Time
This theme runs through several big questions. Here are the ones where it plays out.
The questions that illuminate it
Toward which dimension of time should we orient our life: the present, the future, or the past?
Living for the moment savours life but can lose its bearings; living for the future builds and prepares, but sometimes sacrifices today to a tomorrow that never comes; living from the past honours one's roots, but can imprison us in them. To take a position is to say where to place the weight of a life.
Do we have duties toward future generations?
Can we owe anything to beings who do not yet exist, who claim nothing, and whom our choices will bring into being as they will be? Making room for them can weigh heavily on the living; ignoring them means mortgaging a world we will never see. To take a position is to say how far our responsibility extends in time.
Is the real, at bottom, what endures or what becomes?
Everything we see is born, changes, and perishes; and yet we look everywhere for what endures: stable laws, identical things, a self that stays the same. Is the ground of the real an immutable being of which change is only the surface, or a flux in which stable things are merely temporary slowings? On the answer hangs even the way we understand the world: through fixed forms or through processes.
Faced with what has happened and cannot be changed, should we embrace it or rebel against it?
Accepting, even loving, what has been brings peace and reconciliation, but can look like consenting to the unacceptable; revolting keeps alive the sense that it should not have been, but can rivet us to a wound that will not heal. To take a position is to say how to live with the irreversible.
Does human history follow a direction, or is it sheer contingency?
If history goes somewhere, our struggles add up and progress is real; if it is only a chain of chance events, nothing guarantees that tomorrow will be better than yesterday, and every gain can be lost. To take a position is to say whether political hope rests on the course of things or on us alone.