231
§19. Time and Temporality [327-328]

orientation regarding the traditional concept of time and a delineation of the common understanding of time that lies at the basis of this concept, and (b) the common understanding of time and the return to original time.


a) Historical orientation regarding the traditional concept of time and a delineation of the common understanding of time that lies at the basis of this concept


If we look back historically and survey the various attempts to master time conceptually. it turns out that the ancients had already set forth the essentials that constitute the content of the traditional concept of time. The two ancient interpretations of time which thereafter became standard—Augustine's, which has already been mentioned, and the first great treatise on time by Aristotle—are also by far the most extensive and truly thematic investigations of the time phenomenon itself. Augustine agrees with Aristotle also on a series of essential determinations.

Aristotle's treatise on time is to be found in his Physics, 4.10.217b 29—4.14.224a 17. He gives essential supplementary material for his view of time in the early chapters of the Physics, book 8. There are also some important passages in De Anima, book 3. Among ancient conceptions of time, that of Plotinus also has a certain significance, περὶ αἶῶνος καὶ χρόνου (Enneads 3.7), "On the Aeon and on Time." Aeon is a peculiar form intermediate between eternity and time. The discussion of the aeon played a great role in the Middle Ages. Plotinus, however, gives us more of a theosophical speculation about time than an interpretation adhering strictly to the phenomenon itself and forcing the phenomenon into conceptual form. A summary particularly useful for orientation regarding the ancient concept of time is to be found in the appendix that Simplicius provides in his great commentary on Aristotelian physics. At the conclusion of the interpretation of book 4 this commentary provides an independent appendix in which Simplicius deals with time.3 Among the Scholastics. Thomas Aquinas and Suarez dealt most specifically with the time concept. in close connection with the Aristotelian conception. In modern philosophy the most important investigations of time occur in Leibniz, Kant. and Hegel, and here, too, at bottom, the Aristotelian interpretation of time breaks through everywhere.

From the most recent period we may cite Bergson's investigations of the time phenomenon. They are by far the most independent. He presented the essential results of his inquiries in his Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (1888). These investigations were extended and set in a wider


3. Simplicius pp 773-800.


Basic Problems of Phenomenology (GA 24) by Martin Heidegger