ZUSAMMENFASSUNGDauer wird von Eckhart theoontologisch verstanden. Auf das Sein blickt die Dauer ständig. Dieser perennierende Blick ist nur Gott, dem einen Einen möglich, nicht dem zwischen Sein und Werden aufgespannten Menschen. Indem jedoch der Schöpfer die Geschöpfe in den Ersten Ursprung »zieht«, gibt er ihnen Anteil an der Dauer. Aeternitas, aevum und tempus sind differente modi durationum. Die ihnen zukommende duratio finita ergibt sich aus dem jeweils unterschiedlichen Grad der Identität von esse und essentia bei ihnen.SUMMARYEckhart understands duration “theoontologically” (...) . The duration looks constantly at being. Only God as the only One is capable of this perennial view, but no human beings who are stretched between being and becoming. However, by bringing creatures into the first beginning, the creator gives them a share of the duration. Aeternitas, aevum and tempus are different modi durationum. Duratio finita inherent in them results from different degrees of the identity of esse and essentia which aeternitas, aevum and tempus possess. (shrink)

This article seeks to present for the first time a more systematic account of Edith Stein’s views on death and dying. First, I will argue that death does not necessarily lead us to an understanding of our earthly existence as aevum, that is, an experience of time between eternity and finite temporality. We always bear the mark of our finitude, including our finite temporality, even when we exist within the eternal mind of God. To claim otherwise, is to make (...) identical our eternity with God’s eternity, thereby undermining the traditional Scholastic argument, which Stein holds, that there is no real relation between the being (and, therefore, (a)temporality) of God and the being of human persons. Second, I will argue that Stein excludes the category of potentiality from her discussion of death as a relation between the fullness or actuality of being and nothingness. In fact, death is more a relation between possibility/potentiality and nothingness than a relation between actual fullness and nothingness. What Stein describes as fullness ought to be read as potential. (shrink)

Če želimo učencem in dijakom ponuditi celotno sliko rimske antike, nam na področju kulture in civilizacije v obstoječih učnih načrtih nekaj manjka. Bistveni elementi so nedvomno prisotni; toda če želimo doseči tudi globino, ki jo nudi klasična tradicija, moramo nejezikovne vsebine dopolniti in jih v roku treh oziroma štirih let ponuditi na smiseln, organiziran način. V članku ponujena dopolnitev učnih načrtov je namenjena temu, da bi se pouk kulturno-civilizacijskih vsebin po Sloveniji poenotil (tako kot so jezikovne vsebine že zdaj). Seveda (...) pa moramo vedno imeti v mislih, da se pogovarjamo o eni sami stvari – klasični rimski antiki – ter tematskih sklopov ne na silo ločevati, temveč se jih truditi integrirati in povezovati v eno samo koherentno celoto, ki bo učitelju in učencu v veselje. (shrink)

Frank Kermode uses the term aevum to question the links between origin, order, and time, associating experience with spatial form. Without end or beginning, aevum identifies an intersubjective order of time where we participate in the “relation between the fictions by which we order our world and the increasing complexity of what we take to be the ‘real’ history of that world”; being “in-between” time is a primary quality of the aevum. Regarding cinema, aevum identifies this (...) third duration as emotional experience, occuring as traumatic time. It facilitates thinking beyond lived temporal experience of everyday life to a philosophy of experience that accounts for alternative sensoria of time, similar to the traumatic encounter. The cinematic aevum is equally not of the material, corporeal world; concurrently associating human reality with the myths of the human condition. To say that a cinematic aevum exists following traumatic scenes, is to specify a visual “time-fiction” in film, to recognise a spatial form that belongs neither to the finite time of the film's narrative, or of the “eternal” time outside the film's diegesis, but participates in the order (and linking) of both. Wilfred Bion's psychoanalytic works are used to discuss the traumatic symptom of “empty time”: the inability to recollect, to make links between memory and experience, demonstrating a version of empty time that works as an external violence to spectator perception. Bion's theories offer fresh psychoanalytic perspective on trauma and its relationship to time by challenging classical ways of thinking about inner and outer perception. (shrink)

Scholars from all over Europe have focused on various aspects of philosophical and theological theories on time that characterized late medieval thought. The essays within this volume of the Acts of the international Colloquium held at Trieste, Italy, are a major contribution to the most current research in this field of study.

This work closely examines Bonaventura s philosophical-theological concept of time and eternity. It focuses on the important notions of tempus and aevum and on Bonaventura's position within Augustinian and Aristotelian lines of speculation about time. The study also considers questions of God s uncreated eternity, the eternity of the world, and links to Bonaventura s theology of history.".

This volume contains 14 studies on various aspects of Duns Scotus' philosophy. Duns Scotus is one of the most important philosophers of the Middle Ages. His radical conception of contingency means a break in the history of thought. Despite his importance, he has not yet been studied very much. The contributors to the volume discuss a.o. Duns' view on will and intellect, on the law of nature, on man, and on aspects of his logic and metaphysics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Four-Dimensionalism and Identity Across Time: Henry of Ghent vs. BonaventureRichard CrossModern accounts of the identity of an object across time tend to fall roughly into two basic types.Let us say that something persists ıff, somehow or other, it exists at various times; this is the neutral word. Something perdures iff it persists by having different temporal parts, or stages, at different times, though no one part of it is (...) wholly present at more than one time; whereas it endures iff it persists by being wholly present at more than one time.1On the first of these analyses, but not the second, a persistent object includes temporal parts, and persistent material substances are thus on this analysis four-dimensional objects. On the first analysis, but not on the second, time-indices are explicable in terms of temporal parts. I shall take this as the basic difference between the two views.2Both views allow us to talk of temporal order and temporal direction. I [End Page 393] shall follow the medievals and talk about succession to capture both of these claims: “The notion of succession formally consists in the notion of ‘before’ and ‘after,’”3 and I take it that talk of “before” and “after” entails both order and direction.4 Medieval accounts of identity across time are, however, in some ways more obscure than the two modern ones just described. The medievals tend to associate all temporal succession with temporal extension: an object x has temporal succession if and only if x is temporally extended (and thus includes temporal parts).5 The medievals also (correctly, I believe) tend to suppose that substances—unlike (say) processes—do not have temporal parts.6 Thus, by the end of the thirteenth century the schoolmen commonly [End Page 394] distinguish permanent objects from successive objects. Permanent objects do not, and successive objects do, have temporal parts.7 Successive objects are processes; the class of permanent objects was generally held to include not only God, but also angels, material substances, and static accidents (i.e., accidents which do not entail any sort of process).8Given these claims, there is a problem to be faced in giving an account of the identity of, say, a material substance across time. But it is not the problem we would face. Our problem, post-Hume, is to explain the relevant (explanatory) continuity requirements for identity across time. The medievals’ problem is rather different. They do not need to specify general continuity requirements, because for them there is a very real sense in which substances—and indeed all permanent objects—lack temporal extension and, therefore, any sort of temporal succession at all. The problem for the medievals is thus to explain how substances can persist at all, rather than exist merely fleetingly.9In what follows, I will examine two thirteenth-century solutions to this problem. The first is a radical one: simply to deny the standard claim that substances lack temporal parts. This view will thus bear some resemblance to what we would label four-dimensionalism. The second solution I will examine represents one of the more successful attempts to defend the standard thirteenth-century line that substances lack temporal parts. This solution goes some way towards allowing succession (and time-indexing) without appealing to temporal parts.To understand the debate, we need to keep in mind that the medievals—following Aristotle—talk of the temporality of an object in terms of its being [End Page 395] measured by time. Confusingly, they might speak of a substance’s being measured in one sort of way, and its accidental properties’ being measured in another. Thus, by the end of the thirteenth century it was often claimed that the duration of a substance is measured not by time but by the aevum—the durational measure of objects lacking temporal parts—while some of a substance’s accidental properties could be measured by time. (I will explain in detail below how time and the aevum were understood.) On this view, the temporality of an object’s properties is not sufficient cause for positing the temporality of the object. There are acceptable and unacceptable ways of understanding... (shrink)

This chapter sets the context by giving an overview of historical conceptions of time beginning with a discussion on the distinction between chronos and aion of the Greeks. Aristotle and St. Maximus are invoked. This is followed by the Pauline notion of Kairos or messianic time. For Paul, worldly time or chronos is to be seen as the time of confusion; one must learn to leave it behind in order to prepare to enter into the time of the Now in (...) which a new kind of life begins—the life of hōs mē or “as not.” One lives each thing as not having experienced or possessed it, that is, through the negation of every positivity. This suspension of positivity or revocation of temporal content (katargesis) brings about a state of being in which our relation with the world is fundamentally altered. Serious consideration of the possibility of this new state untouched by temporal formations contributes to the pedagogy of intuition that was discussed earlier. Next, there is the Thomist notion of aeviternity. Poised between time and eternity, Thomas Aquinas’s aeviternity or aevum is closer to the timeless while yet permitting change and becoming. In other words, aeviternal time is seen as the ontological and existential matrix within which beings (creative differences) make their appearance. Aquinas’s descriptions and discussion draw us into a view of reality that is close in proximity to Bergson’s notion of creative duration as the matrix of emergence. Finally, there is the discussion of Henri Bergson and duration. Duration is an ontological time that is not time of the clock or mechanical succession. It is an existential flow whose compressions and elaborations produce material life. All of these notions help to dislodge us from the conventional manner of viewing time and pedagogically prepare us toward building a creative intuition. (shrink)

La vieja Historia griega y la historia magistra vitae ciceroniana exhalan un extraño aroma de eternidad, de negación del tiempo crónico con el fin de ubicar los acontecimientos en su “sitio”: el eón o aevum, la duración para siempre (de donde deriva nuestra “eternidad”. Esta paradoja clásica-que la historia como disciplina y narración impida la conciencia de la historia como vida que inscribe su sentido en sus propios avatares- se ve correspondida, tras la fusión del cristianismo con la Modernidad, (...) con una paradoja inversa: aquí es justamente la convicción exacerbada de la historicidad de las criaturas, la idea de estar expuestos mortalmente al tiempo la que impedirá la constitución de la narración histórica, despachada como descripción de un mundus fabulusus y sustituida por una Filosofía de la Historia que habría de ser paralela en su exactitud y predictibilidad a la Filosofía Natural. Sólo en aquel destello genial e irrepetible constituido por la conjunción del romanticismo (Herder) y el idealismo (Kant, Hegel) se unirán de modo indisoluble historia como acontecer e Historia como disciplina. El sitio común a ambas vendrá dado por una razón capaz de soportar en su seno todo el dolor del mundo. En este ensayo se postula no la impasible vuelta de tal conjunción, sino la fuerza para convivir en un multiverso en ruinas, a la sombra del espectro de aquellas ingentes construcciones. (shrink)

The reflections on time and eternity in patristic thinkers depend, to various degrees, both on ancient philosophy (through some authors’ philosophical formation) and on Scripture—mostly the Septuagint and/or ancient Latin versions. The most common nouns here are χρόνος (tempus in Latin) and αἰών (aevum). The latter in many patristic authors designates a long period, an age, or else this world or the world to come, according to the biblical usage analysed below. “Aeon” is divine life or a divine being (...) or emanation only in “Gnostic” writings. After an investigation into Greek philosophy, I shall pass on to the Bible and Patristic thinkers. (shrink)

Ramelli undertakes for the first time a systematic investigation of the possible knowledge of Christianity in a group of novels, all dated between the first and third century CE, and belonging to geographical areas in which Christianity was present at that time. She endeavors to point out the meaning that possible allusions had for the public addressed by those novels. . . . The results of her research are, in my opinion, of the highest interest. . . . Her work (...) seems to me to be most helpful and rich in outstanding results. --Marta Sordi, in Aevum 76 (2002) -/- The authors of the classical novels shared their world with Christians--some may have been Christians themselves--and one might expect to find references to Christianity in their works. In this learned and pioneering study, Ilaria Ramelli, an expert in both classical literature and early Christianity, brings to bear her profound knowledge of ancient history and a subtle feel for literary values, and identifies a wide range of possible allusions. Her book is a contribution not only to the study of the ancient novel but also to our understanding of the cross influences between religious cultures in the ancient world. --David Konstan Professor of Classics New York University -/- The book has important qualities. First of all, the author offers a very full synthesis of the results of earlier partial studies, including those by herself. A lot of work must have been invested in its preparation, which entailed studying a variety of areas, literary, historical, and theological . . . Secondly, she always takes a careful stand, and never allows herself to declare certain what is no more than plausible or even most probable; Lucian is the only author about whose direct knowledge of Christianity she is absolutely sure. And finally, the work includes a wealth of bibliographical references, both in the footnotes and in the sixty-eight pages of the bibliography. The book is a mine of information . . . Nowadays, both the literature of the novels and the early Church as an element of society are in the spotlight of scholarly interest. Those wishing to work on the points of contact between the two are well advised to use Ramelli as a guide. They will find the facts, well-balanced discussions, and an exhaustive bibliography. --Anton Hilhorst, in Ancient Narrative 3 (2003) -/- Ramelli demonstrates enormous meticulousness, learning, and a critical approach to the sources and bibliography . . . The documentation with which the author of this monograph corroborates all of her statements concerning possible parallels (between the ancient novels and Christianity) with respect to the contents or form . . . is absolutely exhaustive. We must also highlight the huge carefulness, erudition, and critical use of literature. --Antonio Artes Hernandez, in Myrtia 19 (2004). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:So Close and Other EssaysOn Hélène Cixous’s writingJoana Masóce n’est jamaispar l’intérieurni par le centreque je passe—Antonin Artaud, Cahiers d’Ivry, (1947–1948)At the end of the sixteenth century, the genre of the essay transformed the relationship between the subject and object of writing, since the essay emerged as a reaction against other literary forms—such as the commentary, the gloss or the treatise—in which the object of study is not problematized. (...) The gloss, the commentary, or the treatise deal with disciplines or thematic topics—astronomy, agronomy, theology, physics, history—in the proper sense, whereas the essay tends to focus on the approach to those issues. To put it differently, the essay is not strictly concerned with these issues or topics in themselves, but with the approach to them by means of writing.With Michel de Montaigne, specifically in his Essays published between 1580 and 1595, we are faced with writing where the knowledge of the object is no longer the sole center of the text. Despite being actually concerned with the Greek philosophical tradition, sixteenth-century religious wars, and, among many other topics, European colonialism in America, Montaigne’s Essays try to contest the privilege of the object, the privilege of the referent of writing, in [End Page 131] favor of its subject: the subject of writing and the writing itself, what we call in French une écriture de soi.As is well known, in his Essays Montaigne’s writing conveys neither message nor knowledge regarding things and topics, but what he calls “la continuelle mutation et branle” des êtres [“nostre estre”] et des objects [“ des objects”]: “the continual and perpetual mutation” of “beings” and “objects” (257).This epistemological crisis of the essay—abandoning the privilege of the object or theme for an emphasis on questioning the subject of writing and the modalities of the approach to the object—is explicit in the etymology of the word essay. Beyond the notion of attempt—in French, essayer means “to try,” “to attempt to do something”—essayer, from the Latin verb ex-agere, is a compound word of the verb agere, “to act,” in French agir. In Latin, the meaning of agere—“to act”—differs from facere, as agir does in French from faire, “to do”; it is in this way that these two verbs designate a different relationship between the subject and the object of the action. Although agere and facere both refer to action, the verb agere at the origin of the word essay designates an action accomplished by a subject, whereas facere is a transitive verb whose emphasis is placed on the object.While, on the one hand, facere is to be read in the register of transitivity—as is explicit in the following Latin phrases: facere litteram, “to write a letter,” or facere furtum, “to commit theft”—on the other hand, agere, although a transitive verb in Latin, underscores and anticipates the kind of intransitivity of action we will later find in Roman languages. In these Latin phrases, one can see that in Latin, at the same time that, the syntactic construction of agere requires an object, this object is not, strictly speaking, the real object produced by the verb, because in the phrases agere vitam, agere aetatem, or agere aevum, “to spend time or to live,” time is not the real object produced by the verb “to spend.” In Latin, “life,” vitam, “age,” aetatem, or “lifetime,” aevum, are not the real objects produced by the verb agere. This perhaps explains the evolution of the verb in French, or in English, where “to act” and agir have become intransitive verbs, reinforcing the idea that the essay appears to be a genre where whatever has to be done or said is not simply presented as an object.Moreover, instead of the conclusive verb facere, which designates the action as a result or an achievement—the letter is already written, or the theft is already commited—the temporality of agere, in Latin, is a durative one, as in the phrases agere vitam, aetatem, or aevum, “to live.” By its emphasis, not on the object... (shrink)

Stephanie West suggested in a note in this journal , 280) that the presence of an anecdote in Lodovico Guicciardini's sixteenth-century L'Hore di Ricreatione furnishes a parallel for the fable alluded to by Horace, Ep. 1.2.42–3: ‘Rusticus exspectat dum defluat amnis: at ille / labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.’ The parallels, and a third from nineteenth-century Sicily, allow her to imagine a tale, ‘part of Italian traditional lore’, already extant in Horace's time and presumably transmitted in rural (...) regions down to Guicciardini and the Sicilian story-teller. (shrink)

Das Problem der Suibstantialität und folglich des Verhältnisses der menschlichen Seele zum Leiib stellt die schwierigste Frage, ein wahres „Kreutz” für die Anthropologen dar. Zur Lösung dieser Fragen führen zwei Wege, der eine traditionelle und der andere evolutive. Die traditionelle Lehre, nach welcher die menschliche Seele aus Nichts entsteht, nimmt die Suibstantialität und die hylemorphische Zusammensetzung dieser mit dem Leiib an. Dagegen die evolutive Theorie, nach welcher die menschliche Seele von dem Menschen erwächst, schli esst die selbstständige Suibstantialität dieser und (...) das Modell der hylernorphischen Zusammensetzung aus und in Konsequenz löst auf eine andere Weise das Problem ihrer Substantialität.Die evolutive Theorie der Genese der menschlichen Seele setzt voraus, dass den Ausgangspunkt der Seele die raumzeitliche, dagegen den Zugangspunkt die geistige, d.i. freie von den raumzeitlichen Fesseln Wirklichkeit bildete. Diese Überschreitung und Erhebung gechieht in jedem einzelnen Menschen und betrifft sowohl die Ebene seiner Natur, als auch seiner Aktivität. Auf der anschaulichen Ebene hat sich diese Transzendenz in den kulturellen Inhalten geoffenSbart, und auf der ontologischen Ebene hat sich in der Entstehung der geistigen Schicht im Wesen des Menschen verwirklicht. Diese Überschreitung und die Aufhebung des sinnlichen tierischen Psychismus auf das geistige Niveau Ist bei der Erhaltung der evolutiven Kontinuität aibgehalten, was für die neue Lösung des Problems der Substantialität der Seele grundlegend und entscheidend ist. Nämlich, wenn dlie menschliche Seele auf diese Weise entstanden ist, so kann man weder die Zusammensetzung der Seile mit dem Leib, noch den psychophysischen Parallelismus und Identismus annehmen. Diese Lösung möchte sowohl die Scilla des Dualismus, als auch die Charybdis des Identismus und Reduktionismus vorzubeugen. Folgerichtig lässt weder das Zutreten der Seele zum Leib von aussen und von innen, noch die Identifizierung dieser beiden im Sinne des materialistischen oder spiritualistischen Monismus zu.Die evolutive Auffassung der menschlichen Seele erfasst diese weder als selbs- ständige Substanz, noch als die Wirklichkeit, die auf irgendeine Weise mit dem Leib verbunden ist. Der Mensch bildet eine einzige Substanz, derer Teil durch die Loslösung von den raumzeitlichen Fesseln aul das geistige Niveau aufgehoben ist. Durch diese Aufhebung und die Umwandlung entstand weder neue, noch die vorherige.Substanz auf die zwei neuen auf geteilt wurde. Die Differenzierung des Wesens des Menschen auf die materielle und geistige Schicht hat sich mit Hilfe der göttlichen Intervention vollzogen. Diese zwei Niveaus kann man weder trennen, noch gleichsetzen. Diese Schichtung betrifft sowohl die Seinsals auch die Handluhgsebene des Menschen. Die neue Lösung klärt also das Problem der Substantialität der Seele und das Leib-Seele-Problem als das Verhältnis zwischen den zwei seinsartig differenzierten Niveaus der einem menschlichen Substanz. Aufgrund des geistigen Niveau schafft der Mensch die geistige Welt der Wissenschaft der Kunst und der Religion und damit eröffnet sich auf die Unendlichkeit, Aevum und Ewigkeit. Die völlige Umwandlung und völlige Transzendenz über die raumzeitlichen Dimensionen wird sich erst im Moment des Todes, das ist im Moment der Auferstehung, für den Menschen verwirklichen. (shrink)