ABSTRACT
For the early Greeks, the idea of a unified notion of time would be foreign; instead they assume different temporal structures belonging to different events. Not only do we not find a unified calendar throughout the ancient Greek world; more importantly, we also do not find a unified notion or idea of time before Plato. This chapter shows that such a unified framework is lacking in the very beginning of Western thinking and the effect this lack has on the quality of temporal experiences – it means that different temporal experiences are thus seen as experiences of genuinely different kinds. It distinguishes different aspects of temporal experience, such as duration, and the passage of time. There are different kinds of temporal notions capturing different kinds of temporal experiences that are in the beginning not connected with each other: there are notions of duration, notions indicating sequence, notions indicating measurable time, notions linking time with agency, and notions marked by tense.
