The Boundaries of Presence

Pavel Kouba

The essay examines the concepts that are grounding and determining for the concept of the present, as well as of duration, change, succession and their mutual relations, in Kant, Plato and Aristotle, thereby seeking to establish a framework for a reconsideration of Heidegger’s account of the so-called ‘vulgar conception of time’, and prepare the ground for asking the question, in what sense being in time is necessarily dependent on human understanding and unthinkable without it, and in what sense things in themselves ought to be understood as temporal.