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Single Idea 24300

[catalogued under 27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 3. Parts of Time / b. Instants]

Full Idea

The instant signifies something such that changing occurs from it to each of two states. …This queer creature the instant lurks between motion and rest - being in no time at all - and to it and from it the moving thing changes to resting, and vice versa.

Gist of Idea

The instant has no time, but change moves to rest in an instant

Source

Plato (Parmenides [c.366 BCE], 156d)

A Reaction

An instant of time, and the now, strike me as the weirdest and most incomprehensible features in all of reality. I have nothing more to say on the subject. How could the place where past meets future have a duration of its own?

Book Reference

Plato: 'Parmenides', ed/tr. Gill,M.L./Ryan,P. [Hackett 1996], p.163