The Subject of Time

CFS Lecture by Evan Thompson, Professor of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, Canada

The lecture is open to all and all are welcome.

Abstract

It is often said that physical time does not flow and that the impression that time flows or passes is an illusion. In addition, some philosophers have looked to Buddhist philosophy to help answer the question of how the supposed illusion of the passage of time arises. The idea is that the illusion of the passage of time comes from the illusion of being an enduring self, an illusion that Buddhist philosophers have been especially concerned to analyze. I argue, to the contrary, that it is rather the appearance of time’s flowing that underpins the appearance of being an enduring subject, and that neither appearance is an illusion. Furthermore, it is only by understanding the intertwined phenomenological constitution of these appearances that we can do justice to the genetic (developmental) and generative (historical and intersubjective) dimensions of selfhood.