Here I will consider one aspect of the whole, that is, its perception. The whole, we mean as something ultimate, complete and overcoming. It does not lead to the emergence of anything new. In this sense, the whole is opposed to the infinity which has no end or to the finitude which implies a continuation. Therefore, our reasoning must start from the concepts of finitude and infinity, so that we can derive propositions for understanding the whole.

Because the finite mind cannot imagine what infinity really means, we can imagine it through an infinity developed in Hegel’s Scientific Logic (1). According to Hegel, bad infinity is formed by the problem of finitude (2). On the one hand, the “thing” is kept within itself thanks to its boundaries. At the same time, however, a border is always a border with something else. The border denies the otherness of things bordering each other. Thus the “thing” has a definiteness from its bordering on something else of itself. Hence it follows that the limit has a dual existence for the finite. It is a negation of externality, but on the other hand, it is a negation of this negation, insofar as the definiteness of something is dependent on its externality. In this sense, the border becomes a non-being, since it is the non-being of one in relation to the other and of the other in relation to the first. Hegel concludes that something with its immanent limit is a contradiction with itself. This contradiction drives it outward and forces it to go beyond itself. Of the ultimate, therefore, we may say that it refers to itself as negative. Non-being constitutes its nature, and it is never entirely alone. Here the bad infinity consists in the fact that the finite is constantly decaying into the other extremes, losing its truth in the infinite.

While bad infinity appears as something bad and to be avoided, true infinity appears as something attainable, the content of which is possible. Hegel believed that thought could reach fixation on an infinite series or progression. Achieving this becomes possible when we remove the abstract separation of the finite and the infinite. They are not entirely opposed and incompatible, but are moments of wholeness. Therefore, the whole is truly possible only when it is momentary, since thought does not stop prematurely and reach the newness of true infinity. Hegel gives an example of the infinite returning again to the finite. If bad infinity is a line, then good infinity is a circle ending in its own beginning. Infinity becomes finitude when they are simply moments already contained within each other, inseparable.

Reaching infinity also occurs after simulating eternity (3). For example, in the film “Arrival” by director Denis Villeneuve, the protagonist learns about eternity after establishing contact with aliens (4). Linguist Louis Banks begins to haunt her daughter’s strange visions while she doesn’t have children. Later, it is revealed that the protagonist sees the future after learning the language of the aliens. It changes the linguist’s linear perception of time, allowing her to experience “memories” of future events. The contemplation of eternity is placed in a context of absolute simultaneity, i.e. when the imagination tries to contemplate both globally relevant events and trivial moments in the whole. Furthermore, the encounter with eternity multiplies the known by an infinite multiplier. In another example – “The Aleph” by Jorge Luis Borges – the protagonist falls into the space that completely encompasses being (5). Or to put it another way – the aleph is a point in space that contains all other spaces at once. Anyone who looks into it can see everything in the universe from every angle at the same time, without distortion, overlap or confusion. Thus, contemplation of the whole manifests itself not only in absolute simultaneity and in the maximum capacity of life experience, but also in the disregard of causality. For example, in the debate between Russell and Copleston about the existence of God, there is a conclusion emphasizing the existence of the whole without causality (6). In particular, Russell sees no reason to suppose that the common has any cause. His argument is this: every person who exists has a mother, but it does not follow that the human race must have a mother. This is a different realm of logic. The world is just there.

Once we get these characteristics of the contemplation of the whole, we can see how multifaceted this experience is. This includes, first, the novelty resulting from the true infinity, which removes the one-sided inability to recognize oneself in the other, second, the simultaneous contemplation of events ignoring causality, third, the maximum possibilities of life experience and the memories associated with it. Since the true whole is momentary, the contemplation of the whole will not fall into the historically endless arising of trivialities and senseless repetition. The avoidance of the bare abstraction of the absolute distinction of the finite and the infinite, in this sense, underlies the construction of the habit, which in turn gives rise to the impression of the whole. When we talk about the human perception of the whole in the context of time, the question of the finiteness of this perception intuitively arises. One cannot grasp events in the past, present, and future as a whole, because he or she separates them between the finite and the infinite. The present is seen as the boundary between the finite “before” and the infinite “after”. In this context, a study of the border of the past, perceived as something different and alien to the present, is necessary.

In Aristotle’s philosophy, “now” has a boundary situatedness between “before” and “after”. (7) The present, being a limit, is not time, while the past and the future are central to the formation of time. It seems to us that time has passed when we perceive “before” and “after”, because they set the measure, the number of the movement. “Now” does not represent movement with a view to what has gone before and what will come next. There is no movement in the concept of the present, but there is also no rest in it. It has the status of a divider, the connecting and dividing moment of past and future, just as the point connects and divides the line. Augustine, for his part, rejects the existence of past and future. He supports that it is the present that fills with content the time which is measured by the soul. There are three tenses in the soul – present for the past, present for the present and present for the future. Therefore, according to Augustine, the present is reducible to divine eternity. This is the meaning of God’s intervention in the human soul. On the one hand, it is like the image of God, something unchanging and immobile, and on the other hand, it is like time, something constantly moving and changing. Time became directly linked to eternity, as people needed that fixed point against which moving time could be measured. For Augustine, this timeless measure is God who creates time out of “nothing.” Therefore, the beginning and the end of human history are characterized by the presence of an initial event, such as God’s creation, and a terminal event, such as the Last Judgment. This divine intervention in time gives human being a vector character and gives man the perspective to look at time within its limits, to see it as a whole. The definition of time limits through the Divine Plan, however, leads to another limit of definitions, which raises the question of the existence of God and the soul. If an attempt is made to delineate the concept of God and the soul, this process can lead to an infinite regress.

According to ancient thinking, time is realized as an internal definition of the cosmological process (8). It is directly related to eternity, which is represented by the eternal cycle of the heavenly spheres, the eternal repetition of natural cycles, the eternal statics of the inner dynamic cosmos. This ontology of time excludes a clear distinction between the modes of time – past, present and future. Human history is devoid of the future, since the essence of human being is determined by the astronomical model. This means that human history has its own projection that repeats the cosmic circular motion. Time is measured with the movement of the cosmos, in other words with the movement of the Sun, the Moon, and the stars. Here the problem arises that if time is the movement of the luminaries of the heavenly bodies, the beginning and the end of the physical world are in fact the beginning and the end of the existence of the cosmos, which is tied to eternity. Therefore, the historical acquires a special form of eternal reality, which man is unable to grasp in its entirety as the inexorable infinity.

If we accept that time has a relative and not an absolute character, then we can remove eternity as a necessary condition for the measure of the historical. Indeed, people in different periods of history have maintained different calculations of time. In the pre-New Era, they usually dated the founding years of the city in which they lived. Now our era counts the time from the beginning of Christianity, and the time before the New Era is calculated from the beginning of the “founding” of the planet Earth. For Kant, time is a necessary concept that underlies the experience of existing (9). In other words, without time man cannot perceive the existence of phenomena. This means that time as a form of inner sense gives a subjective condition for the existence of each subject. Therefore, the different modes of time—past, present, and future—are found in man, because through them his inner state is represented. Kant clarifies that past, present, and future exist not simultaneously but sequentially. This means that they maintain a distinction between themselves, making it difficult to encompass them in a common time as a whole. In such a case, the past may assume another guise to remove this distinction. It is possible to think of time as an experience of the past that passes from its potential form to a substantial, completed one. The present moment can then be seen as the fixation of this passage, and the future as what the past is made of. Whatever a person does in any period of time, eventually it will all be in the past. Therefore, the real or essential part of time is the past, which removes the boundary situatedness between “before” and “after”.

If the past expresses the existence of time, then the question of embracing the changeability of the past as a whole is raised. The past is finite, not infinite, because it is directly related to the experience of human historicity, which is borderline. If there is no man, there is no past and therefore no time. On the one hand, the past realizes human existence, providing man with his historicity, and on the other hand, realizes its substantial essence, i.e. reaches its final form. When the past takes its completed form, the finitude of the past will not lead to the emergence of something new. The limit of the past is reduced to the moment that does not hold the thing as separate and different from the past. It is a part of the past. In this situation, and through the prism of experiencing the past, time can be viewed from beginning to end, eliminating the abstract division of the finite and the infinite.

References:

  1. Hegel, The Science of Logic: Part One, translated from German – Gencho Donchev, ed. Europe, Sofia 2001.
  2. Especially on this issue there is the analysis of bad infinity by Vladimir Pachemanov, see at https://philosophia-bg.com/archive/philosophia-28-2021/the-boringness-of-bad-infinity/
  3. Several of the ideas about eternal repetition are presented in Revisiting Repetition by Simeon Vassilev, see https://philosophia-bg.com/archive/philosophia-28-2021/recalescence-of-repetition/
  4. “Arrival” is a 2016 American science fiction drama film directed by Denis Villeneuve. The screenplay, written by Eric Heiserer, is based on Ted Chan’s Story of Your Life.
  5. Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph, English translation by Norman Thomas Di Giovanni, MIT https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/borgesaleph.pdf
  6. Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston Debate the Existence of God, 1948, in Reality in Focus: contemporary readings on metaphysics / edited by Paul K. Moser, Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1990
  7. See Gabriela Rusinova’s article on the boundary of the past https://philosophia-bg.com/archive/philosophia-15-2017/boundary-of-the-past/
  8. Ibid.
  9. See Kant, Immanuel. Transcendental Aesthetics, section two translation Prof. Tseko Torbov. in: The idea of time. Anthology. Compiled by Tsocho Boyadzhiev and Zdravko Popov. Sofia/Pleven: Publishing House “Science and Art”/”Al. Pushev”, 1985.