John Dewey’s Radical Temporalism

Philosophies

article

Vincent Colapietro¹ 

[1] Department of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University, State College

关键词: continuity;    immediacy;    individuality;    ineffability;    intelligibility;    quality (including qualitative immediacy);    temporal quality versus temporal seriality;   

DOI  :  10.3390/philosophies8030045

学科分类：内科医学

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The author presents John Dewey’s mature account of temporal continuity, showing how Dewey’s position can be identified as a form of radical temporalism. Even at the most elemental level (that of subatomic particles), natural existence is for such a temporalist an irreducibly temporal affair. While he focuses primarily on Dewey’s “Time and Individuality” (1940), the author supplements his account by drawing upon Experience and Nature (1925), “Events and the Future” (1926), and to a lesser extent, other texts. In his magnum opus, Dewey draws a crucial distinction between temporal quality and temporal seriality. In an essay published the following year, he insists, contra C. D. Broad, on qualitative heterogeneity being an intrinsic trait of even the thinnest slice of the tem-poral continuum. The most elemental units of the temporal flux are neither “eternal and immu-table”, nor qualitatively homogenous. They also exhibit a from-to-through structure, with the dimensions of time being defined by these terms (pastness as from which, futurity as toward which, and presentness as through which). By relating the distinction between temporal quality and temporal seriality as well as the central claims made in “Events and the Future” to “Time and Individuality”, the author brings into clear focus the contours of Dewey’s radical temporalism.

【 授权许可】

CC BY