This article aims to shed light on certain aspects of Iamblichus’ theory of time that have not been sufficiently examined to date in the scholarly literature. As of today, there are a mere handful of scholarly works tackling Iamblichus’ solutions to the paradoxes of time in particular, and his contribution to the developments of the Neoplatonic theory of the subject more generally. This article attempts to redress the lack of literature on this topic by examining Iamblichus’ response to Aristotle’s and (...) Pseudo-Archytas’ theories of time. It begins with a brief survey of the philosophical developments that led to and were formative for Iamblichus’ philosophical explorations of the area in question. Then it moves on to provide a detailed account of Iamblichus’ own unique and puzzling theory of time. The author applies the method of comparative analysis, scrutinizing Iamblichus’ solution to the paradoxes of time against the backdrop of Aristotle’s and Pseudo-Archytas’ theories. The author identifies firm scholarly grounds for doing so from within the tradition of Iamblichus studies initiated by the ground-breaking research of Shmuel Sambursky and Salomon Pines and continued, inter alia, in the subtly nuanced analysis of Richard Sorabji and John Dillon. The author concludes that Iamblichus successfully resolved the paradoxes of time and that his conception lent itself to a more effective highlighting of the ordering function of time. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the relationship between the now, motion, and number in Aristotle to clarify the nature of the now, and, thereby, the relationship between motion and time. Although it is clear that for Aristotle motion, and, more generally, change, are prior to time, the nature of this priority is not clear. But if time is the number of motion, then the priority of motion can be grasped by examining his theory of number. This paper aims to show that, just (...) as numbers are generated by the soul, time is not presupposed by motion, but emerges through the soul’s articulation of motion. Time is co-constituted by the soul and motion. The now is the key to understanding both the contribution of motion and soul to the being of time. The now is part of the soul’s articulation of motion, and sets the stage for an act that distinguishes a unit from its underlying motion. The now, then, sets up an abstraction by which the soul generates the temporal number from motion. Reconstructing this account of abstraction allows us to formulate more strongly Aristotle’s claim to the ontological dependence of time on motion. The paper then gives a systematic overview of the relationships between the now and number in order to address the question of whether the now might be extended. It closes with an examination of the possibility that motion depends on time, and how universal time is possible. (shrink)

Is time flowing? A-theorists say yes, B-theorists say no. But both take time to be real. It means that B-theorists accept that time might be real, even if lacking a property usually ascribed to it. In this paper, I want to ask what are the different properties usually ascribed to time in order to draw the list of different possible kinds of realism and anti-realism about time. As we will see, there are three main kinds of anti-realism. I will claim (...) that if time is defined as the universe’s fourth dimension, there is no way time could be unreal. (shrink)