What is time? Is it the numbers displayed on an analog clock? Is it a numerical attribute? Time can embody a variety of definitions, but whatever time is, it is not universal; everyone experiences time differently. It escapes us; time is forgotten but still forever present. The past and present can be compared without difficulty. We plan for the future through fixed calendars. We reminisce the past through youthful memories. The past ends and the future begins, which sets limits for each other. But the present cannot be conceived at any length. The present cannot be understood as of any length or of any quantity. Humans have an ability to ignore the present and be constantly stuck in either the past of the future. The temporality of the present can only be understood by attempting to define what time is.
In order to understand how time is different between each person, we must first understand what the nature of time is. Aristotle was essentially the first person to question what time is. He considers that the natural world is constantly being a subject of change and transformation. These special changes of the present include quantitative and qualitative views. It was clear to Aristotle that time and change are closely related but time cannot be linked to motion. Change is always faster or slower, whereas time is not. Aristotle quotes, “’fast’ is what moves much in a short time, ‘slow’ what moves in a long time; but time is not defined by time, by being either a certain amount or a certain kind of it” (Physics, chapter 10). When waiting for the subway car to stop in front of us, time doesn’t change as it slows to pick up its new passengers nor does it change as the car speeds away. But this change and temporal event has an influence on our perception of time. The state of our minds does not change at all nor do we notice its changing, we don’t realize that time has elapsed. Our body stays in one indivisible state, regardless of the change in time and the movement of the world around us. Time, therefore, is neither movement nor independent of movement. We must view movement and time together, whether it is physical or mental. Movement goes without magnitude, it is continuous. Aristotle quotes, “if any movement takes place in the mind, we at once suppose that some time also has elapsed” (Physics, chapter 10).
We often associate time with the ‘before’ and the ‘after’ in virtue of relative position, apprehending time only when we have marked motion; a starting point and an ending destination. But this is an obsolete way to view time. It disregards the ‘now,’ the present sense of time. When we talk about motion in association with time, it becomes a number. The ‘now’ is a subject of time’s identity, but it accepts different attributes when comparing the ‘before’ and ‘after’ that is associated with time. It can be assumed that the sense of ‘now’ can be associated with the same measurement of past and future, but in another sense, it is not the same. When sitting on a subway car, the vessel goes at a constant speed; reaching each destination with a predictable measure of time. But the body experiences a different sense of motion, a new understanding of time. The ‘now’ corresponds with the body that is carried along the subway route; ‘now’ is not predictable and time is therefore fluid. The ‘now’ depicts how the body can escape a linear measurement that time creates. Aristotle quotes, “Clearly, too, if there were no time, there would be no 'now', and vice versa. Just as the moving body and its locomotion involve each other mutually, so too do the number of the moving body and the number of its locomotion. For the number of the locomotion is time, while the 'now' corresponds to the moving…” (Physics, chapter 11). Motion is understood by what is being moved, also known as locomotion. What is being carried is a real thing, but movement is not a physical being. The ‘now’ in one sense could always be the same, in another sense it may not be the same. The ‘now’ is ever changing and can even be perceived differently throughout time. ‘Now’ is a boundary, it is not time but an attribute of it. The ‘now’ is continuous and doesn’t have a specific spot on the spectrum of time. If a line was drawn depicting a lapse of time, the ‘now’ would be the whole line. When riding the subway, the ‘now’ may be near your departure or near your destination. The ‘now’ is the being sitting on the subway and how they perceive the time lapse of their journey.
Aristotle believes that time cannot be counted; time is solely up to the mind and body. What we see on our phones or what the clock reads on the does not persuade our body as to how we may perceive time. Even though Aristotle is considered the first philosopher to question time and attempts to create a definition for it, he doesn’t go in-depth with how time is related to the mind. Yes, he does consider the significance of the ‘now,’ but only in relation with the ‘before’ and ‘after.’
Today, we can categorize the time in three categories, physical time, biological time, and psychological time. Physical time, also considered ‘public time,’ is what we read on our clocks. Physical time is designed to be measured, hence the term ‘physical.’ Biological time is within all human beings. This time runs a variety of internal, bodily functions such as heartbeats, breathing, blinking, and our sleep/wake cycle. The circadian rhythm, our twenty-four-hour internal clock, would be considered into this biological time category as well. These two categories of time are both considered measurable sets of time, but our psychological time is very different. Psychological time is considered private time, subjective time, and phenomenological time. Aristotle slightly touches base on phycological time through the ‘now.’ He pointed out that it is understood through the body and the ephemerality of time. Aristotle believes that if there is no soul then there is no time, thus he considers the consciousness needed to understand time. Most philosophers believe that our ability to imagine other times is necessary to having a conscious at all. The psychological time is our ability to experience a difference between our present perceptions and our present memories of past perceptions. Our consciousness allows us to connect the present world through a variety of memories that creates a whole new atmosphere, a whole new sense of time. This world that we see right now is interpreted through these past memories and is forever changing as some past events succeed other events. The ‘present’ is a temporal state.
Heidegger brings the temporality and the analytic of Dasein when trying to understand the meaning time. However, Heidegger does not follow the Aristotle view of time. Heidegger actually criticizes Aristotle’s interpretation of time, he says that viewing time that has a higher priority to the present, the ‘now,’ is a vulgar way to see time. Heidegger’s approach to understanding time is to avoid the conception of time that has a distinction between time and eternity. We should see time as a temporal state that is derived from a higher, non-temporal state of eternity. In Heidegger’s novel, Sein und Zeit, or Being and Time, he defines his interpretation of time and what it means to be temporal. Dassein brings a sense of anticipation, where the human is not confined to the present but instead always projecting towards the future. Human beings aren’t stuck in the ‘now;’ the human being is running towards the end. Heidegger believes there is a link between the future, Zukunft, and to come towards, zukommen. Dasein takes over our sense of the future: in anticipation, I project towards the future, I carry my past, I carry a cultural baggage. This then brings us to another term, Gewesenheit, which essentially means our ‘having-been;’ a sense of the past. But this doesn’t mean ‘I’ am condemned to the past, rather we take these past experiences to take over our current state of free-action. It creates a resoluteness of the future.
Heidegger defines time similar to how he describes the sense of distance. Everything today can be considered as equally far and equally near, it is distanceless, similar to how everything could be considered as temporal. Nearness preserves farness, just like how our temporal state of time preserves the sense of anticipation. In order to understand a sense of ‘nearness,’ we must examine what is close and not from a distance. This follows Heidegger’s critique of Aristotle’s understanding of time that is in constant comparison of the ‘before’ and the ‘after.’ You can’t understand nearness by looking from a distance. We can compare Heidegger’s nearness to his interpretation of the present. The present is something that we can seize hold of; we make it our own. What is opened in the anticipation of the future is the fact of our having-been which releases itself into the present moment of action. Hence, we can only experience nearness from what is close. This is what Heidegger calls, Augenblick, which is called the “moment of vison” or literally meaning “glance of the eye.” What appears in Augenblick is the essence of Dasein. The key understanding to Heidegger’s understanding of time is essentially the unity of the future, past, and present. This is what he calls “primordial” or “original” time that he insists is finite. It comes to an end in death; we are time. It is clear that both Heidegger and Aristotle agree on one thing, if there is no soul then there is no time.
Whether you side by Heidegger or Aristotle, we all question, “Where did the time go?” The aging process persuades our perception of time. When we are younger, we are bombarded by rich, fresh memories because everything is new. When we are older, memories become less rich because we have “seen it all before.” This is why as we age, it seems that decades fly by faster than it did when we were younger. This sense of living in the past is all caused by physical time. We look at the clock, the calendar, and we sigh. Our brains build stories from our past through the variety of sensory organs. The smell of a familiar place, the touch of a past lover, the sound of a song you heard years ago, the taste of some foreign food, or the sight of memorable face, everything is entangled in our brain. We connect time with these past senses. This story-building takes milliseconds until the brain acquires all the information from all the sensory organs; some becoming present faster than others. A good example to visualize this story-building is seen in the early days of television. Engineers were constantly worried about keeping audio and video signals synchronized. If audio is slightly faster or slower than the speed of the video, it looks like a badly dubbed movie. This is just like how our brain works with temporal experiences. Time is blurred when our brain resurfaces past experiences, we remember a smell, or a visual, one before the other. Nostalgia takes over our body and we are thrown into a trance. These temporal experiences are affected by deficiencies in our imagination and our memory; each person’s brain controls that person’s temporal experience.
This sense of slowing down is considered the “time dilation” effect. Essentially, time dilation is the slowing down of a clock as determined by the observer who is in relative motion in respect to that clock. Moving clocks are measured to tick more slowly than an observer's "stationary" clock. This is a more scientific and concrete examination of how time is mailable and has the ability to change. Time dilation is apart of the theory of relativity, which introduces concepts including spacetime as a unified entity of space and time in the field of physics. But it could also be applied to psychology. For example, with repeated events lasting the same amount of clock time, presenting a brighter object will make that event seem to last longer. Similarly, for louder sounds. Heidegger and Aristotle focus on the subjective, psychological time and how it has the ability to change depending on the mind and the body of the person. But what about biological and physical time? Do they have the ability to change and appear to warp as time goes on? Albert Einstein describes how gravity and space changes our physical state as we travel in space. Space-time isn’t linear, instead it is warped. Depending on our position and speed, time can appear to move faster or slower to us relative to others in a different part of space-time. And for astronauts on the International Space Station, that means they get to age just a tiny bit slower than people on earth. Does this mean physical and biological time aren’t fixed in space as they are on earth? I would argue no. The physical and biological time people experience in space is still relative to their time in their position and is constantly being compared to the time on earth. It appears that physical and biological time only changes when it is compared to another physical or biological time. So, only subjective/psychological time has the ability to be warped because it is within us.
Humans see the world differently regardless of what the clock says or how many hours of sleep we get in a night. For Aristotle, time must be seen through the now in relation to the before and the after; a type of dependency between time and the identifier. For Heidegger, time is seen through a type of anticipation; a constant projection towards the future. Einstein’s approach to time brings a warped sense of physicality in time. To Einstein, physical time does change as we explore space. But here, on earth, time is temporal, it is not an endless cycle. Every human experiences time differently through a variety of reasons. No one shares a similar mindset, we all have very different memories and anticipations of the future. One thing that every human will experience is death. Without the soul, without the body, time ends when death arises.
Aristotle (1957). Aristotle: the physics, books I-IV. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Heidegger, M. (2008). Being and time. New York, NY. Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
Heidegger, M. (1971). Poetry, language, thought. New York, NY: Harper and Row, Publishers Inc.