Introduction

This introductory chapter gives an overview of the key concepts discussed in subsequent chapters of this book. As is familiar from the Book of Genesis, Eve picked the fruit of knowledge from the Garden of Eden, but nothing escaped God's omnipotent gaze. It is interesting to reflect on an alternate version of the story. This often seems to describe the world we live in, a world of promised pleasures and unrelenting trivialities. With globalization, the automation of work and all the complex technologies that have emerged, there has been a decline in a sense of community and in the general quality of discourse. Despite these worrying trends of our era, temporality and shame are what lie at the core of the human condition, although we may note them more frequently by their absence or distortions in everyday life. Every person and every culture has an implicit theory or theories of time, and this affects many perspectives, including truth and justice.