The vulgar sequential conception of time erases all possibility of a genuinely surprising future

Evidence

Why has this interpretation of time become generally accepted, dominant, hegemonic, self-evident, and even legitimate, accredited as such and at face value? And most of all, why has it come to deny and even erase or forbid all thought of a future? Well because, by passing through its passage, the ‘course’ of time would only follow the series of present moments, the very essence of the present, all of the nows here present (the actual present, but also, the past present and the future present), and this along the same line of succession. This sequential representation, and often linear depiction, would render it impossible for anything to take place or arrive, anything which has not yet been in advance reduced or which would not yet be reducible to what Husserl, the last inheritor of this tradition, would have called the originary form (Urform) of temporalization, the ‘living present’. This present would give its basic form to all that could be ‘seen coming’ or to all that might be ‘bound to come’. It is the anticipatory act of ‘seeing what is coming’, the very dampening act of the absolute surprise inherent to the future. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 77

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the vulgar Zeitverständnisse as reduction of time to present nows, which is the conceptual foil for the plasticity of time the book develops.
• XREF: This is the Hegel-via-Heidegger inheritance of Husserl’s ‘living present’; connects to the reader’s work on plasticity as temporal self-negation. — connects to: Treating time as a series of nows annihilates past, present, and future alike — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 408; A distant future that is not awaited ossifies into a thing-like given possibility. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 493; Postmodern fragmentation prevents picturing a radically different future at all — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 364 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Thinking the future beyond ‘what is to come’ dissolves time as ordered moments #expands (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 210
• Positing the future as plasticity displaces the future’s definition as a moment of time #expands (0.80)
• The future’s anticipatory structure holds teleological necessity and surprise together #complicates (0.78) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 250
• Strictly conceived, reality is not temporal at all #expands (0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 802