History of the Present, History of the Instant

Abstract

The present article traces an absence of historical sense and its implications in modernity through the diagnosis proposed by Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and other philosophers. I start with Marx’s critique on the lack of historical sense of the bourgeois political economy and Nietzsche’s concept of “Egypticism” as the idiosyncrasy in philosophy of giving more value to permanence that to change. Then, I use the image of the clock to explore the relation between time and the loss of historical sense in modernity under the light of 20th-century thinkers. Afterwards, I propose a possible origin if the lack of historical sense in modernity through the paradoxical relation between being and time in Aristotle. Finally I offer another interpretation of time, from the perspective of the instant, in Dogen to show how this “history of the instant” can transform the “history of the present” we have traced throughout the paper. In my conclusions, I point out some philosophical and political alternatives of the history of the instant.