We speak lightly of time. In a matter of fact fashion we share our knowledge of the hour, but our reliance on mechanical devices to keep account of time betrays inherent subjectivity of time-consciousness. We depend on the clock to synchronise out motion through space with great precision, but beyond the formality of setting one clock against another we do not know what time objectively is. We are never “directed toward time as the proper object of [our] vision” (Heidegger 1988, 258) and yet we are unable to imagine or describe anything without presupposing it.
The continuous unfolding of unique experiences perpetually agitates the framework of meaning, where every new experience augments the terms of reference with respect to which new facts are determined. As a matter of necessity, we compensate via incremental acquisition of information in time for the absence of complete contemporaneous knowledge, but since conceptual development is inexorably unbounded, every proposition about the world is destined to be at only a tentative truth. “Vagueness seeped into the observational terms, for it was a commonplace that an ostensive definition using a finite number of particular experiences could not make clear the application of a term for all possible future experience.” (Williamson 1994, 143) We manage epistemic vagueness via continuous revision of history in order to consistently assimilate new information. Following the internal order of thought, causes do not precede events but succeed them, because the unfolding events can be rationalised in terms of causes only retrospectively. “Backwards over the course of time a constant remodelling of the past by the present, of the cause by the effect, is being carried out.” (Bergson 1946, 122, 22-23) Cf. (Popper 1979, 115) (Ricoeur 1984, 155)
As long as the flow of experience goes on, its retrospective rationalisation in terms of evental identity is not final, and so the past it refers to is not constitutively fixed; identity is continuously reinvented in order to maintain consistency of the evolving framework of meaning. We can therefore say that all realised events have an evolving history of their history, giving rise to a conception of time which is twofold in the sense that every event is defined by the experiential timeline of causal succession and the non-experiential timeline of identity-formation that follows different temporal logic. An event might have only a brief duration in the first dimension but evolves indefinitely in the other, as a mythical split, a right angle divergence from the experiential axis. “The present and former presents are not, therefore, like two successive instants on the line of time; rather, the present one necessarily contains an extra dimension in which it represents the former and also represents itself.” (Deleuze 1994, 80) The unique experience expires and becomes unobservable, while the mythical timeline persists indefinitely after the material context of the event is no longer there, as an identity that changes but its former states are either forgotten or negated as errors of interpretation. These two temporal dimensions are said to be emplotted via the subject who not only witnesses and interprets the world but is also a temporal object within it. According to Ricoeur:
“The act of emplotment combines in variable proportions two temporal dimensions, one chronological and the other not. The former constitutes the episodic dimension of narrative. It characterizes the story insofar as it is made up of events. The second is the configurational dimension properly speaking, thanks to which the plot transforms the events into a story. This configurational act consists of ‘grasping together’ the detailed actions or what I have called the story’s incidents. It draws from this manifold of events the unity of one temporal whole.” (Ricoeur 1984, 66)
The principle of emplotment of experiential and configurational dimensions adequately explains retention of meaning across temporal discontinuities (periods of unconsciousness, for example) embedded within the ostensibly linear order of experience. It explains what we already intuitively accept, that information does not need to be arranged or revealed in a strictly chronological order for the unified course of narrated time to be conveyed to the interlocutor. Experiences may be scattered, composed of temporally dispersed fragments, and yet, if the information-content is logically consistent, a unified temporal order is bound to emerge. Our indisputable ability to “draw a configuration out of a simple succession” (Ricoeur 1984, 65), especially if the succession is not temporal but purely logical (as is the case of ‘static’ text) or if the sequence of narration does not follow the narrated evental order, reveals that temporality is analysable as a mode of grasping the multiple in a unified context. We are thus able to differentiate between the temporal order of communication – or what we call the ‘real time’ – and the temporal order within the narrative – the time we are ‘conscious of’ when understanding or identifying. We can think about real time, but our thinking inescapably remains in the configurational dimension associated with the inner narrative which does not necessarily follow causal logic.
The twofold structure of time consisting of the timeline of causal succession and the timeline of identity-formation can be adequately defined within the theoretic limits of McTaggart’s (1908) model, whose A-series coordinates the historical dimension in terms of past, present and future; the B-series defines the sequence of evental succession in terms of before and after; and the C-series signifies order. In the next two articles I will argue that neither the A-series nor the B-series are sufficient to construct a consistent model of temporality for being because change (a constitutive property of time) supervenes on the constitutive properties of being, and then I will show how the C-series can be integrated into the model in order to consistently accomplish the unity of one temporal whole for a system of objects. (Next article in the C-theory series)
- Bergson, Henri. The Creative Mind. New York: Philosophical Library, 1946.
- Deleuze, Gilles. Difference & Repetition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
- Heidegger, Martin. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
- McTaggart, J. Ellis. The Unreality of Time. Mind, 1908: 457-474.
- Popper, Karl R. Objective Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
- Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative (Volume 1). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984.
- Williamson, Timothy. Vagueness. London: Routledge, 1994.