Single Idea 20818

[catalogued under 27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 3. Parts of Time / e. Present moment]

Full Idea

Stoics do not allow a minimal time to exist, and do not want to have a partless 'now'; so what one thinks one has grasped as present is in part future and in part past.

Gist of Idea

The present does not exist, so our immediate experience is actually part past and part future

Source

report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - On Common Conceptions 1081c

Book Reference

'The Stoics Reader', ed/tr. Inwood,B/Gerson,L.P. [Hackett 2008], p.87


A Reaction

[from lost On Parts Bk3-5] I agree with the ontology here, but I take our grasp of the present to be very short-term memory of the past. I ignore special relativity. Chrysippus expressed two views about this; in the other one he was a Presentist.

Related Ideas

Idea 20819 The past and the future subsist, but only the present exists [Chrysippus, by Plutarch]

Idea 20821 Time is continous and infinitely divisible, so there cannot be a wholly present time [Chrysippus, by Stobaeus]