A Few Thoughts on the Concept of Time

This concept of time is treated by the German writer and philosopher named Ernst Junger. He was born in Heidelberg, on March 29th 1895, and died on February 27th 1998. So he lived all in all no less than 103 years. Given his reflections on temporality, it seems he truly applied what he says in his essay entitled "The Book of Sand Clocks".

The idea of this book is that we are simply surrounded by clocks and watches, measuring our passage through life. Yet we strongly reject the ticking of clocks. We hate sleeping with the ticking of clocks. We don’t want to be called, to be woken up. It’s in fact a call of freedom in the areas in which we haven’t yet been enslaved.

We could not conceive a life without clocks or watches. We’re used to hear them ticking, beating, we’re accustomed to having watches on us, to look at clocks and watches wherever we may go-from the small watches to the grandfather clocks and tower clocks. Where there are more clocks, time becomes shorter and more precious.

And yet, there have been ages in which people managed to live without any clocks or even any objects of measuring time. In those times, there was no measure of time, just an approximation of it. And how could man live without any time-measuring object? We can still find answers to this question if we look at tribes that live in forests, deserts and who don’t have any clocks. But even in our life there are time frames when we take vacation from all the stress of civilization and get closer to nature or to the savage spaces. At that point, we withdraw from the measured time.

The pleasant, funny activities make us forget about measuring time. We cannot play during a measured period of time, or relax. Children for instance lose any notion of time when they play outside. All they know is they have to come home when they are called by their parents.

At the same time, we don’t live by the watch when we go fishing, hunting, sowing or reaping crops. The hunter, the fisherman, the shepherd used to live outside measured time. Their time was bound to be concrete, because it depended on their activity. It was this very activity which determined the hour and the value of that particular time. An hour at school, a meeting or anything that has to do with our civilized life, can be postponed, or replaced by other activities. But the exact time when the game can be hunted or the fish can be found swimming in the water, that exact hour cannot be postponed or replaced, according to the human will and schedule. The same thing is also valid for certain holidays and rituals, which are in a concrete constraining state. There is a certain liberty about tribal rituals that really troubles us if we take part in them.

In those parts of the world where man relies completely on his animals or crops in order to survive, the atmospheric conditions have a great influence on programming certain activities. There are also certain circumstances related to finding prey or picking up fruit and vegetables.

What we call uncivilized people know far better than us how to look at the weather. This knowledge is related to their auxiliary means and is as useful to them as clocks are to us.

In the old times, when people would set up a meeting, the determining elements were the sun during the day and the stars during the night. The sunrise, the lunchtime, the sunset, were used as cardinal points for them.

There lives within us the silence, the peace of the forests, even when we rush in the fastest cars. We don’t live only in present; we live on a time-scale. The Europeans resemble their cities, where one can still find old lanes, castles and palaces. So they have a sort of advantage over the Americans, who are less lucky when it comes to such heritage.

So, those who seek tranquility sleep and contemplation should look for the deeper springs of time. The world of clocks and records is the one of people who are short of time.