In the 1980s\, US economist Jeremy Rifkin claimed that\, \n&ldquo\;a battle is brewing over the politics of time.&rdquo\; He felt that the \npivotal issue of the twenty-first century would be the question of time \nand who controlled it. In this conference\, we open up the possibility \nthat a battle over the politics (and philosophy) of time is also what is\n at stake in the differences between various major currents of \ncontemporary European philosophy.
\nThis is arguably so despite there being a metaphilosophical agreement\n amongst the vast majority of continental philosophers\, which is that \nstarting with the supposition of the ultimate truth of objective time is\n the wrong way to go\, since the time of our lives will not be able to be\n adequately reconstructed\, as David Hoy suggests.
\nIndeed\, the endorsement (and rejection) of various different \nphilosophical methods is partly bound up with their success (and \nfailure) in illuminating the relationship between time and the \nsocio-political. Consider the following methods: dialectics\, \ntranscendental reasoning post-Kant\, genealogy\, hermeneutical and \npsychoanalytic techniques\, Heidegger&rsquo\;s destructive retrieve\, Derridean \ndeconstruction\, the Frankfurt School style critique of modernity\, as \nwell as the general wariness of aligning philosophical method with \neither common sense or a deferential relationship to the findings of the\n sciences. From Husserl&rsquo\;s genetic phenomenology\, to Bergson&rsquo\;s duré\;e and \nthe use of intuition as a method which is claimed to put us inside \nrather than outside time\, to Heidegger&rsquo\;s Being and Time\, time and method\n have been central to continental philosophy at least since the \nnineteenth century. Taken together\, these methods also ensure that \nsustained textual engagement\, and a concern with culture and history\, \nundergird large parts of contemporary continental philosophy.
\nWhen it comes to thematising the ethico-political and normativity \nmore generally\, continental philosophers also invariably invoke time\, \nand this often depends on forms of transcendental philosophy and \ntemporal orders of priority. This is partly due to the vast influence of\n Heidegger. While Heidegger&rsquo\;s work is subsequently contested by Levinas\,\n Derrida\, and Deleuze (as well as others)\, it is typically contested on \ntemporal grounds. Other continental philosophers associated time and \nnormativity in the nineteenth century. While Hegel is an obvious case\, \narguing that the task of philosophy ought to be to grasp one&rsquo\;s own time \nin thought\, we might also think of Nietzsche&rsquo\;s revaluation of values in \nwhich time is central. Nietzsche argues\, for example\, that all \nressentiment is resentment of the present (the &ldquo\;now&rdquo\;) and claimed in \nEcce Homo that the notion of the eternal return of the same was his \ngreatest idea\, along with the associated idea of amor fati: become what \none is. We might also consider Marx\, whose rich and varied analyses of \nthe relation between certain modes of production and time (e.g. \ntime-as-measure) remains influential. Kierkegaard&rsquo\;s work is primarily \nconcerned with the manner in which the genuinely religious life involves\n a contradiction between temporal existence and eternity\, as well as the\n manner in which the choice\, or leap of faith\, occurs at an instant in \nwhich time (lived time) and eternity are envisaged to intersect.
\nDrawing on these traditions\, David Wood suggests that violence (both \nof a conceptual and more empirical nature) is best understood as \nfundamentally a disease of time\, as a &ldquo\;chronopathology.&rdquo\; \nEthico-political problems are in store for us when the living-present is\n understood as self-contained\, when we are nostalgic for the past (or \nseek to return to some origin)\, and when the future is understood as \nentirely circumscribed and delimited by the expectations of the present.\n Current institutions are worth of critique to the extent that any of \nthese chronopathologies are dominant\, and thus exclude other times.
\nIn that respect\, of course\, the irony of the title of the conference &ndash\;\n the time(s) of our lives &ndash\; is also deliberate. With global warming\, the\n financial crisis\, etc.\, it would be hard to say these are\, in fact\, the\n times of our lives in a positive sense\, representing any kind of \napotheosis of modernity. We hence hope to invoke reflections on these \ntimes\, open to a variety of disciplines\, including politics\, social \ntheory\, and literature amongst others\, all of which in their different \nways remain critical of the present\, tracing alternative temporal \ntrajectories that fracture or wound &ndash\; what Elizabeth Grosz calls the \nnick of time &ndash\; any sense of our times as stable\, progressive\, and \nimproving.
\nThis critical dimension remains vital to European philosophy today\, \nbut within which some important temporal tensions remain. Are there \nbiases enshrined\, for example\, in the phenomenological preoccupation \nwith the living-present\, or the post-structuralist valorisation of the \nfuture? Must the philosopher always be utopian in some sense?
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