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Personal Identity & Time

Transcending The Moment

Brian Breeze takes time to think.

Everyone knows what time is: don’t they? But perhaps, when we look more closely, we will find that our initial confidence is not entirely justified. St. Augustine wrote around 397 AD: “What… is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.” (Confessions, book XI) Augustine is not alone in his bafflement; the nature and perception of time are things thinkers have struggled to explain ever since.

In his Principles of Psychology (1890), William James conducts an interesting and insightful analysis of the ‘Perception of Time’, but proceeds to his investigation of “why we perceive time at all” without much hope of success.

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