The Promise of Time

“ὦ Σόλων, Σόλων, Ἕλληνες ἀεὶ παῖδές ἐστε, γέρων δὲ Ἕλλην οὐκ ἔστιν.” - Timaeus, 22b

It all begins with a counting. One, two, three...... Socrates is counting the people present, those who were entertained by his speech yesterday, and who promised to give a speech today in return. This dialogue - or shall we say, a monologue? a speech of one person? - thus starts with that mysterious word, the word that confounds Parmenides to such an extent that he claims Socrates to be yet too young to learn of that difficulty.

But Socrates concludes the counting with something no less mysterious: at the end, he discovers that one person is absent. This person has no identity. All we know is the mere fact that he was one of the guests that were received by Socrates yesterday, and cannot be present today due to his illness. He breaks his promise, unwillingly (according to Timaeus, 17a), of entertaining Socrates in return.

A counting. A promise. From the very beginning, the problematic of time is inscribed into Timaeus. And not only at the beginning: this inscription is throughout the whole body of this text, like a crack, problematizing the speech, confusing it, making it dangerous. Just like every promise is, and should be, always at danger, always at the brink of its own non-fulfillment, this danger is transmitted to Timaeus’ own speech, as he promises to speak, “beginning from the birth of the cosmos and ending with the nature of man”(27a). Does he fulfill his promise? Can his promise ever be fulfilled? These are pressing questions, timely, timely questions.

But I should stop here, since the time is promising and it is not wise to waste it. Instead, I should advance courageously, with a prayer, with the promise, to dive into the whole problematic of time raised by Timaeus, as a part of his fulfillment of the promise: a dangerous promise......

I. Cosmos

What is time?

Timaeus seems, prima facie, definitive in answering this question. His statement of what time is runs as follows: “just as [the artisan god is] putting heaven in array, he makes of eternity, which abides in unity, an eternal likeness that goes according to number, that very thing we have named time”(37d). Here, time is claimed to be a “likeness that goes (moves) according to number”. The meaning of this phrase is the first thing I will examine.

Movement (εἶμι) as such is different from what we understand to be change, for the fact that movement always involves a direction. A change can occur qualitatively, like the yellowing of leaves in fall. But this change, in itself, does not have a particular direction. That is why we do not say the leaves are moving as in yellowing. Or when we add more salt into water, water is not said to move, but only to change into a saltier state. Now, since a likeness, or an image, is said to move, a latent directionality is implied and needs to be elucidated.

What kind of directionality does an image have? The kind most pertinent to our current study is the direction every image harbors in itself toward the original. It is common experience that, when an image is exhibited as an image, it points to something absent of which the image remains an image. When I see a picture of an acquaintance, the picture is pointing toward that acquaintance himself, or my memory of him. But this directionality is not yet aimed high enough. In both Republic and Phaedo, a power to conjure up ideas is attributed to images and perceptions, so that when seeing images and carefully discriminating them from the originals, we might gain the power to reach an ideal plane. This essential movement toward the pinnacle of dialectic is described in Republic through the expression of the divided line(510a) and the “turning around of the soul”(518d). Or as in Phaedo the ideas themselves, like “big itself” or “small itself”, are said to only be arrived at through the paradoxes generated in perceptions(101a), thus this different piece of text also holds that same kind of allowing for movement as properly belonging to image.

Yet directionality is not movement per se. A pointing toward the originals or the ideas is, at best, only a potential allowing for movement, so that in 19b Socrates is able to speak of his desire to see a still life painting of animals be transformed into motion. Then, how should the actualization of this potential to move occur?

In the case of a still life painting, it is rather difficult to say that the painting itself is moving toward the original or has any potential to. However, we recollect the original and our souls turn around, following the course laid down first within the image through that very directionality. In other words, my soul moves together with and guided by the image toward the original (a turning around, of course, does not imply any success of reaching the target; but it is movement on the part of the soul nonetheless). And, the image as an image, as being perceived and understood, is not outside the soul. The image, then, is animated in and through the soul to move toward the original.

By this interpretation, then, the constitution of the soul should precede the constitution of time as to allow for the movement to be carried out. This is exactly what happens in Timaeus. The constitution of time only fully starts after the completion of the cosmic soul (which is on a different scale from a mere human soul). Yet, a complication ensues: if the movement of the soul is said to be prior to the constitution of time, thus distinguished from time, how is it different?

Does it even make sense to say “prior to the constitution of time”? A time not yet time? It is worth noticing, however, that at least some sense of “a time not yet” is already implied in the definition of time in 37d. For instance, words like “just as” (ἅμα) and “abiding” (μένοντος), which seem to involve some temporal significations, are used to describe things not absorbed by time, like “putting heaven into array” and “eternity”. But before addressing this question of a time not yet, it is necessary to first determine what time is in Timaeus. At this point, I will only attempt to distinguish the two movements, i.e. the movement of the cosmic soul and the movement of time.

One defining distinction of the two movements is the respective absence and presence of visible bodies. In the description of the cosmic soul, we witness a circular motion at play: the circuits of Same and Other are said to transmit the message of occurrences throughout the soul(37b). The motion is said to be “wheeling smoothly”(37c) and the account (the message) swept along “without sound and noise”(37b). The smoothness here suggests an uninhibited motion, as if the circuits are both oiled so that no sound is made. What is the significance of this reference to sound? How do sound and noise matter specifically in this context? One likely interpretation has to do with the essential deferring characteristic of sound. Sound signifies a distance, a deferral from the true idea. Sound communicates and transmits only a delayed message the original of which lies buried within the mind of the other. But in the smooth wheeling motion of the cosmic soul, there is neither delay nor disturbance. This amounts to saying that, in the movement of the cosmic soul, the idea (original) is too close to the visible representation of it (likeness). The reduced distance between the original and the image incurs a necessary difficulty: if the image is reduced to the original, how should the movement maintain itself without collapsing into a state of self-sameness? The movement of the cosmic soul would be so swift that within it everything happens everywhere all at once so that there is hardly any time at all, and the image cannot be differentiated from the original. It is true that the particular things are said to be assigned to Same and Other depending on whether it is the same or the other, so there retains some differentiation between the realm of sensible things and ideas. But the differentiation in such an undisturbed movement is too small to be either noticeable or calculated. Therefore, time is impossible to be even as the movement of the cosmic soul, since time, qua image, requires a maintained distance between the image and its original. Accordingly, we see how underlying the constitution of time is really a principle of distance. And this proffers a whole new spatial dimension right in the middle of the problematic of time, thus foreshadowing the second beginning with χώρα in Timaeus.

Now that I have arrived at the underlying spatial principle, I shall turn to an elucidation of the other part of the expression: viz. what does it mean to “move according to number”? A preliminary clarification is necessary here: though it is not self-obvious that Euclid and Plato share the same understanding of number, let us assume, for present purposes, that they do. Now, let us consider the relation of movement and number.

According to Euclid’s definition, a number is “a multitude composed of units”, and a unit “that by virtue of which each of things that exist is called one”. Here we see a difficulty that parallels the previous difficulty of movement that precedes time: in the same way that a state of movement is characterized as preceding time, in this definition of unit a prior unity as “each” and a prior plurality as “things that exist” are spoken of. Before a number or a unit is even established, there is already a more originary sense of unity and plurality that the definitions of unit and number depend on. To fully determine the sense of number in light of this more originary unity (and plurality), we need to look into our own experience with numbers, that is, with the practice of counting.

One defining trait of number is the distinctness displayed by the countables it collects. If, let us say, two things are totally indistinct to each other, can any counting happen at all? Nor can anything be called one, if it appears to be many and one at the same time. In that case, any counting will be impossible, even if an inherent sense of manifoldness might be expressed, like in Parmenides an indistinguishable mass is spoken of(165b). Thus, the distinction as instituted by number is a difference between indistinct magnitudes and distinct collections of units. Distinctness implies a completeness of the unit, that each unit is oneness itself and cannot be complemented by any other. Different from an indistinct magnitude, a number as a multitude composed of units is a gathering of complete countables: the unit, as oneness itself, has to display a total singularity.

But what can be more complete in itself than the self-same originals, namely, the various units of the intelligible model that the artisan god looks upon? None. Number, under this context, is a multitude of originals. Then, the definition of time is now reinterpreted as a likeness moving according to the collection of originals. But what does this mean?

It first needs to be established that time is not number, but rather moves according to number. Therefore time cannot be in itself the original, but has to imitate the original via its motion, itself belonging to a realm of the “things that exist”. What kind of motion can fulfill this imitation? In 34a, the artisan god is said to have assigned the motion of revolution alone, which is claimed to be “especially attend[ing] intellect and prudence”, to the cosmic animal. If any movement should be spoken of as the most proximate to the originals, it can only be revolution. Why? Because revolution, as constant motion, does not exclude differentiation; yet it always returns to itself, thus maintaining a certain self-sameness. By that very movement, a self-differentiation (a differentiation that remains itself) is achieved, so that the moving thing can mimic that self-sameness of the original, without itself being the original. Time, in order to mimic eternity, has to move in this same way; as it can neither escape from motion or differentiation, nor can it not maintain self-sameness to the highest degree allowed for things that come to be. To move according to number, to the rule of originals, in that aspect, means to revolve.

Another differentiation has to be brought up. Not only is time different from number, time is also not a movement. It is a moving likeness. Therefore, this movement of revolution needs to be brought under the context of the image-original relationship in order to be fully comprehended. If we recall our previous analysis of the dynamic relationship between the image and the original, the perception and the idea, the kind of revolution that involves both can be demonstrated as the following.

Formerly, the dynamic relationship was characterized by two presupposed principles. First, the image and the original are brought under the same yoke of one cosmic soul. Thus, the image reaches for the original as the cosmic soul itself carries out the circling movement. Second, the distance between the image and the original should be maintained, otherwise the image and the original will be reduced into one state of indifference, thus making any movement impossible. To synthesize these two principles of movement, then, results into a palintropic state of motion: the image (or the imagery part of the soul) has to reach for the idea (or the ideal part of the soul) yet always turns about back upon itself. The image cannot lose its distinctness during the course of its circling, if time needs to be; thus by completing the circle, the image returns back upon itself to its original position. The completeness of the circle then only stresses the absolute lack contained within it, i.e. the radical distance from the original. As long as the radical distance between image and original is maintained (radical because the undisturbed movement of the cosmic soul in itself, as illustrated previously, cannot be characterized as time), time obtains.

But so far I have only dealt with this mode of motion in general. It is not yet determined in what way the image, in moving, is like the original, that is, how the directionality from the image to the original is established and maintained in the first place. And now I shall turn to this question.

If what we are dealing with here is really a still life painting, the task will be rather easy. The likeness would be said to be like the original only in a visible way. That is, the image resembles the original since the original has a certain look, which the image also shares. However, this is hardly the case if applied to the realm of εἶδος. Even if εἶδος can also mean “the look”, the look of an idea is not simply another visible image. This is where the former analogy of the image of the acquaintance breaks down: the remembrance triggered in that case is but another image layered with indexes to point toward even further memories, till infinity. But this is not the relationship depicted in this definition of time. Time, in this definition, is said to be nothing more nor less than an image of eternity; yet eternity is not a mere collection of infinite images, but is said to “abide in unity”(37d). The signification here is hard to pinpoint, yet one thing is clear: what is emphasized here of eternity is exactly its oneness.

A revisit to our former determination on the mode of movement of time is useful: I say previously that revolution, in its self-differentiation, most imitates the eternal original in its oneness, i.e. unity, by maintaining itself despite the differentiation. Entertaining this mode of movement, namely revolution, the image can be denoted as a one, as it maintains, in its circling back, its distinctness over and against the original in and through that dynamic relationship. In other words, the image that is time resembles its original not in the visible way (of pointing toward potentially infinite images), but in a more “prudent” and profound way, of sharing the unity of its original via acting as one end of the dynamic relationship over and against eternity, thus itself becoming a complete one, “an eternal likeness”. That is, even though time as a moving image is visible, the way the image refers to (and moves toward) the original is intelligible by remaining a different kind from the original.

To put it in a yet simpler way, we might consider an application of counting on this dynamic relationship. How many parts are involved in this dynamism? Two, from the most basic: the original, and the likeness. The likeness then is itself a countable kind. Being a countable kind, it shares the oneness of the original, and becomes like the original in that very way. This countability of time, however, cannot be achieved without the perception of a circular way of motion: by the perception of a revolution, time exhibits its self-sameness and its differentiation by always returning to the same position in heaven. Time thus exhibits its self-sameness in differentiation as differentiation in a tangible form, by always remaining in the visible realm and refusing to go all the way out into the invisible. Hence the prudence of revolution, i.e. its intelligibility, is not cut off from the sensible, but is exactly expressed by that visible circularity, by its remaining its own kind independent from the invisible space of originals. Throughout, a distance has to be maintained for the movement to hold.

Now, we have yielded a fruitful and adequate discussion on the nuances involved in the short phrase, that time is “an eternal likeness that goes according to number”(37d). From all the things said above, it is to be determined that time is a universal kind of image that moves through palintropic self-differentiation in order to imitate the self-same eternity, by its very distancing from eternity.

II. Chaosmos

Time is not said to be moving according to one, but according to number. Time, hence, should be intrinsically plural, as the universal moving image that holds under its sway particular moving images as (not unconditionally complete) countables to be counted. Yet, to be a countable necessarily means to be one. Time, therefore, should in its very movement articulate an interplay between oneness and manyness.

A general account of time can then be proffered. By its revolution, time, as an image, returns to itself, and the point to which this image always returns is the oneness it partakes of, namely, the image held to be one kind (γένος). Through this very oneness of the image within the image, the image imitates the original. This oneness, however, is not maintained if the image and the original collapse into one; the ἀπορία here is that the image can retain its oneness and be like the original only in so far as it remains absolutely distinct from the original. Therefore, by reaching for the original, the image has to distance itself from it and returns itself to the starting point: an eternal circling is thereby constituted. The movement outlined here thus collects in itself the respective moments of completeness and incompleteness: the complete circling only emphasizes the absolute lack encircled by it. If this account holds, a synthesis between incompleteness and completeness has to be available in the understanding of time: time has to be almost always partial, but as partial ones. This partiality of time is most reflected by the fact that time is less spoken of by Timaeus as a whole after the heavenly bodies are put into their places. Rather, what becomes prominent there is the respective measuring out of heavenly bodies by each other, marking off and guarding the numbers of time(38c), as partial organs of time; the comprehending image of time seems either forgotten, or suppressed.

Something even obscurer, and more threatening, raises its head as the comprehending image of time is suppressed. There in the account, a certain “twisting” is spoken of: that the circling motions of the wanderers are twisted by the circuit of Same(39a). This twisting of the planets not only makes the calculation of time more difficult (is not the miscalculation of time the first cause for the decline of the city in Republic?), but it also raises one other crucial question: why the circuit of Same?

It is already established that, to avoid being reduced to its original, a certain interruption has to be introduced into the heavenly motion. But why does it come from the more constant circuit of Same? There are at least two possible ways to treat of this account, without them being by any sense mutually exclusive. The first interpretation is to link this peculiarity with the subsequent account of human beings, that because human beings are mortals who inhabit a visible and bodily world, they are naturally more akin to the visible parts of time; any contact with the circuit of Same, then, will be a divine interruption from the normal course of perception. The other interpretation wedges in more on the side of the things themselves: that the lack preserved within the very constitution of time has to do with and maintains a certain relationship to the self-sameness described by the circuit of Same.

How can lack be related to self-sameness? How can lack be related to anything? A lack, in relation to X, can only be determined in the sense of “lack of X”. Therefore, it should be determined that the lack, that very interruption within the constitution of time which yet allows for the very constitution, is the lack of self-sameness, the absence of the original. However, this absence of the original is not characterized by Timaeus as an image, since an image is always implicated in a double-bind relationship to the original as one end. Rather, this absence is the very distance that allows for the movement to occur. In a sense, then, this lack is prior to the constitution of time: it is the second beginning, the beginning with χώρα. How is this second beginning anyhow different from the first beginning? Do I not already speak of a movement preceding time (a movement of the cosmic soul) earlier in this paper?

There are some crucial differences between χώρα and the motion of the cosmic soul. To start with, χώρα is not simply an image reduced to the original to a degree of indistinctness, as I establish is the case for the motion of cosmic soul. But is it not in Republic that Socrates defines a dream to “consist in believing a likeness of something to be not a likeness, but rather the thing itself to which it is like”(476c); and is χώρα not spoken of by Timaeus as “the very thing we look to when we dream”(52b)? Indeed. Yet it will be too early to conclude that χώρα is nothing but an image reduced to original - that is, an image getting too close to the original. First, is χώρα not spoken of as some “invisible and shapeless form”(51a), though in a difficult and problematic way? So that whatever image is attached to χώρα, e.g. the wet nurse, the mother, the receptacle, it is known that χώρα itself is none of these. And is χώρα not the very thing, in a partial sense, that allows for image, swept along as a phantasm, to hold fast to Being(52c)? Most importantly, χώρα is characterized, from the start of the second discourse, as a third kind, as one other countable, no matter how difficult it is(49a). By this standard, χώρα retains the subtle distinction from a reduced image: that it is still distinguished, regardless of the danger. Even if χώρα only pertains to dream, it is dream as such, being determined as a dream: a dream only becomes a dream when a person wakes up and reflects upon it in a waking lucidity. Being a third kind, moreover, already suggests that the other two kinds have to be held distinct; if this is the case, how can the two distinct kinds be completely reduced? Anyhow, χώρα cannot be a still-life image that only retains in itself very little motion, like the smooth and soundless circling of the cosmic soul. On the contrary, χώρα always possesses in itself a disequilibrium of powers, a shaking and being-shaken(52e). By these determinations, χώρα can never be reduced to an image that is reduced to the original. Yet the question about the non-linearity of χώρα and its precedence to time remains unaddressed. How does χώρα, itself moving, precede time?

What I am questioning here, essentially, is the localization of χώρα, a spacing of space, in relation to time, and - in so far as time is something “we have named”(37d) - to us. Where are the possible localities? Is χώρα really to be understood as prior to time? If we take the statement in Phaedrus seriously, that the speech “ought to be constructed like a living being [...] it must not lack either head or feet; it must have a middle and extremities so composed as to suit each other and the whole work”(264c), is it not significant that χώρα is situated at the very middle of this discourse, which is itself a temporal undertaking? But it is also explicitly said in 52d that “Being and Space and Becoming, three in a threefold way, are before the birth of heaven”. How to reconcile all these difficult claims?

Let us assume, for the present, that the localization is “in the middle of time”; it is first to be determined what “middle” means here. In 37e, Timaeus speaks of forms of time, that “ ‘was’ and ‘will be’ are forms of time that have come to be”. As “was” and “will be” take up the two ends of time, the middle then can naturally be determined as the present. The real ambiguity here, however, is whether the present is a form of time or not.

Timaeus does not really address this issue. All he says is that the two forms of time that have come to be are not applicable to the everlasting Being, whereas “is” alone is proper(38a). There is no clarification whatsoever whether “is” is a form of time or not. But there is no explicit argument against the present being a temporal form either, since it might very well be an unconditioned form of time, a form that “has not come to be”. Even when Timaeus says how it is inappropriate to say the everlasting Being “has become so now”(38a) he is not ruling out this possibility, for “has become so now” is already a mode of present contaminated with the past; and it is not unlikely that the present itself should be the proper form applied to Being.

But is this problematic status of the present not like that of χώρα? Does the present, perhaps, share with χώρα this peculiarity, that while it has to be thought in time, it remains somehow related to an outside of time (present to Being, χώρα to itself)?

III. Chronosmos

If χώρα, with respect to time, is located in the present, the present has to be understood in accord with what we have already gathered about χώρα. We say, χώρα is an amorphous form that holds in itself motions of disequilibrium. The present, then, has to be like χώρα in this way: to shake up the self-complacent motion of the cosmic soul and allow for time.

Time is then spaced out in its middle by the present, i.e. the presentation of Being. Yet the presentation of Being is also a presentation of the very absence of Being, as the spacing should signify a radical distance between time and its original, while also relating the image to Being so that the image still clings to Being(52c), for the countability of the image is exhibited through the spacing. What is presented, then, is immediately spaced out and retained, as if it jumps over to the other end, so that the presentation self-splits: the presentation remains no longer itself. By this very description, a new moment comes to be: the past.

But this past is not the past understood in our daily life. This past is the very pastness itself. As the presentation splits into its “being no longer”, it retains in itself the generative power that comes from presentation, a power to generate memories of itself. In other words, the self-splitting presentation gathers within itself a double signification: it is both a presentation that is the source for all images - including memories of itself - and an imaged now point. To put it more concretely, the present is always a mixed texture of the presentation of Being and an image perceived, but the presenting of the absent original is itself the very source of any image. At the very moment of presentation, we perceive images that are generated in the present by the present: the present, in this sense, has surpassed itself into its own past, being the very source of the images we perceive now. The past, retaining its power to present, is a past presentified, and prior to itself: what this prior to really signifies, then, is an atemporal past, a past before all past, the pastness itself that makes temporalization possible. The presentation, then, only circles back upon itself in its becoming past. And as the currently undergone presentation generates images, it also anticipates a new now that is pointed to by those images, and thus, the currently undergone now is spaced out into a future presentified. These encircling presentations describe the completeness of ones: by their very motion, they imitate the complete countables and hence become accorded to numbers. To count in time, then, is to count the presentified circularities, to count them as distinct nows. By this account, the locality of the present itself becomes a constant delocalization and relocalization into past and future. Thus, by starting with one possible locality as our hypothesis, the whole localization itself ends up being shaken. The relation of χώρα and present can be firmly drawn, but the price is a shaking up of the present itself.

Yet is the locality - or better, non-locality - of χώρα not expressed through this very movement of time? Is not the “prior to” of χώρα only understood in light of an understanding of the dynamism between presentation and pastness? It seems that the whole account of grounding time through space can be subverted. What I mean is, instead of grounding time with the spatial principle, as was premised earlier in the paper, it is always possible to arrive at space starting from the groundedness of time. This converse possibility is an implicit premise of this paper, for it was exploited when the spatial principle first appeared, being yielded from the temporal motion. The possibility is now clarified through my presentation of the motion of time, for this movement of time is actually the essential expression of spacing. Here, an ultimate circularity is laid out: a circular co-constitution of time and space, where each constitutes the other as its own complement.

Now it is time for a conclusion. This paper is confined in its scope and perspective, that it primarily inquires into the spatial for the sake of the temporal. This is due to the nature of the subject matter. The goal of this paper is set from the start to be an inquiry into time, not space. Though space is later discovered to be necessary for the inquiry, the course of this paper is still run very different from the other possible presentation in which space is set as the primary object for questioning. This being clarified, I will now turn to a representation of my work to help readers retrace the steps I take in this paper. This representation reflects different phases of this paper as defined by different layers of circularities that essentially characterize time. The four circularities are C1. the visible circular motion of heaven; C2. the circularity between image and the original; C3. a circularity of now and past (including future); C4. the ultimate circularity of time and space. These four circularities are interdependent expressions of one whole, and they often do overlap: C1 describes both a remaining within the visible and a radical outside, namely the absent original, thus expressing C2; C2 relates the very structure of our temporal experience C3 to that spacing of originals; C4 is the ultimate expression of the circularity of time with respect to space. All four circularities pertain to different layers of the signification of time. C1 pertains specifically to the perceived, whereas C2 links up the perceived to the intelligible. C3 is the most properly temporal (yet has to be in a sense atemporal) as it pertains to the forms of time and the structure in which time is experienced. Finally, C4 describes a general co-constitution of space and time. By this summary, the structure and content of this paper is clarified.

The end. The end at which time is dissolved. A dissolved time.

In 41b, the artisan god promises to hold heaven together, alongside time, from a possible dissolution, for his will is good. But at the beginning, the absent fourth is said to be ill despite his will. Then, should we ask if the will of the artisan god is to be trusted? What if time really is dissolved? Will time be saved?

Plato was already an old man when Timaeus was written. Death was on his doorstep. Perhaps also illness. Illness and death: do these things perhaps compose of the final dissolution of time, if not for the whole of time, at least for that part of time we call life? That will be another story, a story in which Plato makes his most beautiful promise, a promise on the soul.

But let things already said and done be. Let gods be prayed to. And let it be said that, for now, I have fulfilled my promise: a promise to promise, a promise to inquire, and a promise to present. If anything, I ask for your forgiveness: please, receive this likely discourse warmly, like a host to a guest.