Dasein and Duration:

A Critique of the B Theory of Time

A Term Paper
Presented to the Faculty of
The Department of Philosophy
School of Arts and Sciences
University of San Carlos
Cebu City, Philippines

___________________________________________

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for

the course Philosophy 656: Martin Heidegger
Master of Arts in Philosophy

Submitted by: Ryan Vincent F. Alisaca

MA-Philo

December 6, 2019
McTaggart and the B Theory of Time

The British idealist, John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart, has given us a good case for the

unreality of time. In this paper, however, I will not go out all the way to prove McTaggart wrong.

In fact, I will only touch upon a little portion of his work on the unreality of time. For our purposes

here, I will try to expose only the necessary concepts which are found pertinent in this paper.

McTaggart’s argument starts with a presupposition, a commonly held spontaneous

conviction: that it is universally admitted that time involves change.1 From this, McTaggart sets

out to prove to us that if there is no change, then so too can there be no time.

Now, McTaggart points out that there are two ways by which we can try to understand the

events occurring in time. One is the A series which suggests that events are either past, present, or

future. If there can be time, should be in the A-series. Change, in this regard can only occur if we

consider the change among the relations of events, that is, the relation between past, present, and

future. A past event becomes ever more past, and a future event comes ever closer to the present.

If we are to believe in time, then we must hold on to the A series.2 The A theory of time is,

therefore, derived from the A series. The A theory of time posits a constant flux in the transition

of events.

The other is the B series which suggests that we can view events as either earlier than or

later than.3 The implication is that there is no change as there can be no actual change in the

relations earlier posited. An event remains earlier than and can never become later done in relation

to one event. The B theory of time is therefore derived from the B series. The B theory of time

1
J.M.E. McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time,” Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy 17
(1908): 457.
2
Ibid., 458
3
Ibid.
posits a single determined continuum of events. Thus, in the B series, there is no change, and

therefore no time at all.

McTaggart would then proceed to demonstrate that the A series is invalid and that only the

B series can stand, giving us the idea that there is no change at all, and therefore, no time too.

Critique of the B Theory of Time

The experience of external reality has always been very obvious to us. In fact, we

have become so accustomed to our experience of reality that we sometime express things which

are actually purely mental as seemingly outside ourselves. Such was the case in our former

question. The question is in fact a manifestation of this experience. And yet, the question also

implies a certain presupposed subjective reality in the one who asks, the “I” who is asking. I say

presupposed because this certain subjective reality is something so immediate to us that we cannot

even question its existence. Any attempt to question this “I” is simply begging the question as the

question already presupposes someone who is asking.

The question “How do I critique?” shows us the subjective and objective reality of the one

who asks. The question shows us Man as someone who perceives and experiences reality. The

question also implies an “I” a person who is aware of himself. In short, the Human Person is

implied by the question.

But how indeed do we make this critique? Perhaps we must take the path of science here.

Science must always begin with a question. Without questions, we cannot have any investigation

at all. Thus, we must start with questions. And the question from which we shall take off is this:

who does the questioning? Who is capable of doing the sciences? The human person is clearly the
one who questions, the one who seeks for answers. It would be meaningless to say that the stone,

or the dog, or the sun and stars are aware of themselves and are investigating the universe in the

same way that humans are inquiring into reality. Therefore, he who does Language (i.e. he who

speaks in an intelligent language), Phenomenology, Metaphysics, and Physics, etc. is the human

person, he who desires to know. The question, thus is met in the reality of the human person and

his internal and external experiences.

Dasein Perceives the World as Significant.

Allow me therefore to take off with Heidegger’s Dasein. Clearly, for the human person, to

exist is not to exist in the same way that a chair or a table exists. The person, afterall, is “not a

thing, not a substance, not an object.”4 When Dasein exists, it exists in the world. When we exist,

we encounter other beings which are also in the world.5 An objection to Heidegger’s

phenomenology is immediately brought to mind. Why must Dasein be so significant in this wide

universe? We have answered that already: the human person is able to ask. The human person

perceives the world in a manner far different than how animals perceive the world. The evidence

to this is our own experience. We have always, at one point in our lives, asked the bigger questions

of life. At some point, we were actually pondering as to what the ends of the universe look like.

We discover the stars and other organisms. They don’t discover us. While at the grand scale, we

might seem so insignificant, and the stars and other heavenly bodies on the contrary seem so

immense and mighty, in reality it is actually the human being who makes these gargantuan realities

4
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, (New York: Harper & Row Publishers Inc., 1962), 73.
5
Ibid., 154.
significant. “It is man, who, by existing, gives significant being to things.”6 The human person, in

this sense, may be called the center of the universe.

However, to avoid misunderstanding, I am not positing that it is the human person who

creates essences, that a thing’s essence is subjective to the perceiving person. No. Things do exist

in a certain way. They have a particular and specific structure which in themselves are independent

of the human being. But these essences are as good as nothing i.e. insignificant, because they

merely exist. It is the human person who gives these essences significance, who properly

recognizes that they do exist although not in the same way that he (the human person) exists. The

stone does exist independently of the mind of the human person. It has its own constituent minerals

and elements. But it will continue to lay there on its insignificant corner until the human person

sees it, picks it up and transforms it into a fine figurine. The gigantic star may be so massive and

bright. But it is only massive in so far as human beings are conscious of their littleness, aware of

other stars, and are revering the said star for its majestic form. Without the human being, the star,

no matter how peculiar, remains simply a star.

Man in the world and Time

Let us bring our capacity to make things significant to the reality of time. The human person

experiences time in such a way that is not experienced by any other being. The human person is

involved in so many kinds of changes. By direct experience, he is spontaneously convinced that

time exists in so far as he is able to experience change. At this point, it is easy for us to point out

6
Manuel Dy, Philosophy of Man: Selected Readings, (Makati: GOODWILL TRADING CO., INC., 2001), 59.
that when speaking of time, language specifically has tenses to signify temporal positions.

Language should therefore be our medium of analysis if we wish to critique McTaggart’s unreality

of time.

There are things, however, which Language will always fail to convey. The human person

does not only perceive the external world. He is himself a world also. The human person is a

microcosm (micro = small, cosmos = the world). In himself, the human person experiences

changing internal psychic states (e.g. emotions, passions, etc.). The human person will wish to

express these internal working of himself by means of terms and words, in short, through language.

Language however “is not meant to convey all the delicate shades of inner states.”7 While it might

be possible to express at some degree that we are angry or we are sad, language cannot completely

express that sadness. “…each of us has his own way of loving and hating; and this love or hatred

will express the person. Language, however, denotes these states by the same words in every case:

so that it has been able to fix only the objective and impersonal aspect of love, hate, and the

thousand emotions which stir the soul.”8 There may be some aspects in time that language cannot

express unless we acknowledge first the reality of human subjectivity. Let us not rely therefore

on language and grammar in our endeavor to critique McTaggart’s thesis.

Again let us clarify. When I say that language is unreliable, I do not mean that we no longer

use language in our inquiry for how must we express our findings? In the investigation of time,

language is usually used as a medium to express objective, person-external realities. This use of

language is what I find unreliable. However, an objection arises. If we do not consider the

7
Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Conciousness, (New York: Dover
Publications Inc. 2001), 160
8
Ibid., 164
objective, how are we supposed to know the universality of our conclusions? Let me answer the

objection. Allow me first to express that what we ought to rely on in this critique is the immediate

data of our internal experience and consciousness. These data are the ones language should

express. “But these are subjective,” the objection says. No. In so far as each and every person

experiences consciousness and intuits time in that consciousness, our experience of time will be

universal in that sense. However, in so far as each and every person are concerned with different

concerns in time, the experience will be personal. The latter is obviously not for us. The data of

the former consideration of time is what we should rely on.

Man, Internal Time, and Duration

Let us turn then to the most immediate data to us as Man: the Data of our consciousness.

In our consciousness, time is intuited. Now time, by our experience, essentially involves change.

Change too, is therefore intuited. I say this in the spirit of Henri Bergson who believes that we

primarily know of change and succession through the idea of Duration.9

Duration is our awareness of “the succession of qualitative changes (internal to us), which

melt into and permeat one another; without precise outline, without any tendency to externalize

themselves in relation to one another, without affiliation with number.”10 Such internal change in

us is basically how we are conscious and aware of change even without our perception of physical

motion. This idea, however, can only be attained by the mind in a pure effort of abstraction.

9
Ibid., 101.
10
Ibid., 104.
 Abstraction reminds us of the Aristotelian idea of being. Anything will be considered in its

“being qua being” when its singularity, mobility, and quantifiability is abstracted from its

particular instance in reality. This is abstraction based on things in reality. And it is this abstraction

which first sets us on the way to Traditional Metaphysics: the Metaphysics of being qua being.

But the abstraction which will lead us to the idea of pure Duration is not the abstraction applied to

things in reality. It is applied to one’s own consciousness. However, at the tip of that abstraction

is the same idea: pure existence (of consciousness). Let us therefore not apply that act of the mind

which Aristotle describes. Let us return to Phenomenology and Husserl, and apply the Eiditic

Reduction, and reduce our experience of consciousness to its essence: that without which it is no

longer that thing i.e. that without which, consciousness is no longer consciousness. Thus, we arrive

at Pure Duration.

Human beings are self-aware beings. When we examine the very depths of that self-

awareness, we arrive at pure duration. Now, it is this self that sees the world in a significant way.

We should therefore see how this self sees the world as significant. At this point, it would be

helpful for us to use the distinctions made by John Searle in order to categorize some features of

the world. These are either observer independent or observer dependent.11 The former pertains to

things and properties in the world which exist “independently of our feelings and attitudes. They

include force, mass, gravity, photosynthesis, etc.”12 The latter pertains to things which are

“dependent on us because they are our creations. These include money, property, government,

hammer, cars, and tools generally.”13 Thus, an insignificant piece of wood and iron might be

11
John Searle, “The Phenomenological Illusion” (paper presented at the Wittgenstien Conference,
Kirchberg, 2004)
12
Ibid.,
13
Ibid.,
nothing at all but brute facts. But the self which desires to facilitate work sees in the wood and iron

the hammer. The iron and wood are therefore, so to speak, made into a hammer through the human

person for whom it is significant. It is therefore upon the consciousness of man that things are

made significant.

Let us return to our endeavor of examining how we make time significant and introduce

the idea of Pure Duration in the analysis. For Bergson, duration is pure quality. As such, it is

unquantifiable unless we project them as quantified units in an imagined space. With this, we are

putting determinations on things. A further effect of this quantification is number, Mathematics,

and measurement. Any calculation based on numbers would be a product of that projection earlier

mentioned. Now, such might be the case when we seemingly perceive time. Our inner psychic

states are pure quality. However, in order that we may be able to speak of it, we will have to project

them as having a kind representation. Now, if “in order to count states of consciousness, we have

represent them symbolically in space, is it not likely that this symbolical representation will alter

the normal conditions of inner perception?”14 If such is the case, then we would have to think of a

“homogenous medium in which our conscious states are ranged alongside one another as in space

so as to form a discrete multiplicity.”15 “Now, let us notice that when we speak of time, we

generally think of a homogeneous medium in which our conscious states are ranged alongside one

another as in space so as to form a discrete multiplicity.”16 But this idea reduces time to a mere

medium for “our conscious states [to] form a discrete series so as to admit of being counted.” 17 If

time is merely a homogeneous medium derived from space, would it not be easier to reduce time

14
Ibid., Bergson, 90.
15
Ibid. Bergson.
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid., 91.
to space? In fact, time is reducible to space if we follow the analysis. With this, we actually fall to

modern physics’ position on time: time and space form a single entity called space-time. This leads

us to the same path McTaggart has laid out: the B-Series.

This error arises because we have the tendency to project, represent, and communicate our

inner states. This is because we see an observer independent reality, which is our consciousness

and existence, as an observer dependent reality. I would daresay this tendency for representation

comes from our desire to project things and communicate them. Thus, in our perception of inner

time, in order to calculate change, we project a series of successive units in space. This gives us

the idea of succession and allows to calculate accordingly using the units we have projected. But

this is not time, at least not primarily.

Let us go back to pure duration, and to pure duration only. Let us remember that it is

because of our awareness of our internal psychic states that we are able to have a feeling of “time

passing”. This internal states change constantly in an unclear flux, each permeating one another,

“each one of which represents the whole, and cannot be distinguished or isolated from it except by

abstract thought.”18 Such awareness is unique only to the human being. Pure duration is therefore

experienced in the human life. Pure duration is lived.19It is therefore in living that we are able to

perceive time. To put it more philosophically, it is in existing as humans that humans perceive

time.

18
Ibid., 101.
19
Ibid., 100.
Dasein, Free Will, and Time

We have already learned from Heidegger that man i.e. the Dasein, has for itself possibilities

through which it is able to project itself as futural. Necessarily, therefore, time is not something

which determines but is instead something which allows for possibilities. The future is not fixed

but open ended. This must be our case as Free Will can only arise in this regard. This consciousness

of Free Will is our further evidence against the temporal determinism McTaggart’s thesis implies.

The human person, because he exist in such a way that his being is an issue for him, knows of his

own existence. He is conscious of himself and thus develops in him a personality. By personality,

I do not only mean the attitude and dispositions of a person. I mean here the expression of the

person of his whole self, of what he is. But by this very development, a person is able to choose

what he will become as a person. This free act is the expression of the whole soul, i.e. the self. 20

Bergson says, “And the outward manifestation of this inner state will be just what is called a free

act, since the self alone will have been the author of it, and since it will express the whole self.”21

This capacity for a certain degree of self-determination, as experienced in our soul and not as

determined by any temporality, is our evidence against the temporal determination McTaggart

implies in his unreality of time.

Let us now make the necessary distinctions. In the world, we perceive two kinds of change.

First is the most obvious to us: Physical change. The motion of the world outside us. This is the

change measured by clocks. This Physical change gives rise to the idea of Physical time. This

Physical time gives us the idea of a great degree of determination as the Physical world is made

up of so many determinations. Let us take for example the speed of light. Light travels at a uniform

20
Ibid., 167.
21
Ibid., 161.
speed. We know this determination of light, thus we are able to say that if this is the distance, light

will reach that place in this point in time. Calculation can only be possible with determined things.

This prediction is only possible because of light’s determination as regards its speed. We therefore

have in here a determined future (and of course a determined past). Clearly here, I do not reject

the reality of this external world. I am simply saying that there is still something which must be

put into consideration when we try to speak of time. The second kind is the one which we have

just discussed: Internal change. This is that change which we intuit in our internal psychic

experiences as described to us by Pure Duration. This internal change cannot be measured by any

device since this is pure quality. It must be lived out by the human person. This gives rise to our

idea of lived internal time. Now, I shall daresay that this internal time is superior to the Physical

time. Physical time happens. Motion happens. But, like any other thing in the world, it is

insignificant. It is made significant only by the consciousness that makes things significant, the

consciousness of the human person, the same consciousness from which Free Will arises, and the

same consciousness which expresses man’s unique existence, but which is rooted by that same

existence.
 Bibliography

Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Conciousness. New
York: Dover Publications Inc. 2001.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. New York: Harper & Row Publishers Inc., 1962.

McTaggart, John McTaggart Ellis. “The Unreality of Time,” Mind: A Quarterly Review of
Psychology and Philosophy 17 (1908): 456-473.

Searle, John. “The Phenomenological Illusion.” Paper presented at the Wittgenstein Conference,
Kirchberg, 2004.