Saint Augustine of Hippo - The confessions (Book XI: On time)

Another of the purest concepts in the philosophy of St. Augustine of Hippo apart from the concept of memory, will, evil, soul or frewill is the concept of time. The feat is not of little difficulty because the essence of time always seems to escape through many limitations of our mind. Is time really a concept that can not encompass the human mind unless it is divided into parts? No doubt the saint of Rome has one of the most difficult tasks in the pages that follow. So much attention is called to what is coming.

The Confessions

BOOK XI: ON TIME

The total creation

St. Augustine recognizes God as the total creator of intelligible existence material. He makes the man and all the things with body, but also adds a soul to that man so that he can understand things higher than certain animals. However, after all this there is an implacable question: how did God do all things?

How could God create the earth and its components? He should have done something that was something other than matter, but that would be impossible. For St. Augustine, the creation of things comes precisely from the mouth of God, just as he did with the son:

''This is my beloved son''

(Matthew 3:17)

And so the son became, but also this was announced:

''When you spoke and all things were made''

(Psalms 33: 9)

Thus, it is proved that God creates things from his mouth or rather from speech. However, for heaven and earth to be created must have been created on something, obviously, this something comes from the voice of God but what is this ''something''? This principle is for a moment forbidden to St. Augustine, but then it is deduced what is this thing that makes the others exist: time.

Of course this can remind us of the theory of Aristotle's Physics where it is said that everything has its container and this container has a content. The place of the wine is the vessel and the vessel of the table, as well as the contents of the vessel is the wine. In this case, St. Augustine, making something apart from the concept of place, adds the concept of time, that is, all things are contained in time.

Time considerations by other philosophers

Pythagorean

In the earlier times, the Pythagoreans were among the first philosophers to establish a formal theory of time. They said that it was "the sphere (earth planet) that embraces everything" and that therefore time was identified with movement, that is, time is due to movement.

Plato

Plato himself in Timaeus defined time as "the image of eternity" and further added that the Universe and time were made together and will perish together. Plato considers that time is the one that impresses the movement, and this in turn creates the other things of the world like the sun and the moon.

Aristotle

The stagirite defined time not as a movement, but as something that goes much further, something that underlies movement. He also told us that the present is the intermediary between the past and the future, that is, if the present did not exist, then the past and the future would overlap, which is ridiculous. Just as this explanation is plausible, Aristotle gives us the first definition of time: "Number of movements according to before and after", now, why did Aristotle refer to time as "number"? Because the past, the present and the future, according to Aristotle, are measured by magnitudes and the magnitudes are numbers.

Marco Tulio Cicero

Cicero also had his own conception of time written in a book called "De Fato" (or Fate), where he tells us that both the past and the future are immutable times, that is, they exist in themselves without the need of the present.

In fact, there is an immutable future as it would be to say that we are all going to perish, just as there is an immutable past that is to say that all living beings are born.

These have been the theories that at least we have seen in this blog with respect to the time. Let's see what St. Augustine tells us about these things.

The concept of Time

One of the typical errors of the Manichaeans (and in part also of Marcus Tullius Cicero)was to ask himself what did God do before time? Was he idle when it suddenly he hit on the idea of creating humanity? In the book ''On the interpretation of Genesis against the Manichaeans'', Augustine replied that it would be ridiculous to say that God was idle ahead of time, for then one would have to speak of another time where God was idle. Hence we can also speak of the hypostases of Plotinus, to say that creation must have occurred outside the knowable hypostasis for the human being.

What did God do before time?

However, the question remains: what did God do before time? Time is measurable and has intervals, for it to be done it would take something without movement and to remain always, in other words, God created time in eternity because eternity is not time.

Eternity: perpetual present.

Time: past, present and future.

But how can he create time if he needs movement and in eternity there is no possibility of movement? It is one of the crucial questions of St. Augustine who humbly answers, "I do not know."

Many said in the time of Augustine that before time, "God prepared hell for those who dared to search the highest mysteries." This phrase was made in the form of a joke or metaphor so that the children did not ask such strange things, something that to San Agustín bothered deeply.

Finally, St. Augustine says that one can not ask what God was doing before the time because before time there was no time to do something. Indeed, how are we going to talk about the creation of time when there was no time? The question is ridiculous to St. Augustine's reasoning. In nothingness there can be no movement, just as there can be no creation. Notwithstanding all this, God is the great creator of time.

What is time?

Agustín himself admits the difficulty of the answer saying:

''I know what it is, if you do not ask me. But when I want to explain it to the person who asks me, I do not know.''

To try to resolve this doubt, Augustine starts by saying that if the present had neither past nor future then it would be eternity, and therefore we could not talk about time. Thus, the present needs the past to be time, otherwise it would be eternity. Now, the present ceases to be once it is past; Which means that the present to exist must have a tendency to not-be (otherwise it would be eternity).

Past:

Having said this, St. Augustine sets out to analyze the past and the future. The past no longer exists and the future does not yet exist, but how can we refer to them as if it were a present time if they do not exist? We can not refer to the past in any way, not even saying that "the stay was long", because that stay no longer exists.

Also, let's think about the following: to have said '' the stay was long '' we should have said first '' the stay is long ''. On the other hand, something is long when it is placed in the present, when it is already part of the past, it no longer exists; Therefore, things have magnitude when they are in the present and they do not have it when they are in the past (for that reason, the long stay no longer exists).

How should you say something that was 'long'? According to St. Augustine: "Long was that time while it was present."

Incorrect way of referring to the past: '' the stay was long '' is an incorrect form because nothing belonging to the past can have magnitude.

Correct way to refer to the past: "The stay was long while it was present" is correct because the magnitude exists while it is in the present. That is, the only way of referring to the past is referring to the present.

Let us now see if the soul can recognize this present time with reference in the past.

Present:

To understand the present, St. Augustine resorts to a small simile of a hundred years. Imagine a man within a 100-year interval:

When he is in the first year, the man has 99 days to come.

When it is in the second year, the man has 98 future days and a day in the past.

Under this reasoning, we can determine that the present can never be in the 100 years simultaneously, but only in one of them. The same would happen if we took the simile to a year, the man in the first month would have 11 months to come and when he moves to the second he will have 10 futures and 1 past.

The same would happen even if we reduce those years and the year in a day. The day has hours and minutes that would have the reference of being past or future according to what hour or minute we are; Thus, nor the day can be present all.

In this way, St. Augustine defines the present as "an instant," but then what can we call long? How can the present be long or can it last for certain minutes or certain hours if it is an instant?

Future:

Much less could we say that the future has a long interval, as it does not yet exist. And if it exists, it is thanks to the present because the future happens to be present once it passes through it.

Conclusion:

What, then, will we say of these three times: past, present and future? Do we have to say that the past and the future do not exist by themselves unless they pass through the present?

At least in the past, all we have of it remains in our memory. Now, if it remains in memory, then it is in the present because as we can recall it in memory it will be present; So does the future.

All things that exist are seen in the present, but it is memory that also has them. For example, we can see an aurora and we can predict that the sun will rise. The image we have of the sun coming out is an image present in our mind and the prediction would be to say '' the sun will come out ''. Therefore, we can retain the past and the future by bringing them into the present by means of memory, as we have already said, the past and the future can exist only through the present. In fact, it could be rightly said that the past and the future do not exist.

Thus, the correct reference to the present and the past would be as follows:

Past: Present of past things

Present: present things present

Future: Present of future things

We repeat again, it is the present that gives existence to the past and to the future.

This is a subject that has already been spoken among the ancients, especially by Aristotle who said that the past and the future have limits to the present, but never assured something such as saying that the past and the future do not exist. Cicero also had his opinion regarding time, saying that the future and the past are immutable, that is, each has its own existence.

In any case, Agustín accepts that others can say that there is a past or future, as long as it is understood that it is with reference to the present, but one must be aware that the only correct way of referring to the past and to the future is described by St. Augustine.

Time and space

How can we measure time if the present is an instant? Difficult answer has this question, but what is clear is that we can perceive that time changes, that it has intervals and that those intervals ''pass''.

It is a paradox because according to Augustine, the past and the future do not exist and yet they are measurable when they pass through the present. How can they exist and not exist at the same time? In everyday language we can speak perfectly of the past and the future by saying (erroneously) that such period was long or such a period was short.

Times and bodies

Many say that time is nothing more than the turning of the sun and moon to mark the days, but St. Augustine is not at all in agreement with that. For if it were so, then, the motion of the sun would be the creator of time; However, let us remember that movement is possible thanks to time. Therefore, time is something that goes beyond bodies, as we said, time is the container of bodies.

The movement does not determine the time, because it is possible that the sun will stop but time will continue to count. On the contrary the movement is moved by time and if so, time goes first of all things. On the other hand, something as important as movement is the rest of bodies, because this also has time. Hence the movement of a body is not time itself.

The mystery of the phenomenon

Augustine agrees not to know the essence of time because, in fact, he assumes that when he measures an interval "he does not know what he measures", and in fact, he does not know what is measured since the instant (which is the present) can not have An accurate extension. This is how St. Augustine would define time:

''For this reason, it seems to me that time is nothing but a certain extension. But I do not know about what''

Augustine wonders, "What do I measure God when I say that this time is longer than another? How can one measure if the future does not exist and the past does not yet exist? It is well known that time is measured, but not the past or future, and obviously not present because it has no extension. Finally Agustín concludes the said a little before, the time that already happens is measured.

Time and soul

Nothing can be measured unless it is finished, therefore, the tendency to non-being (in terms of the past and the future) is what determines the duration of a thing. With what thing does man measure time? Of course, that man measures time with the soul, for it is there that the perceptions of time are imprinted.

On the other hand, we have a phenomenon even more out of all logic that would be the extension of the future and the past that have no existence. How can we say that the future has an extension if it does not yet exist? How can we say that the past was long or short if it does not already exist? Simply because this sensation remains in the soul and it is she who gives us the impression that it was long and short. The soul has three functions with respect to time: wait, attend and remember. These three actions represent the three times of which we are speaking:

Wait: Future

Attends: Present

Remember: Past

This action of the soul happens especially when we want to sing a song that we do not know. We wait as it is going to be, we pay attention to the letter and the music and finally we sing it again when we remember it.

Finally, this would be the solution to the question of time according to St. Augustine, it is the soul that can retain all future and past thoughts.

Conclusion

With many more doubts than answers (as is the philosophy) leaves us this very difficult text of St. Augustine. Time has been a subject of obscure passages in the life of philosophers but also in the lives of the greatest scientists in history. Of course, the forerunners of these precious ideas were the philosophers to what scientists later endured with theories that are being renewed for each period. While there is no certain solution for the measurement of the present (more than of time because it would comprise past, present and future), the clues that St. Augustine leaves us are not smaller; On the contrary, there is much more encouragement to find out what time really is.