Duration in Metaphysical Thoughts

The Essence of Duration

In the appendix to Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy, the distinction between duration and eternity is organised around the division ‘of being into being whose essence involves existence and being whose essence involves only possible existence’. Possible, here, is not to be taken as contrary to necessary, for strictly speaking, everything is subject to the necessity of divine law. Spinoza takes great care to specify that ‘possible and contingent signify only a defect in our knowledge about a thing's existence’. ‘A thing is called possible, then, when we understand its efficient cause but do not know whether the cause is determined.’ In this respect, it is hardly surprising that the origin of duration seems obscure, since it is linked to the problematic concept of possible existence. Consequently, an elucidation of its nature presupposes an analysis of the reasons for our ignorance, reasons that explain why we perceive as merely possible what is really necessary. Possibility and contingency are not affections of things, but testify to a weakness of our intellect, for if we perceive the existence of an efficient cause and thereby acquire the conviction that the thing is not impossible, we cannot therefore conclude with certainty that it will inevitably be produced, since we do not know if this cause is determined. If everything is necessary, how is it that we are kept in such a state of ignorance, seeing the indeterminate instead of the determinate? Logically, if we know the efficient cause, namely God, without which nothing could be conceived, we must infer that the effect follows from it. Why don't we manage to deduce the necessity of a thing's existence when its efficient cause is given? And why do we limit ourselves to envisaging the existence of the thing as merely possible? This weakness of our power of knowing stems from the fact that the existence of a created thing does not depend on its essence and is not contained in it. In itself, the essence has no necessity, for it is also created by God and ‘depends on the eternal laws of nature’. The thing's existence is subordinated to God and more specifically to ‘the series and order of causes’.