Time and Rhythm is an attempt to summarize the whole tradition of thinking about time from antiquity to the present. First of all, the philosophical tradition, from Hesiod and Plato to Heidegger, Patočka and Lévinas, but also the scientific tradition. Indeed, those who once observed the sky and created calendars, and those who constructed clocks, have also contributed significantly to today's conception of time. It is through the development of mechanical clocks that the author shows the evolution of ideas of time in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. In a series of overview chapters, he then notes the various sciences and their relationship to time: geology, which discovered its depth, physics, which was able to mathematize it, biology, sociology, economics, psychology - and of course history. The final chapters are the author's original contribution to the philosophy of time, namely an account of the remarkable phenomenon of rhythm and its connection to human temporality. For rhythm is certainly corporeal - and yet out of it grows the most spiritual things known to man: music and poetry. We experience rhythm as internal - and yet it is something that connects and engages us. New revised edition.
Czech edition