//Under Eternity: The Analysis of Time across Universal History - 2023

[This text was part of a lecture performance presented at two events: first, during the "first draft pop-up show #4" at Max Müller Bhawan in Delhi, and second, at an open studio called "Time Flickers" organised at CAMP Studios in Mumbai]

Considering how western historiography is deeply rooted in the practices of "visuality", that is, visualising history to organise and naturalise the authority of the visualiser, this article examines the Hegelian concept of universal history and its conceptualisation of time. 

By analysing the discourse of time across universal history, from Greek civilisation to the fall of the Berlin Wall via the Renaissance, I argue that the concept of time was replaced by its oppositional concept of eternity throughout universal history, which has shaped our temporal experience.

Keywords: time, eternity, universal history, Hegel

Nicholas Mirzoeff, in his book The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (2011), elaborates on the idea of "visuality" as a political practice that functions beyond the capacity of perception. He argues that by incorporating information, intuition, and imagination together, the practice of visuality surpasses the substantiality of all visual images. Declaring it an "old word for an old project", Mirzoeff traces visuality’s roots to an early 19th-century term that refers to the "visualisation of history," theorised by Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle in 1841. Carlyle used the term to describe the historical tradition of heroic practices that visualise history to exercise and maintain control over its people. To put it differently, visuality can also be seen as a political strategy that functions against the operations of time to seize power and control over the transitory present and to organise it in such a manner that control seems natural and, finally, aesthetic. According to Mirzoeff, it is through this practice of visuality that Western historiography sets itself apart from other historiographic practices around the world.

In this regard, the conception of universal history can be seen as the prime example of the practice of visuality. In the book Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (1830–31), German philosopher Friedrich Hegel theorised a universal system of history that begins and culminates in Europe. This led to the rendition of what Argentine-Mexican philosopher Enrique Dussel calls the "myth of modernity" (Dussel 1993). Dussel postulates that modernity manifests when Europe claims itself as the centre of world history, entangling the peripheries within its definition (Mignolo 2007). Universal history is the manifestation of Spirit (Giest) at work for Hegel, whose final goal is freedom attained via the progressive stages of self-consciousness. The Greco-Germanic world is the height of civilization for Hegel, where the spirit is fully self-conscious and hence free from the regulations of nature. Based on this narrative of universal history, which is constituted and defined over the cultures that are without history, i.e., the "oriental world" (Chinese, Indians, Persians, and Arabs), the modern world is organised with the complexes of visuality that justify the historical advancement of Europe.

Hegel’s universal history engenders a unique relationship with the element of time in this context. In its determination as nature, spirit emerges as its own antithesis and negation, which it must overcome to attain absolute freedom (Hegel, 1830, Part II). According to Hegel, in its own externalisation, the spirit manifests itself spatially and temporally. Thereby, the spirit must endure its digression and ascend towards the ideal through the course of its historical trajectory. By dialectically engulfing itself in nature and hence manifesting time, spirit ascends and returns to its origin, which is eternity. Hence, this orientation of universal history towards eternity had a significant impact on the conceptualisation of time and its experience, in the manner that time has been overshadowed from its oppositional concept, i.e. of eternity.

Writing in 1830–31, Hegel's idea of history originates from the Ancient Greek civilisation; whose transition from prehistory to history is denoted by the earliest development of "freedom" in personal and political lives of people. Although Hegel declares the end of history to be the apotheosis of the Germanic/Christian civilization, I would extend it until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in this context. If the motion of the historical dialectics, i.e., the contradiction between the thesis and antithesis propositions resolving into the higher synthesis, sets off from the Greek civilisation, it ceases at the point when all its contradictions end. According to the American historian Francis Fukuyama, this end followed only after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the decline of Soviet communism. The end of communism, the sole contradiction of liberal democracy, marked the end of history with the emergence of "Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government" (Fukuyama 1989).

Following the successive stages—from the Greek civilisation to the fall of the Berlin Wall via the Renaissance—as the framework of this article, I will analyse the concepts of time that emerged at different stages of universal history. By doing so, the article deconstructs the expanse of universal history to understand its conceptualisation of time and its promise of freedom. My analysis of time is centred on the exploration of prominent philosophical discourses and theories that emerged at different stages of universal history.

Historical analysis of time 

Among the Greeks we feel ourselves immediately at home,

for we are in the region of Spirit..  (Hegel 1830)

Despite having a conception of history, the Oriental civilizations could only develop history on an ambiguous level, according to Hegel. Where the Oriental cultures supposedly lacked the inert means to initiate historical dialectics, i.e., the inner contradictions that produce individual and social transformation, Greek civilisation first fulfilled this criterion with the growth of individual consciousness against despotism. With the given amount of freedom embedded in their consciousness, Greeks were no longer engulfed in nature, according to Hegel. The conception of time is in direct relation to the notion of eternity at this stage. Plato’s metaphysical philosophy emphasises the primacy of eternal forms or ideas that serve as the foundation for our basic logical categories, where all matter in the physical world is mere imitation. In Timaeus, Plato gave an explanation of time while addressing the origin of the eternal universe. Time, for him, is a moving image of eternity. That is, as eternity abides in unitarian conception, time is a manifold image of this unity (Catherine Rau 1953). Platonic time is an absolute, unitary, and constant flowing stream through which all mundane events pass.

Aristotle shifts the emphasis away from the ideal and metaphysical universe towards the changing and sensible world. However, the concept of eternity can still be traced in Aristotle’s philosophy through his explanation of the smallest unit of time, the instant. In Book IV of Physics, he posits time in relation to changing states of things. Since change is local and can be discerned in concrete forms, it is explanatorily prior to time for him. Furthermore, he argues that the interval of time can only be experienced in its division into instants that mark a changing thing, i.e., the before and after phases of its change. However, an instant exists but only paradoxically as a nonexistent and metaphysical point, that is, as a boundary between the moments of the past and the future. Since it has no duration, it is a direct opening into eternity. To put it differently, each instant, divided as a marker of change in time, is an experience of eternity in itself. Aristotle dominated the philosophy of time over the course of its development with this instantaneous concept of time.

With the awareness of the notion of eternity through time, the Greeks stepped into the course of universal history, where time is absolute and objective, to which the soul merely follows.

Here, in Rome, then, we find that free universality,

that abstract Freedom..  (Hegel 1830)

Roman civilization progressed through history—in the phases of monarchy, republic, and empire—by constructing an abstract state with its own political sovereignty and constitution. The power of the state and the law took precedence over individual preferences. Although the philosophies of the Romans invariably implied Greek thought and culture, the Romans transcended nature by rationalising nature’s principles (Hegel 1805). For them, reason leads to a good and virtuous life. At this stage, a unique idea of time surfaced in the philosophy of Stoicism: the kariological idea of time, which, although having its roots in Greek philosophy, was deeply thought by the Stoics. In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Kairos denotes a critical, opportune moment where a decision claims and fulfils the instant. Aristotle considered it a crucial point when an agent responds ethically to the circumstances and imposes its presence over the contingency of life. Where chronologically moving instants in time appear as a point in time, Kairos signifies a critical decision as an incision in that order of time that attains this eternal instant in its perpetuation and randomness. The spirit of Roman civilization indicates a concrete consciousness towards time with its claim to eternity by opening the instant via receptivity and responsiveness, which accounts for its position in universal history.

when the fullness of the time had come,

God sent forth His Son... (Galatians 4:4-5)

The Roman civilization created favourable conditions for the emergence of the higher spirit that gave rise to the Christian world. The spirit of world history acquired self-consciousness to its finest with the birth of Christ. He connects the infinite with the finite as he unites divine eternity with temporality. Whereas the Greek conception of time was absolute and independent of mind, the incarnation of divine Being instigated a subjective view of time, where the experience shifted from abstract units of time in continuation to the concrete experience of the past, present and future. Given the consciousness that is attained by the spirit at this point, the soul may evoke an instant as its present moment with its own self-referentiality in time (Ricoeur 1984). The creation of the past has established a foundation for historicity (Agamben 1993). Furthermore, with a linear and teleological time, the soul seeks orientation; its future as the moment of redemption, in contrast to the Greek cyclical time that followed the repetition of an instant. Although within this Christian conception of time, in which the soul is distended into the moments of past, present, and future, Augustine in Book XI of The Confessions grants Aristotle credit and asserts that the present has no duration in time. The soul intercepts the wheel of eternity at this discreet present. This synchronicity is personified in the form of Christ. The spirit reaches its acme at this stage before it falls into the Middle Ages.

antithesis occasioned by that infinite falsehood

which rules the destinies of the Middle Ages...  (Hegel 1830)

The central political authority of the Roman state over its citizens dissolved as a result of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the vast lands were fragmented into local polities (Hegel 1805). The Frank Kingdom, the post-Roman monarchy, gave Christianity a political shape. A new philosophy of Scholasticism emerged from the religious practices of Christianity, and its tenets are based on the Church that gave rise to the monastic order. For Hegel, a real downfall paves the way for the following and more advanced step (Teshale Tibebu 2011). If the separation of philosophy and theology is considered the premise of modern times, their marriage was initiated during the Middle Ages.

The reduction of time to discipline emerged with the philosophy of scholasticism, which led the spirit of the age to lose its direct contact with eternity; the understanding of time shifted to regulate the day in sacred order. Thereby, the consciousness of time was preserved in organising the everyday ascetic lives of monks; the divine order replaced the natural rhythms of time. The workings of monastic communities in creating a temporal order and rhythms of ritualistic repetition are cited by Michel Foucault in his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) as the oldest forms of discipline that influenced the operations of factories in Europe in the 17th century. Furthermore, the daily activities of monastic lives were governed by the seven periods of prayer; the day was split into the seven sacred canonical hours (Nanni 2012). At this stage, the study of time was combined with moral discourse due to the explicit connection between the act of sin and time waste, as well as the drive to advance scientific discovery and increase the precision of time-telling devices (Esther De Waal 1990, 77; David Landes 2000, 58). Europe was disconnected from the world market in the Middle Ages, and the resurgence of antiquity gave the continent its centrality during the Renaissance.

But now spirit gathered itself together, and rose to claim the right to find

and know itself as actual self-consciousness...  (Hegel 1830)

The Italian Renaissance was the revival of the philosophies, arts, and sciences of the ancient world. In Hegel's opinion, this revival is not a return to infancy but rather the ascension of spirit into the Idea from the deep and arid slumbers of the Middle Ages. Hegel views the Renaissance as the birth of modernity, a fundamental shift in the unfolding events of history (Mignolo 2007). Along with the return to the ancient world, this stage simultaneously marked the age of discovery of America and the way to the East Indies. These two events transformed the understanding of time, which, however, led to a single outcome, i.e., the centrality of Europe in universal history. With the re-articulation of the antiquities, the idea of Historia magistra vitae—history as the guide that would lead the present to the future—shaped the consciousness of the men of the Renaissance, according to the German historian Reinhart Koselleck (2004). Koselleck reinstates the call of a Renaissance historian, Machiavelli, to reorient towards history as it connects the exemplary with the empirical. Consequently, under the influence of its historicity, this age explicated a change in its order of temporality, where the present is now organised around the lessons of the past in order to enter the future.

Additionally, according to Walter Mignolo, the heights of the Renaissance were principally constituted against its own darker side, namely the discovery of the new world, rather than just in comparison to the Middle Ages (Mignolo 2007). Mignolo argues that with the discovery of the new world, the spatial term "barbarian," which signified exteriority, was replaced by the term "primitive," which signifies a lag in time. As a result, the time consciousness of this period was precisely constituted by declaring the lag of the other in achieving historical consciousness. The spirit ascends to a new level as Europe gains cultural and economic prosperity with the treasures of the ancient world and colonial extractions.

science of the determinate understanding,

made its appearance at this time.  (Hegel 1830)

The Renaissance shifted the common sense of the spirit towards abstract reasoning. During the scientific revolution, the Greeks were supplanted, and a new perspective on nature developed. By declaring reason the universal ruler, René Descartes ensured the mind's capacity for definite knowledge. In the unity of being and knowledge, he declared the primacy of mind over nature and rendered nature transparent and mechanical (Ferreira 2007). The mind gained its prerogative at this point as the sole unbiased determinate of the universe. In that manner, Descartes, with his res cogitans, contends that time is a thought that is abstracted from the constant motions of the heavenly bodies and imposed as a measure on things (Gorham 2007). With his rational abstraction of time, he anticipates Newton. In Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), Isaac Newton introduced a radical change in the understanding of the physical world, reflected in his concept of time. Newton presents an absolute idea of time that, although independent and objective to any perceiver, can only be comprehended mathematically by the rational mind. He postulated that absolute time is homogenous and devoid of any quality, making it imperceptible. As all things and motion reside in space with the order of situation, they reside in time with the order of succession (Westphal 1999). He contrasts absolute time from relative, apparent time, which is biased and based on the sensible and external world and is measured in units of hours, days, and months. According to Newton, with its persistent duration, absolute time is akin to eternity (Westphal 1999). In other words, by elevating the notion of time in reason, spirit touches eternity, where time becomes a pure succession of uniform duration. At this point, modern philosophy and science began to take hold, completely replacing God with a rational subject.

We have now to consider the French Revolution in its organic connection

with the History of the World  (Hegel 1830)

The political and social system of the French Monarchy, which had been in place since the Middle Ages, was repealed by merchants and peasants to end feudal oppression. The revolution brought about a permanent change from religious impulses to secular ones, transforming the hereditary monarchy into a liberal democracy and instilling the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and human rights. Hegel viewed this as a remodelling of the state and the establishment of political certainty for individuals under the state, i.e., concrete identity with self-consciousness (Hegel 1830). However, according to Agamben (1993, 89–105), the purpose of the revolution is not only to alter the world but also the course of time. Thereby, along with changes to the political and social structures, the transition from the old regime to the new one also brought about changes in the order of time. What transformation to our understanding of time did the 18th century bring with its revolution? In his book Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (2004), Koselleck asks the same question. For him, the French Revolution inaugurated an orientation towards the future, one in which the past is inquired into only in the light of what is to come. The church's invocation of the future as a pathway to redemption was replaced by the secular logic of perpetual progress in order to gain social and political freedom. According to Koselleck (2004), this new future provided an acceleration of time as well as a quality of the unknown embedded in it — the kind that the future instills into our space of experience at an ever-increasing rate. This self-accelerating time robbed the present of its space of experience in favour of the expectations of the future as a result. Thereby, the asymmetry between the space of experience and the horizon of expectation marks the order of time at the end of the 18th century (Koselleck 2004). This revolution introduced profound depths in consciousness and social freedom, according to Hegel.

Enlightenment is man's emergence

from his self-imposed immaturity  (Kant 1784)

While the Renaissance marked the beginning of historical modernity, the Age of Enlightenment saw the beginning of philosophical modernity, in Hegel’s view (Mignolo 2007). It is a broader phase that encompasses both the Scientific and French revolutions. However, radical attempts were made regarding the philosophy of time, particularly during German idealism, a philosophical movement closely related to the Enlightenment. In his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant hypothetically declared the beginning of philosophy. He asserted that the things that pure reason can evaluate are only appearances and that the things themselves are beyond the reach of reason. He inverted the orientation from the mind confirming the objects to the objects confirming their representation in the mind. By establishing the rational mind as the centre of the universe, Kant drew comparisons to the Copernican revolution in philosophy. He posited that time and space are only abstract inner intuitions or categories of understanding that are a-priori to all experiences. Categories of time and space make the experience possible, not the other way around. In this way, Kant challenged Newton's concept of absolute time as being objective and independent from any perceiver by relocating the regulations of time in the interiority of the mind. 

Hegel, on the other hand, emphasises time as a process through which the mind (Giest) dialectically indulges with nature in order to transcend it and reach absolute and eternal spirit. According to Andrzej Karpinski (2022), Hegel's philosophy is an attempt to import the importance of eternity after Kant's postulation that it is incompatible with pure reason. To put it differently, spirit engages dialectically with temporal presuppositions before overcoming them and arriving at a state of complete lack of presupposition. Hegel concludes by describing time as the repetition of spirit externalising itself in space, and he assigns time the attribute of negation. By being transitory, it simultaneously negates itself as well as what space manifests. Hence, "It is the being which, insofar as it is, is not, and insofar as it is not, is" (Hegel 2019, VII, 53).

At this point, the spirit marching towards eternity gets its articulation in the course of universal history. In its articulation, it gains recognition.

The hand mill gives you society with the feudal lord;

the steam mill, society with the industrial capitalist (Marx and Engels 1848)

From the serfs of the Middle Ages, a mercantile class emerged after the French Revolution, overthrowing feudal rule (Marx and Engels 1848). The rise of mercantile activities in the 13th and 14th centuries prompted the demand for more accurate time-keeping, which displaced the monopoly of the Church on time and secularised it according to the French historian Jacques Le Goff. In other words, the invention of the clock marked the emergence of the Industrial Revolution.

E. P. Thompson, in the article Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism (1967), argues that the foundation of industrial capitalism and the formation of the modern state were based on the emergence of clock. He contends that extremely accurate clock time has superseded the previous systems of task-oriented temporal systems that were developed from the norms and rhythms of social activity. Clock time is a highly abstracted and impersonal time where moments lack any kind of value in their succession and are qualitatively neutral or homogeneous. The sole goal of every atomistic, distinct instant that succeeds in the absence of any telos is to synchronise time with work. By reducing the role of time merely to the character of a measure, clocks have altered time to the order that is constructed for the extraction of surplus value from work. Time emerged as a discipline in the service of surplus at this stage, just as it did in the service of God during the Middle Ages. The industrial revolution further widened the gap between classes, which sparked revolutions around the world.

The history of all hitherto existing society

is the history of class struggles. (Marx and Engels 1848)

The Russian Revolution, under the direction of the Socialist-Marxist school, ended the tyranny of the ruling class and the Russian monarchy in order to build a socialist system of governance. Antonio Negri developed a fundamental critique of bourgeois temporality in his book The Constitution of Time: The Timepieces of Capital and Communist Liberation (2003, Part I) by theorising what he called "the communist idea of time" and "a new proletarian practise of time (Negri 2003)." My reading of Negri’s theory of time is based on Cesare Casarino’s interpretation of it (2008). Considering Marx's assertion that the primary measure of labour is its duration, Negri distinguishes between labour time that is socially required and labour time that is surplus-oriented. Since labour is the fundamental potential of all human beings, it is through labour that time is manifested. Negri describes time in this way as an expression of our productive and creative efforts and, hence, as an incommensurable becoming of all substances. In other words, time cannot be quantified; rather, it is incommensurable and manifested through labour. It is this heterogeneous time—that is, based on the rhythms of collective labour—that capital endeavours have isolated, contained, quantified, and reduced to a homogeneous substance in order to extract surplus value from it.

From this angle, Negri's communist view of time stands in opposition to the Hegelian understanding of time, that is, the opposition between the forces of production that determine history and the Spirit determining history in its elevation towards the eternal Idea. Time, in this sense, is the very immanent fabric of labour and production rather than a condition that the spirit must overcome. It is in time that one attains one’s potential, not in its transcendence. However, at the same time, the Marxist view of time is a re-conceptualisation of the same logic of dialectical progression towards an advanced future, although materially oriented. Marx shared Hegel's belief in the centrality of Europe in world history because it provided the conditions for the class revolution that would lead to the establishment of a communist society.

Socialist-Marxist thought did not last long after the revolution and was quickly replaced by a totalitarian school of thought under Joseph Stalin. Class struggle emerged as a driving force of history.

The plunge of civilization

into this abyss of blood and darkness (Henry James)

The 20th-century world wars caused enormous harm throughout the world, from social and economic hardship to philosophical and cultural destitution. While some believed that the two wars marked the end of Europe's ongoing modernization process, others saw them as a revolutionary step towards further progress (Warren 2014). However, the prominent thought that emerged during the war period was the philosophical study of phenomenology, which was initiated by German Philosopher Edmund Husserl.

Husserl defines phenomenology as a method to investigate only what appears to the conscious mind. With this, he proposes that all acts of consciousness presuppose and include an internal consciousness of time. In the book The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness (1928), Husserl challenges the time which is divided into instants and theorises a continuous experience of lived-present. He argues that, without a continuous perception of moments in the mind, things would lie in disconnection. For Husserl, consciousness retains a shadow of what has been passed and anticipates what is yet to come in order to have a unified sense of things across succession, like a melody. To perceive time in the form of successive instants is to consider consciousness as a light continuously switching on and off, according to him. Hence, this suspension of the lived present in retention and protention allows consciousness to overcome the point-like instant. By explicating the structure of consciousness as temporal, Husserl declares time as flux and cannot be divided into individual atomistic units.

This phenomenological concept of time was founded against the Aristotelian notions of time as instantaneous punctuality. However, it merely presents a magnified version of the same concept by stating the appearance time as flux. In other words, Husserl's conception of time still assumes now as an instant, albeit one with a comet's tail.

The modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his text;

and every text is eternally written here and now. (Barthes 1967)

The post war time saw a worldwide economic expansion, which accelerated the world's prosperity, caused an upsurge in the birth rate, and increased access to education. The advancement of mass media like television created a shared understanding among the youth of that period, allowing them to witness, unite, and raise their opinions on subjects such as the Vietnam War, the Cuban missile crisis, the looming nuclear threat, and the cold war. This resulted in the May 1968 student and worker revolt against all authority and the state. During this period, post-structuralism evolved as a philosophical study and a critical literary theory that largely challenged the foundations of earlier philosophical ideas such as structuralism and phenomenology. In his book Speech and phenomena (1973), Derrida developed a critical response to Husserl’s phenomenology and his theory of time.

According to Husserl, phenomenology is the study of pure experience, and to do so, one must separate one's natural and objective worldviews. Similarly, Husserl theorised the conditions of the lived present as the direct and unmediated experience of the "now" and therefore claimed the indivisible moment of the present. This is what Derrida refers to as the “metaphysics of presence”, in which the indivisible present and its relation to the "now" are illusions. Because the perception of the lived present carries the retention of an elapsed moment as well as an anticipation of the moment that has not yet come, it includes an aspect of non-perception. As a result, Husserl's claim to the actual present is constantly compromised by its trace. In other words, attempting to claim the present phenomenologically, it inevitably slips away. Derrida claims, echoing Hamlet, that 'time is out of joint' and that it is always too late to retain the moment. Thereby, this deference of the present is time for Derrida.

Derrida asserted that Husserlian phenomenological invocation of the pure present is the invocation of basic metaphysical notions such as presence, essence, origin, eternity, and others that have formed a historical hierarchy over language, society, and its institutions. For him, these conceptions, in their hierarchical binary relations, are the derivatives of all other concepts and must thus be deconstructed.

By asserting the durational aspect of an instant, Husserl attempted to escape the Aristotelian concept of the instant that in its point-like form escapes time and hence touches eternity. However, in doing so, Husserl eventually fell back into it.

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War...

but the end of history as such. (Fukuyama 1989)

Following World War II, the occupied German territory was split under allied powers which included the United States, the United Kingdom, and France in the western zone, and the eastern zone included the Soviet Union. With the increasing economic problems in the eastern zone and the fall of communist governments in neighbouring countries, the USSR disintegrated, and the wall between the zones fell with the final demise of communism. Fukuyama famously declared this event as the end of history with the cessation of human ideological development.

In his book Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time (2003), the French Historian Francois Hartog characterises the impact of this event on the order of time as a stagnation. Following Koselleck, Hartog contends that the future-oriented regime that evolved after the French Revolution came to an end with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, defining the situation as "presentism." It is a temporal standstill in which only the present exists since it has lost all connection with the past and future. The past is visited only for glorification, and the future is transformed into a threat considering the global crises of migration and ecological disasters. The effects of this regime are evident in many forms. It manifests itself in the "status of casual workers," according to Hartog, as they have no past, especially in the case of migration or exile, and no future because they lack the power to make plans and projects, resulting in a hand-to-mouth situation. Similarly, it has led to the creation of modern cityscapes and constructions that resist the expressions of time and are devoid of context and history (Hartog 2013). These constructions leave no trace and induce amnesia. Furthermore, the consequences of this are discussed in Jonathan Crary's book 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (2013), where the eternal present under late capitalism repeats itself in the cycles of 24/7 regulations. Crary represents the ultimate "theft of time," manifested as increased insomnia or the end of sleep. Time becomes eternal now.

With the regime of the present, the spirit attains its destined and ultimate eternity. Time, which, according to Plato, was an image of eternity, becomes eternity at the end of history. In the name of eternity, the promise of freedom that is made by universal history appears to be a temporal stagnation at the last stage. To paraphrase Fukuyama, the eternal will govern the temporal world in the long run.

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Ricoeur, Paul. 1984. Time and Narrative. Chicago, Ill. ; London: University Of Chicago Press.

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Warren, Nicolas de. “THE FIRST WORLD WAR, PHILOSOPHY, AND EUROPE.” Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 76, no. 4 (2014): 715–37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24673365. 

Westphal, Jonathan. 1999. Time. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Lecture performance at first draft pop-up show #4, Max Muller Bhavan, Delhi

Lecture performance at CAMP studio's Terrace