This volume explores the status of temporality in a selection of sources ranging from Augustine to Virginia Woolf. The point of departure for the programmatic reflections on temporality lies in a paradoxical concept of time as coined by Augustine. Augustine emphasizes that time can only mean the indivisible moment of present time. As a result, the past can only be grasped as the indivisible moment of the present of the past. The volume's essays take up Augustine's paradox of time: how to account for the continuity of history and the certitude of memory if the indivisible ‘now’ of time cuts off ... More

This volume explores the status of temporality in a selection of sources ranging from Augustine to Virginia Woolf. The point of departure for the programmatic reflections on temporality lies in a paradoxical concept of time as coined by Augustine. Augustine emphasizes that time can only mean the indivisible moment of present time. As a result, the past can only be grasped as the indivisible moment of the present of the past. The volume's essays take up Augustine's paradox of time: how to account for the continuity of history and the certitude of memory if the indivisible ‘now’ of time cuts off any extension? A number of Christian religious thinkers is paraded: Augustine himself, Abelard with his shaky view of history, Eriugena and Thoreau with their seemingly reassuring breadth on nature, Calvin's certitude and doubts with regard to time and eternity, Abbé de Rancé in his effort to artificially resurrect the timeless shape of the Cistercian order, Bach and Stravinsky on death and musical endings, Messiaen on musical lateness, Shakespeare's religious past, and, transcending the boundaries of religion while staying within the frame of time's paradox, the skepticism of Stanley Cavell, and the pointed fragility of the painter Rubens and the writer Virginia Woolf.