Time, eternity, truth, and death: history as allegory

Abstract

The act of remembrance through history, the desire to impose 'form on formless time', lies deep in our culture? Not in all cultures, as Levi Strauss remarked: historical thinking is not necessary thinking, is not essential to our humanity.' But in Western societies it is inescapable, we cannot think without or beyond distinctions between future, present, and past, and such thinking is deep in the classical and Judeo-Christian heritage.