Steven Frazier
3/2/15
Philosophy 1101-03
Pro. Attard

Paper on “Time and Eternity”

In From Plato to Derrida book 11 by Augustine talks about the notion of time and eternity and its complexities. When Augustine starts to analyze the problem of time he starts to ask himself endless questions on time.
When Augustine analyzes time in the sense of the past, present, and future on he asks if they have real being if the past does not exist anymore and if the future does not exist yet. When he addresses the present he says that if we are always in the present and never slip away into the past then it would not be time but instead eternity. In conclusion he says that we cannot really say that time exists, except because it tends to be non being. (Baird, 282, p3)
Augustine starts to ask the human mind whether time can be long. He asks if the present century is a long period of time. Now most people would say that yes a century is a long period of time but Augustine does not see it like that. Augustine says that we may represent any one of the intervening years of the century present and always the years after as present and those that pass will be in the past but a hundred years cannot be present. (Baird, 282, p3)
Augustine continues in another paragraph to ask if one current year is present. He goes on to say that you can live one month of the year in the present and the months ahead will be in the future however once we move on to a new month then the month we were just in is in the past. Augustine further explains that even if we are in a month we can only live one day in the present and not the whole month. (Baird, 282, p)
Augustine asks what kind of time can be referred as “long time.” If a time in the future is going to be long then it will not be long because nothing yet exists but as we speak it has begun to exist by emerging from the non-existent future and so it has become the present. To Augustine time is bot long because as soon as we start to talk about it becomes present so nothing in existence is actually long. (Baird, 283, p
In the next paragraph he asks the lord if anyone could measure past periods that does not exist anymore or future periods that have yet to exist. He explains that while time is passing it can be felt and measured but once past it can no longer be measured because it no longer exists. (Baird, 283, p2)
Augustine asks the Lord if past and future things do exist then he wants to know where they are. If future things are in the future and past things are in the past then clearly wherever or whatever they are, they can only be in the present he goes on to explain. When one tells about past events it is not the event itself which has passed away but words formed from the memory of the event. Augustine goes on to explain that even though his childhood has passed away he can still tell stories from his childhood which is in his memory. (Baird, 283, p4)
Augustine says to God that he is still ignorant of time but he realizes that within time he is talking about time in such great lengths and that he knows its lengths itself because time has been passing but he does not know that because he still does not know what time is. Even though Augustine has analyzed time and has asked many questions but he still does not understand what time is and what he is measuring. He can measure a body’s motion in term of time but by that he is still measuring time itself by saying he is measuring how long the body lasts. He can measure anything with time but cannot measure time by itself. Augustine came to the conclusion that time is nothing other than tension. (Baird, 287, p1)
Augustine asks the question if sound can