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04 September 2011

Schopenhauer on time

"Past and future (apart from the consequences of their content) are as empty and unreal as any dream; but present is only the boundary between the two, having neither extension nor duration. In just the same way, we shall also recognize the same emptiness in all the other forms of the principle of sufficient reason and shall see that, like time, space also, and like this, everything that exists simultaneously in space and time ... is only through and for another like itself, i.e. only just as enduring."

I understand the reasoning here in broad terms. Indeed, William James' notion of the 'specious present' was developed largely as a riposte to such reasoning.

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