Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life

by Clare Mac Cumhaill

Marcel considers a ‘cinematographic’ conception of time, whereby the past is thought of as a fixed series of discrete events (like the row of pictures that Elizabeth uses to illustrate the idea of the past as something there and unchanging).[50] This is the picture of time that operates in the I-It world, writes Marcel (borrowing Martin Buber’s way of speaking). But when it comes to living individuals, the I-Thou world, the cinematographic conception of time is inadequate. In the world of human beings, the past remains alive in the present and the future. ‘Past is all “open to be recreated” – my own & others’, Iris summarises.[51] The interweaving of past, present and future in the I-Thou world is seen most vividly in the case of promises: ‘Reln of lang. to past & future. Promises.’ [52] A promise is an act of faith, or ‘creative loyalty’;[53] ‘faith’ because although a promise orientates us, together, towards a shared future, neither of us can know what kind of people we will be when that future comes.[54]