Is time merely an incoherent illusion? One philosopher argued it cannot possibly exist.
In short: John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart, a prominent British idealist, famously claimed that time is unreal. By distinguishing between the A-series of past, present, and future and the B-series of fixed relations, he argued that our perception of temporal change is a logical contradiction, sparking a debate that persists over a century later.
Born in 1866, McTaggart was a central figure at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became known as a leading neo-Hegelian. While he shared Hegel's belief that a priori thought could grasp ultimate reality, McTaggart eventually forged a highly original system. His mature philosophy, detailed in the two-volume The Nature of Existence (1921–1927), posited a universe composed entirely of souls linked by love, rejecting the existence of God, matter, and time while embracing reincarnation and human immortality.
McTaggart’s most enduring legacy is his 1908 paper, 'The Unreality of Time'. He argued that for time to be real, events must form an A-series—a moving sequence from future to present to past. However, he contended that this series is self-contradictory because events must possess all three properties simultaneously. When one attempts to resolve this by claiming these states occur successively, a vicious infinite regress emerges: one requires a second A-series to explain the first, a third to explain the second, and so on, ad infinitum.
Though his argument faced intense scrutiny, it remains a cornerstone of modern philosophy. Historian Emily Thomas notes that 21st-century thinkers have cited the work over 1,600 times, reflecting its extraordinary longevity. McTaggart himself was a man of paradoxes: an atheist who defended the Church of England, a conservative who supported women's suffrage, and a member of the 'Mad Tea-Party of Trinity' alongside Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore. His work serves as a vital bridge, marking the final peak of classic British idealism before the rise of analytic philosophy.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: J. M. E. McTaggart
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