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The Now as a Model of Eternity
“Time exists only if it can be measured, and the standard by which we measure it is space. Where is the space that allows us to measure time found? According to Augustine, the answer is: in our memory, where all things are stored. Memory, the storehouse of time, is the presence of “no longer” (iam non), just as expectation is the presence of “not yet” (nondum). Thus, I do not measure what no longer exists, but rather something that remains fixed in memory. Time exists only when we bring the past and future into the present of recollection and anticipation. Therefore, the only valid verb tense is the present, the Now. Plotinus writes: “Generally speaking, the past is the time that ends now, and the future is the time that begins now.” The Now measures time backward and forward, because, strictly speaking, the Now is not time; it is outside of time. In the Now, the past and future meet. For a fleeting moment, they are simultaneous so that they can be stored by memory, which recalls past things and anticipates things to come. For a fleeting moment (the temporary Now), time seems to stand still, and this Now becomes for Augustine the model of eternity, for which he uses Neoplatonic metaphors—nunc stans or nunc aeternitatis—even as he strips them of their specifically mystical meaning.”In this way, Hannah Arendt decodes Augustine’s thought in her famous doctoral thesis, entitled: Love in Saint Augustine (translated by Georgeta-Anca Ionescu, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2023).
Hannah Arendt in 1963 / Source: Wikimedia Commons
Born in 1906, Hannah Arendt grew up in a secular Jewish family in Königsberg.
Although her parents were not religious, they allowed young Hannah to go to synagogue with her maternal grandparents, who belonged to reformed Judaism (liberales Judentum). She learned about Christianity mainly at school and was impressed by the stories about Jesus. Later, as a teenager, Arendt became an avid reader of Søren Kierkegaard, which can be seen as the first signs of her interest in theology.
Starting in 1924, she studied philosophy at the University of Marburg, Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, and Heidelberg University. In 1924, in Berlin, she attended the lectures of Romano Guardini, a Catholic theologian who only strengthened her passion for Kierkegaard. Arendt then studied philosophy and theology with Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Bultmann until, in the spring of 1926, she left Marburg for Freiburg to study with Edmund Husserl. In Freiburg, she met Karl Jaspers, who would become the supervisor of her doctoral thesis, defended in the autumn of 1928 and published in Berlin in 1929 under the title Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin: Versuch einer philosophischen Interpretation. Many themes from her thesis migrated into her postwar work in various theoretical languages.
In Marburg, she met Martin Heidegger, under whose influence she remained until 1928. In 1933, when Heidegger joined the Nazi Party and began implementing Nazi educational policies as rector of Freiburg, Arendt, who was Jewish, was forced to flee to Paris. She married Heinrich Blücher, a philosophy professor, in 1940. She became a fugitive from the Nazis again in 1941, when she and her husband emigrated to the United States. Arendt taught at prestigious academic institutions, such as The New School for Social Research, where she became a leading figure in political philosophy. During this time, she continued her academic work, offering courses on politics, history, and philosophy. Her final major intellectual project was the unfinished work titled “The Life of the Mind,” a deep reflection on the activities of thinking, willing, and judging.
She died on December 4, 1975, at the age of 69, following a heart attack in her New York apartment. Her death was sudden and unexpected to many, although her heart condition was known.
Such a life could not remain untouched by great turmoil. And the issue of time—a theme synonymous with history itself—could not go unnoticed. Arendt found in Augustine’s reflections everything she needed: speculation, depth, perspective. The subjective element (how we perceive time) and the objective element (how time is in itself) achieve a particular cohesion in Augustine. Through an intriguing staging—and in a paradoxical manner—the past and the future “dissolve” into a present that becomes... eternal.
The intangible nature of “now” makes it unique: the meeting point of immanence and transcendence. Like a nodal point, all the threads of existence converge in the present; only in it are they contained. And, in this case, is it not an unprecedented prefiguration of eternity? Or, to be more dogmatic, is the evangelical today not that time of the Kingdom (kairos), with its definite festive qualities?
Indeed, that is exactly what it is. A time that escapes ephemerality, fulfilled by its immediate actualization. The fact that a person is fully present in their own moment, that they encompass it in all dimensions—this is the great achievement. Thus, every fully lived day is a participation in eternity, a foretaste of the eschatological banquet. Time is redeemed, and its irreversibility no longer frustrates.
And so what if time passes, as long as its flow is no longer irreversible but instead redemptive?
Ghita Mocan
The article highlights Hannah Arendt's work on Augustine's concept of love. Inevitably, the topic also touches on the dimension of temporality, as is the case with all major themes. Time, or rather the present, thus becomes a model for eternity—a deeply Christian and comforting idea.
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