John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart

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John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart (born September 3, 1866 in London , † January 18, 1925 ibid) was an English philosopher .

McTaggart - a friend and teacher of Bertrand Russell - brought Hegel's philosophy to the English-speaking world and is attributed to neo-Hegelianism and British idealism .

Life

His parents were Francis and Caroline Ellis. As a result of an inheritance clause of the maternal great-uncle Sir John McTaggart, the parents carried the additional surname McTaggart, so that the official family name was Ellis McTaggart. The son was given the name John McTaggart, did this full name: John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart .

McTaggart attended Clifton College in Bristol from 1882 to 1885 and Trinity College in Cambridge from 1885 to 1888 . In 1888 he obtained his BA and in 1892 his MA in Cambridge, where he taught from 1897 to 1922. In 1906 he was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the British Academy .

Think

The time at McTaggart
Number series

McTaggart's essay on the philosophy of time , The Unreality of Time (1908), is one of the most influential texts in the entire discipline. There he differentiates between different ways of looking at time, which he calls A, B and C series. In his view, both the A and B series are contradictory or incompatible with the phenomena, from which he concludes that time is an illusion at all. Very few theorists agree with this conclusion, his proof of the unreality of time is therefore uncontroversial as a failure, but his conceptual distinction is still the standard terminology. The A-series operates with transitory terms such as “past”, “present” and “future”, which are each relative to the perspective of the first person of a speaker as the deictic center . The sentences of the A series are thus indexical and temporal, that is, they change their truth value with the moving present. There is thus a so-called tensed series or dynamic series . Time is directed, the flow of time moves with the present and corresponds to the experienced time. The B-series, on the other hand, operates with terms such as “earlier than”, “simultaneously” or “later than”, which are relative to other points in time and are therefore independent of a purely subjective perspective. The sentences of the B series are timeless, because their relational determination does not change, it does not matter at what point in time you look at the events, their truth value always remains the same. This series is therefore referred to as a tensless series or static-time-series . Time does not flow, temporal determinations are static and permanent; Time is analogous to space, so that all points in time are present at the same time. Time is objective and scientific. If you subtract the time determinations from the A series, you get a C series, a series of permanent relations, comparable to the series of natural numbers . It is not temporal because it does not involve change, and it has no direction of its own, only an order.

McTaggart sees the A-series as more fundamental for the time than the B-series and wants to show that time cannot be real if the distinctions “past”, “present” and “future” never apply to reality. He essentially sets up three theses (premises), from which the unreality of time results as a conclusion . If the premises are accepted, then the proof has succeeded because the argument is deductively sound.

  • Thesis 1: No time without change.
    This thesis is generally accepted (change is not the flow of time, because this would already presuppose the A series, but the fact that objects have incompatible properties in time.)
  • Thesis 2: There is only change in the A row.
    The B series is not able to show the flow of time. Events are statically ordered relative to one another, there is no real change. This is only possible in the A series.
  • Thesis 3: The A series is contradicting itself.
    After the A series, every event or point in time has the attribute that it is present, future and also past. But these are contradicting provisions that cannot be real at the same time , which is why the A-series is unreal. Avoiding the simultaneity of the attributes also leads to contradictions. But if the A series is unreal , but a necessary prerequisite for time, time itself can only be unreal.

These theses are not unassailable. One of the most essential points is the current understanding of the concept of change, according to which thesis 2 cannot exist: According to Russell, there is also temporal change in the B series due to the occurrence of new events and facts. A thought experiment by Sydney Shoemaker creates a possibility after which time could be possible without change. The fact that McTaggart's attempt to prove the unreality of time (i.e. the proof of an antinomy ) has failed does not mean, however, that the reality of time is already proven.

See also

Works (selection)

  • Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic . The University Press, Cambridge 1886.
  • Studies in the Hegelian Cosmology . The University Press, Cambridge 1891.
  • The unreality of time . In: Min. A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy 17/1908, pp. 457-474.
  • The Nature of Existence . The University Press, Cambridge 1921-1927.
  • The changes of method in Hegel's dialectic . Mind (NS) 1 (1892) 1, 56 - 71; 1 (1892) 2, 188-205

literature

  • Armen Avanessian , Suhail Malik (ed.): The time complex. Postcontemporary. Merve, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-88396-380-8 .
  • Michael Dummett : McTaggart's Proof of the Unreality of Time: A Defense. In: Walther Ch. Zimmerli , Mike Sandbothe (ed.): Classics of the modern philosophy of time. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1993, ISBN 3-534-12013-2 , pp. 120-126
  • Edmund Runggaldier: Formal semantic renewal of metaphysics. In: Matthias Lutz-Bachmann (Ed.): Metaphysics Today - Problems and Perspectives of Ontology. Alber, Freiburg 2007, p. 57 (70-73) (on A and B series)
  • John Jamieson Carswell Smart : The Flow of Time. In: Walther Ch. Zimmerli, Mike Sandbothe (ed.): Classics of the modern philosophy of time . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1993, ISBN 3-534-12013-2 , pp. 106-119

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed July 6, 2020 .
  2. ^ Sven Bernecker: Space & Time: McTaggert's conception of space and time.
  3. ↑ Christian Kanzian: Why McTaggart's proof of the unreality of time fails.
personal data
SURNAME McTaggart, John McTaggart Ellis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH September 3, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH London , UK
DATE OF DEATH January 18, 1925
Place of death London , UK