Filozofska istraživanja, Vol. 25 No. 2, 2005.
Original scientific paper
Abraham J. Heschel’s Philosophy of Time
Ivan Devčić
Abstract
The article presents Heschel’s philosophy of time, strongly influenced by Jewish religion. Heschel is convinced that the main problems of contemporary civilisation are connected with predominance of space over time, i.e. with human endeavour to rule the space, along with neglect of time. According to this, Heschel stresses that predominance of space means predominance of things, reduction of existence to possession, closing of the world into immanence. In contrast, predominance of time brings predominance of Being over having, and means disclosure of the world towards eternity and transcendence. According to this, time is of much more importance for existence than space is. Finally, doesn't the originality of existence reflects the originality of time which is condensed into a moment Heschel also stresses that we can- not look at the world exclusively sub specie temporis, i.e. we also need to take into consideration category of space. In that sense, he tries to develop such a philosophy of time where space can find certain meaning. But possibility of such a harmonization is questionable, if we have in mind that Heschel almost exclusively connects the meaning of human existence with the category of time. It seems at least problematic also his attitude that, to contemporary human, time is bigger problem than space. Wouldn’t it be better to say that two of them are of same difficulty and importance?
Keywords
Abraham J. Heschel; philosophy of time; time; space; human existence
Hrčak ID:
202216
URI
Publication date:
25.6.2005.
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