Under the pseudonym Pascal Mercier Peter Bieri presents concepts of time in his 1995 novel „Perlmanns Schweigen.“ Therein is expressed the idea that a differentiated experience of time takes place in the medium of language, in which the experience of time is not depicted, but rather—especially with regard to one’s own past—is created as a narrative or fiction by both oneself and others.

At the same time, the experience of time is context-dependent, particularly with regard to the openness or determinism of the future and the past. When options for action are available, there is scope for creativity and hope. Under the pressure of seemingly unalterable developments, as well as in the face of approaching death, the experience of time is reduced to a sequence of sluggish, drawn-out moments, of pure passing into eternity and without any hope. On the other hand, when the context is cut off, for example, in solitary confinement, the self-evidence and trust in the self-invented past are quickly lost due to a lack of confirmation.

In moments of intense experience of the present, the impression can arise that time is not something that is independently and progressively imposed by the outside world, but rather something that, depending on the extent to which it is allowed, in a rich or sparse form unfolds from within into the world as a fixed aspect of one’s own person. However, this intense experience of the present is not something that can be taken for granted. In times of future designs and preparations, the present can be experienced as something that is yet to come. The present moment then appears in retrospect as something missed, in which one only participated incidentally, that has passed one by.

The context-dependent variability and the creative arbitrariness of the experience of time already point to a heterogeneity. Bieri goes even further in his depiction of time and describes a multiplicity of different times that run alongside one another, bound to the subject, occasionally intersecting one’s own experience, or at times converge in the resonance of shared experience and can decouple again. In this context, Bieri speaks of multiplications of reality and time, competing levels of world experience, each claiming to be the real time. Wrapped up in their own, unshared time, familiar people can seem strange. Mutually exclusive experiences of time lead to (self-)exclusion, alienation, isolation, withdrawal, and can be accompanied by doubt, suspicion, and experiences of loss.

At the breaking point of more or less unexpected, surprising, and irreversible events, the experience of time can shift from feelings of self-determination and hope to feelings of external determination and hopelessness. This gives rise to situations of existential self-awareness, accompanied by Kierkegaardian „what if I had known“ thoughts. The certainty of not having known better, coupled with the possibility that one could have acted differently, evokes the despair of being responsible for decisions whose consequences were unforeseeable.

However, as Bieri also demonstrates, the opposite experience can manifest itself at the breaking point of irreversible events. A decision whose consequences were unforeseeable can open up favorable developmental opportunities that, as incredibly fortunate circumstances, transform the experience of time from hopeless determinism into hopeful openness.

Literature:

Pascal Mercier, Perlmanns Schweigen (1995)

Further Reading:

Martin Heidegger (Time Thinkers)

Kommentare