'Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding.'
(Time,
that is a strange thing)
Aria
from act 1 of Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss
When at a bright night we are looking at
the stars, we are looking far back into time.
I realized this again, when I was last weekend at some place outside the
city. It was in the middle of nowhere, with the Ijsselmeer at one side and
endless green pastures at the other side. There were neither streetlights, nor
the lights of big buildings, just the bright lights of the stars and even the
Milky Way was visible. I could very well imagine that the Babylonians and many
other peoples and tribes took their religious inspiration from the stars, but I
must say that as a historian of religion, I am unashamedly romantic – as I
think many historians of religions are. While looking at the stars and being
fascinated by the idea of looking backwards into time, it suddenly crossed my
mind that in his Confessiones, that
strange combination of autobiography, prayer and philosophical reflections, St.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) wrote about the concept of time. First he stated
that eternity is not the endless sum of time, but something outside time. In
this way he solved the problem of God’s foreknowledge. As God created time, he
must stand outside time and so He can see what will happen. St. Augustine
doesn’t use the word `other dimension’ but that is exactly what it is. Suppose
there are flatlanders living in a 2 dimensional world: we can see this 2 dimensional
world as a postcard or a picture and, looking to it from a 3 dimensional world,
we can see it at one glance. Now God is looking to us living in time from a
dimension outside time and so He can see past, present and future at one
glance. One doesn’t need to be religious to see the brilliance of this thought.
Next St. Augustine asks himself: what is time?
Confessiones 11.17 (XIV)
(…).
quid est enim tempus? quis hoc facile breviterque explicaverit? quis hoc ad
verbum de illo proferendum vel cogitatione comprehenderit? quid autem
familiarius et notius in loquendo commemoramus quam tempus? et intellegimus
utique cum id loquimur, intellegimus etiam cum alio loquente id audimus. quid
est ergo tempus? si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim,
nescio. fidenter tamen dico scire me quod, si nihil praeteriret, non esset
praeteritum tempus, et si nihil adveniret, non esset futurum tempus, et si nihil
esset, non esset praesens tempus. duo ergo illa tempora, praeteritum et
futurum, quomodo sunt, quando et praeteritum iam non est et futurum nondum est?
praesens autem si semper esset praesens nec in praeteritum transiret, non iam
esset tempus, sed aeternitas. si ergo praesens, ut tempus sit, ideo fit, quia
in praeteritum transit, quomodo et hoc esse dicimus, cui causa, ut sit, illa
est, quia non erit, ut scilicet non vere dicamus tempus esse, nisi quia tendit
non esse?
The
Latin is not easy!
quis hoc ad verbum de
illo proferendum vel cogitatione comprehenderit?
Who can understand this by talking (ad
verbum proferendum = by bringing to word) about this even (vel) by thinking? (Vel has here probably not the meaning of a disjunctive but is an
intensifying particle, though some translators take it as a disjunctive, like
the one I copied below.)
commemoro
(1): to mention
utique:
certainly
cum alio loquente
= cum alius loquaretur
quaero – sivi –situs:
to ask
praeter-eo:
to pass away
fidenter tamen….praesens
tempus. i.e. If nothing happens, then there is
no time
duo ergo…sed aeternitas.
We speak of two times: past and future,
however, If the past time isn’t there anymore and if the future time isn’t
there yet, then there is no time at all, but just eternity. We can quibble about
the last point, but in St. Augustine’s definition of eternity is that, where no
time exists. Present time does not exist at an ontological level, as it is an
in-between these two times. We are so to say in a constant flow. This is
further explained in the next sentence.
si ergo praesens, ut
tempus sit, ideo fit, quia in praeteritum transit, quomodo et hoc esse dicimus,
cui causa, ut sit, illa est, quia non erit, ut scilicet non vere dicamus tempus
esse, nisi quia tendit non esse?
The
words are not difficult, but the train of thought is, and indeed the syntax doesn’t
make it easier to understand. Many translators have been wrestling how to
translate this and I have seen some monstrosities. I will first give a literal
translation - as far as possible – and then an understandable translation:
If
therefore the present, as soon as it exists as time, in that way acts, that it
goes over to the past, how can we say that that exists, for which the reason
(of its existence), as soon as it exists, this is, that it will not exist, so that
we indeed cannot say in truth that time exists, unless it strives not to exist?
And
now what St. Augustine meant to say:
If
the present time, as soon as it exists, will go over to the past, how can we
say that the present time exists, as the reason for its existence is to become
non-existent? So indeed can we not say in truth that time exists only in so far
it strives to become nothing?
St.
Augustine continues trying to understand time. He asks what it means when we
speak of a short and long time ago or in the future. The past does not exist
anymore and the future isn’t here yet, so past and future are non-existent. But
how can we attribute a quantity to something that does not exist? He comes to
the conclusion that it is in our and with our mind that we measure time: the
past is in our remembrance, the future in our expectations. Time is in our mind
and it is a subjective experience. It took St. Augustine pages of Latin to come
to this conclusion, but he had no predecessors to build upon. It was worth the
trouble: up to this day philosophers have been fascinated by his treatment of
time and that is not a bad result for a bishop living 1600 years ago!
Translation
by Abert C. Outler (1955)
CHAPTER
XIV
17
(…) For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who can even
comprehend it in thought or put the answer into words? Yet is it not true that
in conversation we refer to nothing more familiarly or knowingly than time? And
surely we understand it when we speak of it; we understand it also when we hear
another speak of it.
What,
then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to
him who asks me, I do not know. Yet I say with confidence that I know that if
nothing passed away, there would be no past time; and if nothing were still
coming, there would be no future time; and if there were nothing at all, there
would be no present time.
But,
then, how is it that there are the two times, past and future, when even the
past is now no longer and the future is now not yet? But if the present were
always present, and did not pass into past time, it obviously would not be time
but eternity. If, then, time present--if it be time--comes into existence only
because it passes into time past, how can we say that even this is, since the
cause of its being is that it will cease to be? Thus, can we not truly say that
time is only as it tends toward nonbeing?
About
the Confessiones
About
St. Augustine
Aria
from the Rosenkavalier
The punctuation helps a lot when trying to translate this.
ReplyDeleteI guess there was not much punctuation in the original text?
Indeed, the punctuation is made by later editors.
ReplyDelete