ABSTRACT

In 1908 John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart (1866-1925) published an article containing an argument purporting to show the unreality of time.1 While this argument was later included in McTaggart’s major work,2 it stands alone in both its form and influence. McTaggart’s ontological position is a variant of Hegel’s. Yet his argument for the unreality of time does not draw on Hegelian concepts, particularly the notion of a sufficient description of substances, which dominates his other ontological concerns. The argument that time is unreal stands apart from McTaggart’s peculiar ontology, for it concerns features of time as it is experienced. The importance of the argument is that it raises questions about the coherence of temporal appearances. Consequently, debate about the argument has been inherited by empiricist philosophers, especially analytic philosophers, who tend to recast the debate in terms of questions concerning linguistic representations of time.