FOOTNOTES2PLATO

"THE SAFEST GENERAL CHARACTERIZATION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION IS

THAT IT CONSISTS OF A SERIES OF FOOTNOTES TO PLATO." —ALFRED NORTH
WHITEHEAD

ON MAY 15, 2015FEBRUARY 26, 2017

Minding Time: Chronos, Kairos, and Aion in an

Archetypal Cosmos
Notes for a brief talk I gave today at CIIS.

[Update (July 15, 2016): This talk was expanded into an article published in Archai: The Journal of
Archetypal Cosmology (http://www.archai.org/article-posts/archai-issue-5-saturn-and-the-
theoretical-foundations-of-an-emerging-discipline/)]

………………………………………………………………………………..

“…what is time? Who can give that a brief or easy answer? Who can even form a conception of it
to be put into words? Yet what do we mention more often or familiarly in our conversation than
time? We must therefore know what we are talking about when we refer to it, or when we hear
someone else doing so. But what, exactly, is that? I know what it is if no one asks; but if anyone
does, then I cannot explain it.”

-Saint Augustine, Confessions (book 11, chapter 3) (~400CE)

One thing is for sure, whatever the ego thinks time is—whatever spell it tries to cast with its
alphabetic magic to capture it—it will almost certainly miss the mark. Whatever time is, we should
admit we are mostly unconscious of it. In fact, it seems to me that there is an intimate connection,
perhaps even an identity, between time and the Jungian notion of the unconscious, a connection that
archetypal cosmology (http://cosmosandpsyche.com/) obviously substantiates. Despite time’s
unconscious depths and ineffability, I am after all a philosopher, and we love nothing more than to
try to “eff” the ineffable.
In the 15 brief minutes I have with you, I want to introduce, with help from the Ancient Greek
language, 3 different modalities of temporality, or rather, I want to introduce you to 3 Gods, each
with a powerful hand in shaping our experience of time: Chronos, Kairos, and Aion. In concrete
experience, each mode appears to me at least to be co-present and interwoven; I only separate them
abstractly to help us get a better sense for the anatomy of time. Of course, we should remember all
the while that “we murder to dissect” (Wordsworth).

I therefore humbly ask for the blessing of the Gods of time as I embark on this short journey into their
meanings. May you grant us entry into your mysteries.

A Brief History of (the Idea of) Time:

1. Plato suggests in the Timaeus that time is brought forth by the rhythmic dancing of the Sun, Moon,
and five other planets then known upon the stage of 12 constellations. Through the cooperative and
friendly circling of these archetypal beings, eternity is permitted entry into time. Time, in other
words, is said to emerge from the harmonious or regular motion of the heavens—motion regulated
by mathematical harmonies. Plato’s ancient vision of a perfect cosmic order had it that the motion of
the 7 known planetary spheres was in mathematical harmony with the 8th supraplanetary sphere of
fixed constellations, that the ratios of their orbits added up to one complete whole, finding their unity
in what has been called the Platonic or Great Year (known to us today as the 26,000 year precession of
the equinoxes). This highest of the heavenly spheres was the God known to the ancients as Aion.

2. Aristotle critiqued Plato’s idea of time as produced by motion. Aristotle argued that time couldn’t
possibly be produced by motion, because motion itself is something we measure using time. Motion
can be fast or slow, he argued, but time always flows at the same rate. Time is simply a way of
measuring change. Aristotle’s conception of time, then, is chronic, rather than aionic. His was the
beginning of the scientific view of time as a merely conventional measurement, rather than a cosmic
motion, as with Plato.

3. Galileo’s view of the universe was, on the face of it, a complete rejection of Aristotle’s physics.
Remember that Aristotle still held a teleological view of chronological time: an apple falls to the
ground, for Aristotle, because it desires to do so, because earth is its natural home; for Galileo,
nothing in the apple compels it to fall, it is simply a blind happening working according to
mechanical laws. Galileo, like Newton and Descartes, rejected the idea of purposeful, meaningful
time. Time became for them merely a function in a differential equation. In a sense, then, though the
early scientists rejected Aristotle’s view of teleological time, they only further formalized Aristotle’s
view of time as a measure of motion. Time became t, a variable quantity used to calculate the precise
velocity of material bodies through space.

4. Einstein’s theory of relativity revealed how time and space are intimately related, since, strange as
it may seem, as speed increases, time slows. But still, time is understood not on its own terms, but is
reduced to a linear, easily measurable and quantifiable function. The reduction of time to Chronos
may have begun with Aristotle, but was carried to new extremes by modern materialistic science.

5. Today we know things are quite a bit more chaotic than earlier thinkers, including Plato, let on: we
live in a chaosmos, not a perfect cosmos; an open spiral not a closed circle. The orbital periods of the
planets shift ever so slightly as the years pass, and the “fixed” stars are actually not fixed at all. Our
universe is very strange, and measuring time is no easy matter. Even merely chronological time is
extremely counter-intuitive: A day on Venus, for instance, is longer than a Venusian year.

Everything is spinning around everything else. Time is then not a moving image of eternal perfection;
rather, time is what happens when divinity loses its balance and gets dizzy. But don’t worry, there is
nowhere to fall over in the infinite expanses of space.

Time comes in three modalities:

(https://matthewsegall.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/minding-time-chronos-kairos-aion.png)
1. Chronos (chronic time/Saturn): quantitative, homogeneous, secular time. The modern age has
entirely succumbed to the rule of chronic time. Chronic time is empty, passing meaninglessly and
without narrative arc. Chronic time is mere conventional measurement, a means of counting time so
as to be able to use it as we see fit for our private economic or public political ends, as something to
be “spent” (time is money) or “wasted” (time is a resource). Chronic time is laid out on a grid upon
which unremarkable change can be plotted; it is time as materialistic physical science knows it, where
the past is imagined to be no different ontologically from the present or the future (that is, there is no
creativity, no teleology). Chronic time is utterly indifferent to what happens, a passive background
rather than an active and interested participant. With Chronos, the temporal situation is indifferent to
the subject. Chronic time is ruled by death anxiety: Chronos is the time of the ego.

2. Kairos (kaironic time/Uranus)- qualitative, heterogeneous, seasonal, archetypally informed time.

Kaironic time is full of potential, such that it beckons us to participate in special moments more
pregnant than others. Kairos reveals to us that there are certain times when the order of things, the
cosmos, the would-soul, is attempting to persuade we human souls to participate in the unfolding of
events in a particular way, times when a certain mood descends as though from heaven to
characterize earthly events. Kairos allows for a “subject-situation correlation.” Kaironic time
introduces novelty into the banality of linear, chronic time. It is time as “creative advance,” to use
A.N. Whitehead’s phrase. It is timeliness. We might even refer to the planetary archetypes as kairoi, as
principles of timeliness, rulers of the different ways eternity puts on the dress of time. When we ask,
“what time is it?”, we receive an answer in chronic terms; when we ask “what kind of time is it?”, we
receive an answer in kaironic terms. If Chronos is the time of the ego, Kairos is the time of the Soul.

3. Aion (aionic time/Neptune)- unbounded, sacred or eternal time. Aion is time as a moving image
of eternity, as an eternal circle that, when we contemplate it, grants us eternal life. Aion is time as
experienced by the archetypes themselves (rather than, as with Kaironic time, when the archetypes
spill out of eternity to participate in our more mundane experience). Aionic time is a sphere whose
center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere. Aionic time is our immeasurable
movement of experiential intensification toward our unique but no less cosmic destiny. If Chronos is
the time of the ego, and Kairos is the time of the Soul, Aion is the time of the Self.

Minding time means learning to participate again, to collaborate with the stars in the making of
meaningful time. Without the promethean aid of astrology, the texture of time would remain
invisible to our mind’s eye, its music inaudible to our heart’s ear. Astrology makes time sensible,
meaningful, and moral. The archetypal astrological perspective teaches that each of us expresses our
own time signature; transits make us aware of how our own psychic rhythms attune to planetary
rhythms. Each of our beating hearts is a microcosmic Sun, which is to say that we are each at the
center of our own mini-universe. Time doesn’t just happen to us, we help generate its meaningful
passage. Only chronic time seems to happen to us, while kaironic time requires our participation.
Aionic time dissolves any difference between what happens to us and what we make happen.

One practical way forward for our civilization would be to consider the difference between
Conventional and Cosmological calendars: Ancient peoples tended to have calendrical systems
based upon natural or cosmic rhythms (the Egyptians started their year with the periodic flooding of
the Nile, for example). Modern people have introduced calendrical systems that are more
mathematically regular, but bear little if any relationship to the cosmos itself (the Roman Empire
introduced the Gregorian calendar, whose year begins arbitrarily on Jan 1, a date which doesn’t’
correspond to any significant cosmological or ecological event, for example). Today the modern
world measures time in merely conventional terms, reducing it to a cultural construct. If we are to re-
invent ourselves and bring forth a more ecological civilization, turning again to the cosmos for our
sense of timing will be one of the most crucial steps.

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10 Comments

1. ggoldbergmd says:
MAY 16, 2015 AT 12:08 AM
This is a deeply insightful and extremely helpful post and compressed TED-type talk, Matthew.
Thank you. I have a couple of thoughts to consider. The first is the implications for the concept of
time in the cosmology of Charles Sanders Peirce. Specifically, the idea that deeply embedded in
the structure of the cosmos is the tendency to ‘form habits’, which relates to the concept he called
‘synechism’, the Continuity Principle through which regularity is progressively imposed on chaos
(the understanding of which he called ‘tychism’) in the process of ‘growth’. Lee Smolin has
incorporated this idea at the quantum level into what he has called the “Principle of Precedence”.
The basic idea is that once an event has occurred in a particular moment, the probability of its
recurrence in the future beyond that moment increases. Which, I think, is huge and which, it
would seem, has some deep implications for the structure of time. The second thought is the link
between time and relation. And the concept in the work of Levinas of “eschatological time”.
Levinas addresses this in his book “TIme and the Other” and this was a major thread in his work.
Basically, that time is intimately linked to relation. Given the manner in which Peirce showed that
relation could be understood in the context of the “action of signs”, it would be fascinating to
consider this ‘Semiotic Time’ or ‘Relational Time’. That is, the manner in which subjective time is
influenced by or perhaps intrinsically linked to, in particular, the relation to the Other. And thus
to affect and, particularly, desire. And Eros and fecundity. And how all of this relates to
metaphysics in a human context. A penny for your thoughts on all of this…

REPLY
2. ggoldbergmd says:
MAY 16, 2015 AT 12:23 AM
Or one might call this concept of ‘relational time’, ‘intersubjective time’. Time as a factor in the
intersubjective context.

REPLY
3. ggoldbergmd says:
MAY 16, 2015 AT 1:16 AM
 For more discussion of this aspect of time, I would recommend a book called “The
Intersubjectivity of Time. Levinas and Infinite Responsibility.” by Yael Lin published by
Duquesne University Press.

REPLY
4. apprenti says:
MAY 16, 2015 AT 2:25 AM
Referring to our 3 mind systems : Chronos implies Emotion (leminiscate) ~ Kairos implies
Intuition (pulse) ~ Aioon implies Cognition (period) : http://youtu.be/FrhbG77wvow / Chronos
:: Passenger / Kairos :: Car / Aioon :: Driver

REPLY
5. waterdrop reflections says:
MAY 17, 2015 AT 11:30 AM
Thank you…very interesting!!

REPLY
6. Muttering Retreat says:
FEBRUARY 5, 2016 AT 10:36 AM
Really interesting article. I studied classical civilizations in my undergrad and am currently
researching different kinds of time for a postgrad thesis. Could you tell me where you find the
symbols in the image “minding time” for chronos, kairos, and aion? I’ve heard the terms before
but didn’t know there were symbols for them. Thanks!

REPLY
1. nonspecifiq says:
MAY 27, 2016 AT 6:35 PM
I don’t know if the author knows something about it that I do not, but I assumed the relations
he forms with the concepts/words/deities and symbols are his own except for the obvious
Chronos-Saturn. He’s actually written it down. The symbols are; Chronos –> Saturn, Kairos –>
Uranus, Aion –>Neptune. So they’re not symbols for Chronos, Kairos and Aion per se, they’re
the astronomical (and of course astrological) symbols of these planets.

REPLY
7. Apprenti (@apprenti2410) says:
MAY 28, 2016 AT 2:25 AM
Most is based on Ancient Greek Mythology; Read the next article of Hermes’ :
https://goo.gl/emPfWL

REPLY
8. Pingback: From Power Sets to N-Tuples | The Perennialist
9. Jim Racobs says:
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 AT 11:27 AM
Thanks for your analysis. It brought to mind Wlm Blake – Eternity is in love with the productions
of time.

REPLY