Life is the Key to Now

Life is always designed. It is always a present form that changes in time. In general, we perceive these phenomena as living, to which we grant a relationship to space and time, even if not entirely transparent, but always ordered.


Photo: Ariane Totzke

And such a relationship is always present in living beings. Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) once said: «Life means as much as the present.» There is no life that is not a permanently active present. In the inanimate world, there is only elapsed and upcoming time. These time properties merge in the inorganic with infinitely small distance, that is, through nothingness. But because we live and perceive living things, we know the present and – this is not only meant psychologically – we permanently experience the present.


From Wolfgang Schad, «Säugetiere und Mensch», [«Humans and Mammals»]. Stuttgart 2012, Volume 1, p. 11.

Translation Monika Werner

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