Reflections on Eternalism: Part 1

Eternalism is the thesis that all times are equally real; the past just as real as the present, and the future just as real as the past. If eternalism is true, does it make sense to look forward to future events? I think there are good arguments to show that it does not.

Assume that there is some future event e that I am looking forward to. What exactly am I looking forward to? Not e’s existence, for this is eternal, and so e “already” exists. If I am waiting for e’s existence, I need wait no more. Am I waiting for my being present at e? But if I am ever present at e, I am eternally present at e. Assume for the moment that perdurantism is true, so that, instead of being wholly present at each time they exist, objects persist by having successive temporal parts. In that case I cannot wait to be identical to a future temporal part of me, for if we take the view according to which it is my whole temporal extent which is properly said to be me, then I cannot identical to some proper temporal part of myself. The temporal part of me which is present at e is eternally a temporal part of me. On the other hand, if we take the view that each of my temporal parts constitutes a distinct, momentary self, I cannot look forward to being identical to my momentary future self which is present at e, for if the self which anticipates e is not identical to the self which is present at e, it never will be. And if it is identical to it, there is nothing to anticipate, for e is eternally present to that self. If we assume instead that endurantism is true, the problem is still not solved, at least so long as we still uphold eternalism. For if, e.g., I have the time indexed property of voting for the Democratic Presidential candidate on November 4th 2008, I eternally have the time indexed property of voting for the Democratic Presidential candidate on November 4th 2008. Once again, it seems there is nothing for me to anticipate.

If all events are eternally existent, it makes as much (and as little) sense to “look backward” to past events as it does to “look forward” to future ones. So if, e.g., I’m sitting in class and the class has been going for ten minutes, why do I not “posticipate” the beginning of the class, just as I anticipate the end of the class when there are only ten minutes left to go? After all, if eternalism is true, there is no such thing as “the passage of time” or the absolute termination of a process[1]. We never get “closer to” future events, at least not in any sense we don’t also get “closer to” past events. We can say that we “get closer” to future events in the sense that if A and B are two time slices of me, and B is later than A, then B is closer to a future event e than A is. The later a time slice of me is, the closer it is to e. But we can say with equal truth that if C and D are time slices of me, and C is earlier than D, then C is closer to a past event e’ than D is. The earlier a time slice of me is, the closer it is to e'. In some sense these notions count as “getting closer to an event”, because an object of zero temporal extent would, in the above senses, never get closer to anything. But since time does not pass, we never get closer to any event in an absolute sense. So it makes sense to anticipate the future if and only if it makes sense to posticipate the past. If it makes no sense to posticipate past events, as I think most would grant, we can conclude by a parity of reasoning that it also makes no sense to anticipate future ones.

So does it make sense to look forward to future events? If eternalism is true, I’m afraid it does not. Those who uphold common sense may take this as an indictment of eternalism. Those of us who uphold eternalism—who attempt to view things “under the form of eternity”, as Spinoza put it—can take it as confirmation of just how limited our everyday perspective on reality really is.

[1] A given entity may be temporally finite in the sense that it has temporal endpoints, but the entity itself—the segment which connects the endpoints—never ceases to be.