Man is unique insofar as he constitutes two events. The event of his biological organism – and, in this, he is like tortoise and hare – and the event of his consciousness. Thus in man two times coexist, corresponding with these two events. The time during which he is conceived, grows, matures, ages, dies. And the time of his consciousness.
The first time understands itself. Which is why animals have no philosophical problems. The second time has been understood in different ways in different periods. It is indeed the first task of any culture to propose an understanding of the time of consciousness, of the relations of past to future realized as such.
The explanation offered by contemporary European culture—which, during the last two centuries, has increasingly marginalized other explanations – is that which constructs a uniform, abstract, unilinear law of time applying to all events, and according to which all ‘times’ can be compared and regulated. This law maintains that the Great Plough and the famine belong to the same calculus, a calculus which is indifferent to both. It also maintains that human consciousness is an event, set in time, like any other. Thus, an explanation whose task is to ‘explain’ the time of consciousness, treats that consciousness as if it were as passive as a geological stratum. If modern man has often become a victim of his own positivism, the process starts here with the denial or abolition of the time created by the event of consciousness.
