Jon McGinnis “ For Every Time there is a Season :

The originality of John Philoponus’ temporal theory has been underestimated.The paper emphasizes Philoponus’ creativity, especially in his reconciliation of Plato’s and Aristotle’s temporal theories (or at least one possible interpretation of Aristotle’s account of time). To this end, the paper sketches both Plato’s (and later Neoplatonic interpretations of Plato) and suggests an interpretation of Aristotle’s accounts of time, which is at odds with the Platonic and Neoplatonic view of time. It next presents Philoponus’ reconstruction of Aristotle’s account along Platonic lines and concludes with the relevance of these ancient theories to contemporary temporal discussions. The commentary of Aristotle’s Physics by the late Neoplatonist John Philoponus had an enormous influence on the later Aristotelian commentary tradition. Of the great Hellenistic commentators such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, Simplicius and of course Philoponus, only the latter’s commentary on the Physics was known in its entirety, more or less, to later Arabic Aristotelians, who were deeply influenced by it.1 In turn the commentaries and exegeses of these Muslim philosophers, significantly indebted to Philoponus’ reading of the Physics, were passed on to the Latin West and so influenced the scholastics’ KronoScope 3:1 (2003) © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2003 reading of the Physics. And indeed the views of the medieval schoolmen have, too varying degrees, impacted our own views of Aristotle’s Physics. Thus it is reasonable to suggest that even today Philoponus’ commentary is either directly or indirectly still shaping our understanding of Aristotle’s Physics. This influence is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Philoponus’ interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of time.2 Yet I am unaware of any systematic study of Philoponus’ account of time.3 The reason no doubt is that Philoponus’ temporal theory appears to be nothing more than a close reading of Aristotle’s own theory of time. But as David Bostock has observed “Of all the discussions in the Physics, the treatment of time in Chapters 10-14 is the least well organized.”4 As one might expect, then, Aristotle’s account of time has been interpreted in numerous, often mutually exclusive, ways and there still is no consensus among scholars about what the correct interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of time is. Given Philoponus’ significant influence on the subsequent commentary tradition’s understanding of Aristotle, then, it might well be the case that Philoponus’ commentary only appears to be a close reading of Aristotle simply because our contemporary understanding of Aristotle is just Philoponus’. Of course, Philoponus might actually have gotten at the historical Aristotle’s meaning, in which case we are still indebted to him for clarifying and simplifying Aristotle’s opaque text. In the following study, however, I want to suggest reasons for thinking that Philoponus’ commentary is more than just a “cleaned up” reading of Aristotle’s text. Rather, it might be viewed as an attempt to grapple with two disparate positions concerning the nature of time. One view is that any adequate account of time must include some reference to temporal becoming. The other view is that one can fully explain the nature of time without appealing to temporal becoming. Very roughly speaking the former position imagines that time is a type of motion or flow. Thus, one might say it is a “kinetic” account of time. The latter, in contrast, treats time as a measures of motion, and although time measures motion or flow, it itself neither moves nor flows. Thus, one might say that it is a “static” conception of time. The first view, I shall argue, was espoused by Plato in the Timaeus and subsequently articulated more fully by a number of Neoplatonists, while the second view might be found in Aristotle’s Physics IV 10-14, based upon one possible interpretation of that