Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

SUBSCRIBE NOW

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Editorial

Time and Being

by Rick Lewis

“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numb’ring clock;
My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.”

Shakespeare, Richard II

Near the end of Shakespeare’s play Richard II, the king, unthroned by his rival Bolingbroke, languishes in a dungeon awaiting his fate and contemplating the nature of time. Such circumstances give even kings the time and inclination to be philosophical. Still, Richard’s musings touch on a deep and fascinating philosophical problem – the interrelation between time and personal identity.

The question of how the passage of time affects who we are is one of those philosophical questions that we bump up against in everyday life.

…