A Moment in Time

One may indeed read philosophy as ’the spirit if its time’ for it is some the greatest minds of the age exploring the world and themselves through the concepts, imaginations and limitations imposed on them by their time, place and culture. And yet philosophy seeks always to go beyond itself; beyond its time. It is history but the universal and eternal history, the unhistorical history, of the present moment. To philosophise is then to talk with the past and the future, from the present about the eternal. But philosophy seems always to point away from itself. It never merely preserves the moment. It is ever changing, ever expressing the changes in reality and thought which it helps produce. It is the constant, bringing about change. Perhaps thus it grasps the Truth in which it is involved. In that sense philosophy is always disproving itself. Perhaps therefore philosophy is always accompanied by religion. Which is never simply grasping the moment; but imposing it. It demands of the Truth to remain the same. It seeks to prove the present by perpetuating it. Perhaps the man of faith is the philosopher grown weary of eternal movement. ‘Let us sit and rest’ he says. ‘Let us preserve and build’. Yet thought ever restless, yearns for new frontiers. Change breaks it bonds; for now its moment-in-time gives it freedom to express itself. Yet thus realised it comes to realise its own end. Ever ending, ever giving birth to new beginnings and new moments.