Time and Eternity, Part 1

Photo by Yusuf Onuk on Unsplash

Our experience of time moving from past to present to future is so embedded that it is difficult, if not impossible, to think of life and experience without temporality. But many great thinkers have taken on this challenge and offer some insight into how we might think about eternity. Here we explore what French philosopher Henri Bergson had to say about time, memory, and matter.

Life is good, and most people want to see it continued, even after death. In fact, preferring not to continue life seems almost a form of mental illness. The idea of eternity, however, confounds us and makes many doubt the possibility of immortality. The Abrahamic faiths– Judaism, Christianity, and Islam– all offer the promise of immortality, albeit with varying requirements and conditions. If eternity seems too far-fetched to be true, then it becomes far easier to reject the whole faith or even the idea of religion.

Some may think that even considering alternatives to time, which any notion of eternity certainly is, is a waste of time. But the author of the paper we will consider here quotes Immanuel Kant, who said questions of eternal life belong to the questions that human reason “cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer as they transcend every faculty of the mind.”