Time and Metaphysics: Kant and McTaggart on the Reality of Time

What is it about?

I use Kant's theory of the transcendental ideality of time to answer McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time. McTaggart's argument is that the atemporal C-series (the logical atoms of all moments) must be regarded as the metaphysical foundation of the B-series, the non-dynamic world of objective temporal relations of events being earlier or later than others. That B-series (having a qualitative aspect that is not indifferent to the direction of time) is essentially an ossification of the A-series--the dynamic flow of qualitative relations of past, present, and future moments. But McTaggart argues that the A-series is contradictory--if the A-series were real, then each logical moment of time would have past, present, and future equally predicated of it. Because it doesn't exist, then neither does the B-series. All that is real is atemporal C-series. Kant rejects this argument by denying the metaphysical reality of absolute time (the C-series). He then argues that the B-series is dependent on the A-series and that the A-series is subject-relative. The first person perspective creates the simple moment--the now--which acts as a temporal metric to metaphysically ground all possible B-series relations. This is how time (as the objective relations between events in nature) is transcendentally ideal.

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Why is it important?

Besides the fact that there are few articles on Kant's theory of time on its own, this article develops more convincingly the structure of how Kant's metaphysical expositions (of both space and time) are meant to achieve metaphysical conclusions about the reality of space and time and not merely epistemic ones. The subject-relativity of time was primary in the 1770 Dissertation and has been overlooked by scholars who have focused on space. But Kant's argument is actually easier to see here than in the case of space. This because we can easily see how relations of earlier-than and later-than depend on the subjective flow of time (the existence of a now). It is harder to see how the object relations that make up the spatial order of the material world (the B-series of space) depends on the qualitative and subject-relative introduction of directional orientation (left-right-up-down-front-back). In order for that argument to hold, one has to believe that matter itself is not intrinsically individuated (not a substance).

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