Fall 2026 | Philosophy of Time, Part I: From Antiquity to the Renaissance | Philosophy Seminar
Time governs nearly everything human beings do: days are divided into hours, work into schedules, lives into years; clocks and calendars coordinate our activities today with extraordinary precision, allowing a kind of punctuality unprecedented. Yet the ease with which time today is measured conceals a much more difficult question: what do we actually mean by “time”?
Is time something that exists independently of those who measure it? Is it a feature of motion, a measure imposed upon motion, or something bound up with our human or animal consciousness? How are past, present, and future related? And what distinguishes temporal existence from eternity?
These questions form the subjects of The Philosophy of Time, Part I: From Antiquity to the Renaissance, an advanced seminar at the Lyceum Institute for Fall 2026. Rather than beginning with contemporary theories and working backward, the seminar follows the development of the problem historically. Here, it seems, all philosophical inquiry relies upon common conceptual foundations—gaining clarity about their meaning and application is essential to any further theories.
As such, our inquiry begins in Greek antiquity, especially with Aristotle’s famous account of time in relation to motion and number. From there, the problem becomes increasingly complicated. Augustine turns our attention toward the peculiar relation between time and the soul, our experience of time being somehow different in its own measure. Medieval thinkers, especially Thomas Aquinas, help us to distinguish time from eternity and aeviternity. Later Scholastic debates investigate duration, quantity, measurement, and the relations by which temporal things are ordered.
But our inquiry is not merely a succession of theories marching through history. Each is a lens through which we intend to examine the phenomenon itself, and to sharpen our own reflective perception. This also requires a certain awareness of the practical. For, between antiquity and the Renaissance, developments in societal structures and increasingly precise mechanical measurement begin to alter the relation between lived duration and numbered time. By the Renaissance, questions concerning temporality intersect with new questions concerning human consciousness and existence, and our relation to the eternal—preparing the way for profound transformations in modern thought.
Participants will encounter major texts from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Buridan, Petrarch, Ficino, Suárez, John Poinsot, and others. Through careful reading, recorded lectures, continuing conversation, and live discussion, the seminar, under the guidance of Brian Kemple, will pursue the philosophical difficulties themselves: measurement and continuity, duration and existence, temporality and consciousness, and the relation between time and what lies beyond it.
This is the first half of a two-part inquiry. Part II will carry the problem from the Enlightenment through the postmodern present.
The seminar meets Saturdays from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM Eastern during Fall 2026.
Come think about time with us!
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