Huaiyuan Zhang (Pennsylvania State University)
The Eternal Present in an Instant
—Plato’s Revision of Parmenidean Time in the Parmenides
Abstract
Although scholars have acknowledged that Plato’s conceptualization of time is a specific response to Parmenides’ insights and have theorized such concepts as the now (Palmer 1999, 198-206), eternity (Owen 1966, 332-3) and the instant (Sorabji 1983, 100) (Heidegger 1930-1, 13), there is no consensus over the precise meaning of these concepts and how they interplay to offer a comprehensive view of time. Following Palmer’s approach of reception study, I seek to reconstruct Plato’s reading of Parmenides in the Parmenides. More specifically, I will demonstrate how Plato inherits Parmenides’ notion of the eternal present and transcends Parmenides by tracing the genesis of the now and eternity to the instant.
My argument includes three steps. First, through the notion of “now together” (νῦν … ὁμοῦ) (B8.5), Parmenides conceives of an eternal present pertaining to the path of truth and dissociates being from time. There are two kinds of present in our daily understanding: (1) the diachronic present that flows in and out in coordination with the past and the future and (2) the synchronic present as the enduring point of reference of all temporal phases. It is in the contrast between a fleeting present and an eternal present that we derive the conception of the past and the future. Parmenides only accepts the reality of (2) and rejects (1), stating that “it was not, nor will it be at some time, since it is now together” (οὐδέ ποτ’ ἦν οὐδ’ ἔσται, ἐπεὶ νῦν ἔστιν ὁμοῦ) (B8.5). His conception of the now is external to the linear time of past-present-future.
Second, by transforming Parmenides’ static eternal now into the fluid “always now” (ἀεὶ νῦν) (Parm. 152e1-2) in the Second Deduction of the Parmenides, Plato returns the now to the stream of time and hence saves time as a phenomenon that Parmenides relegates to the path of opinion. Therefore, Plato’s now is not together and beyond time; it synchronically accompanies each temporal phase (2) and must be experienced in the diachronic succession (1).
Third, while Parmenides’ temporal verse and Plato’s two Deductions have focused on the relationship between one now and another, the Third Hypothesis in the Parmenides deals with how or whence the now is generated; it resolves the contradiction of the first two Deductions by grounding their premise that “being is in time” in “the instant” (τὸ … ἐξαίφνης) (Parm. 152a2-3, 156d3), revealing it to be the origin of both the now and eternity. As the intersecting point of time and eternity, the instant belongs to both; as the process that generates either time or eternity, the instant belongs to neither.
By transcending Parmenides’ twofold relationship between time and eternity in the instant, Plato opens up a threefold temporality of the now, the instant, and eternity in the originative philosophy of time. This historical reconstruction of Plato’s revision of Parmenidean time sheds a refreshing light on the phenomenon of time and the ever-fascinating history of its conception.