Time

The subject of time in these letters may be a difficult one; but it throws much light on their qualities. We have already discussed letters where past events are enclosed into the form of narrative; but there the treatment of time is comparatively simple, and more akin to that in other kinds of literature. Time in letters is particularly complicated. One may find some leads by using, or perverting, ideas from philosophy and linguistics. Kant conceives of time as something subjective, the containing mould in which our arrangement of our experience is inevitably formed. It is we who organize occurrences (or rather states of mind) in time. Without venturing to deny the absolute reality of time-could we forgive ourselves? – we may still find suggestive for literature the idea of time as in effect a shaping of perceptions by the mind, and as a framework for contemplating them rather than an object of contemplation in itself.

Aesthetics · Contemplation · Epistemology · Linguistics · Narrative · Object (grammar) · Perception · Philosophy of space and time · Simple (philosophy) · Subject (documents) · Western philosophy · Computer Science · Humanities and Social Sciences · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel · Philosophy · Psychology · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications