What, Then, Is Time?

by Eva Brann

Book Overview

'What is time?' Well-known philosopher and intellectual historian, Eva Brann mounts an inquiry into a subject universally agreed to be among the most familiar and the most strange of human experiences. Brann approaches questions of time through the study of ten famous texts by such thinkers as Plato, Augustine, Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger, showing how they bring to light the perennial issues regarding time. She also offers her independent reflections. Examining the three phases of time, past, present, and future, she argues that neither external time nor the time of the human past is real: the one is a comparison of motions and the other a projection of memory. She concludes that true time is internal and has its origin in the imaginative structure of memory and expectation. Throughout her rich and original study, Brann never fudges the central fact that time is a mystery.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0847692930
• ISBN13: 9780847692934
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Length: 237 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Einstein would agree

Our human brain has been created over millions of years and conditioned by that which we see around us. Three dimensions of space. Time to measure change. It is very difficult for us to imagine that the universe is not as we see it. Is it? Others throughout history asked this question but Einstein was really the first to show that it is not. Time is relative and space-time is a dimension. But does time exist at all? No, says the author. Is there a beginning or an end point in space? When did time begin? When will it end? Only if time doesn't exist are these things possible. Read the book and you will at least begin to understand the question.

One of the Great Minds of Our Time

Eva Brann is both wide ranging and thoroughly disciplined. Especially impressive is the sheer unexpectedness of her thoroughly logical insights. One is a little reminded of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Recommended for the serious preoessional, the intellectual and every kind of intelligent teader there is.