?

Memory + Expectation bring the past and future into the present

The Present has no duration.

No longer characterized solely by that which does not remain, but by that which has no extension.

We can be aware of time and measure it only while it is passing.Passing is going from the future, through the present, into the past.

We recount things which we hold as true and we predict events which occur as we foresaw them.

A present of past things – memoryA present of present things – direct perceptionA present of future things – expectation

Three Fold Present

Wherever they are and whatever they are, it is only by being present that they are.

Some such different times do exist in the mind, but nowhere else that I can see.

Our use of words is generally inaccurate and seldom completely correct, but our meaning is recognized nonetheless.

The measurement of time is done in relationship to some measureable period and that all the relations between intervals of time are in relation to a given period.

succession | tide | time