in thinking about things… thinking about how Kant and Hegel
brought time into the philosophical mix… which is to say, read
Descartes…Time, duration of existence doesn’t appear in Descartes…
there is no duration of existence within Descartes…no past, no future…
just the present, the here and now…Descartes doesn’t work out
the idea of how we gain our knowledge historically………
Cogito, ergo sum… I think therefor I am…
that has no existence within time, within a duration of moments…
it exists independently of the duration of existence……. it is the same today
as it was yesterday and as it will be tomorrow…
in the “history” of philosophy, we see how Descartes fits into philosophy…
he was the first “modern” philosopher… or as some believe, the last Medieval philosopher …
depends… but Descartes and Spinoza and Leibniz and Hume, all wrote before
our “modern” times…Modernity began after the Enlightenment… again, to put
a date upon the beginning of Modernity, I would say 1789 or the start of the
French Revolution… and when did Kant write? His Critique of Pure Reason was
published in 1781…and his other Critiques were written during the 1780’s…
so Kant wrote at the very beginning of the Modern age…
what could be a possible answer to the question of, “What is the modern age?”
we humans became aware of existence as being in time… we began to see
our existence as being moments with duration… and we also began to see
idea’s and concepts as having existence over time… so we see writers like
Plato or Augustine of Hippo having no duration of moments in their writings…
time as we know it didn’t exists for these writers…everything was set in the
present, right here, right now…
and this lasted until Kant and Hegel… or the beginning of Modernity…
being or existence was now a duration of moments…existence lasted
over time…idea’s lasted over time…
but what does this really mean?
it means that starting around 1789 give or take a few years,
that people began to understand existence differently then they
did before… we have what we today know as the 4 dimensions…
width, height, depth… and today we see time as being that 4th dimension…
at night, look at the stars… they seem so close and yet they are billions
of billions of miles away…what we see of a star is that star thousand or even
millions of years ago… we actually see time when we look at the stars…
so distance is time… the greater the distance, the greater the time…
our perspective has changed…we have had a radical change in viewpoints
as human beings…what we see, that which we take for granted today,
is actually new to our human understanding…time, being existing over
time… the very idea of there being time is new……
this extraordinary change in how we view the universe isn’t really understood
for what it is… we can call “modernity” as being the change in how we have
understood moments in time…experience, existence, being, idea’s all have
past, present and future…something that has never happened before…
before modernity, being was static, existence was static, experience was static,
it was unmoving, unchanging…… it was easy for one like Machiavelli to
understand that human beings, that man was the same since Adam and will not
change ever……… this notion that we are who we are and that can never change
is an pre-modernity idea… today, we know anyone can change and oftentimes
the reason for change can be very obscure…
a static viewpoint of human beings…that is pre-modern… human beings
who are viewed as being unable to change…
but let us look at modern idea’s… the very basis of evolution lies within
its understanding of change and how that change creates new species…
the Big Bang theory is all about the ever changing universe from
the Big Bang to today…modern scientist debate how the universe will
end, either from the slow death from the loss of energy or to the universe
flowing back into itself and the ever present cycle of existence…
how our very solar system, the sun and planets and us… were all created
from the remains of a prior star which had exploded… we are the second
and even third generation of stars and planets existing in this spot…
what life existed in our location previously, in that last star before it
went supernova, gives me pause… perhaps we can credit this last
star/planet for the seeding of life on our current planet… we will never
know…
that existence flows from past to present to future is a major
contribution of modernity understanding of existence, of being…
that we think historically, is a major shift in the viewpoint of
human beings and that shift began with the rise of modernity,
the rise of capitalism and the industrial revolution and the French
revolution……. all of which began roughly the same time…
even this radical shift in understanding gives us hope because we
are not fixed, set in our viewpoint… we can change and adapt
our viewpoints to meet or understand what is existence…
if such a radical and world wide shift in perspective can occur
about our understanding of experience and being having
duration in time, then we can certainly expect to be able
to shift and think differently about other aspects of existence
and experience…
so, those who say, capitalism is the final, ultimate understanding
of our economic experience simply have failed to understand
that capitalism is simply another economic system in time,
and we shall change our economic system once conditions on
the ground or our understanding of what it means to be human
changes…… our political and economic system is simply a reflection
of our understanding of what is means to be human…
we see humans as being greedy and lustful, so our political
and economic systems reflect that vision of being human…
but what if we see human being as being different then greedy or
lustful or materialistic… then the economic and political system
must change to reflect our new understanding of what it means to be human……
and once again, our knowledge of what it means to be human depends upon
our understanding of what it means to be human…… we fail because
we don’t have an map of what it means to be human…
and so to move forward in time, we must have or create a map of
what it means to be human…
who am I? that understanding can help us create a new and more
powerful understanding of experience and existence…
Kropotkin