Treating humans as permanent substances dissolves real temporality into mere measure

Evidence

This problem has for a long time been disguised by a conception of the human being as an in-itself. It is the sinew of Kant’s refutation of Berkeley’s idealism and a favorite argument of Leibniz that change by itself implies permanence. Consequently if we suppose a certain non-temporal permanence which remains across time, temporality is reduced to being no more than the measure and order of change. Without change there is no temporality since time could not get any hold on the permanent and the identical. Moreover if as with Leibniz change itself is given as the logical explanation of a relation of conclusions to premises—that is, as the development of the attributes of a permanent subject—then there is no longer any real temporality. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 487

Categorization

• XREF: Chains Kant’s refutation of Berkeley and Leibniz’s permanence argument to the in-itself conception of the human; connects to the broader opposition between in-itself and for-itself running through the book. — connects to: Permanence presupposes time rather than helping constitute it; The permanence of change itself grants passing objects an illusion of duration — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 742; Treating time as a series of nows annihilates past, present, and future alike — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 408 (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The tight argument that permanence-assumptions reduce time to mere order-of-change, hence no real temporality, is a dense conceptual payoff worth sitting with.

Broader Connections

• Permanence presupposes time rather than helping constitute it #corroborates (0.85)
• Treating time as a series of nows annihilates past, present, and future alike #contradicts (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 408
• The permanence of change itself grants passing objects an illusion of duration #corroborates (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 742