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Essay Example
In his Confessions, St. Augustine argues that time is the tension of consciousness, and
thus subjective. In the paper that follows, I will explain why Augustine thinks that time cannot be
objective and how the present only exists in consciousness as a tension between the past and the
future. First, I will detail his arguments against the length and existence of objective time. Then,
I will show how Augustine connects time with awareness and our overall consciousness. Finally,
I will compare the philosophy of Augustine to that of Plotinus.
“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain to a questioner, I do
not know.” In the beginning of his writings, St. Augustine isn’t able to come up with a direct
answer for what time is as a whole, it is too complex a concept and has two sides to it: objective
and subjective. Augustine says that objective time is the time we refer to when we are speaking
of it and relating it to others’ understanding of time. This time is the time we measure by minutes
and days and years, and the time that gives us the idea that periods of time can be long or short.
Thus, objective time is the time that allows for the recognition of the notions of past, future, and
present.
However, Augustine denies the idea that an objective time is even able to exist because
time cannot be measured. Though we generally speak of long or short times in the past or future,
it is not possible for these times to be measured because they do not exist. Augustine argues that
only the present exists because “the past no longer is,” and “the future is not yet,” therefore we
are not able to say that an amount of time is a long time ago or is a long time to come. Times
“could be long only while it was in existence to be long…Thus we must not say that the past was
long…since, precisely because it is past, it is not at all.” Generally, things can only be a certain
thing—such as long or short—while they are in the process of being, and, since past and future
are not in existence in the present, things can only be while they are currently happening.
This idea of the measurement of time leads Augustine to the question of whether present
time can be long or short. Though it is in existence and present time is the only time capable of
being, is it then able to be measured? Augustine considers if a “long” amount of time can be
present, beginning with the idea of a present one hundred years. By the way we speak of it
objectively, one hundred years is a “long time.” However, not all of those years are present,
because, if it is currently one year out of one hundred, the other years surrounding it are either in
the past or the future. For instance, consider the year 2016 in the first one hundred years of the
2000s. If it is presently 2016, fifteen years are in the past and eighty-four are in the future. Since
