Temporality—Endogenous and Subjective

This chapter is grounded in the ontology of temporality. The focus of the chapter is endogenous temporality and subjective temporality as the lived experience of time. I start with a discussion of the lived experience of time, the ongoing nature of temporality, and possible struggles in restoring and maintaining coherent connections to the past and present in the face of unexpected disruptions in the sensed flow of time. While highlighting the importance of the subjective temporality of our lived experience, I aim to avoid being restricted by the ideas of temporal idealism. Therefore, the chapter includes a brief section on temporal idealism before introducing endogenous temporality as a broader concept applicable beside humans to the world, things, events, and relations. I discuss the agency of time and its connection to becoming. Concerning becoming, a distinction is drawn between the realization of possibilities and the actualization of potentialities. The realization of possibilities is viewed as maintaining our trajectory of movement or form of being, while the actualization potentialities indicate a qualitative transformation. Both temporality and becoming require a closer look at the present, and pasts and futures, including the notion of the immanence of time. The chapter ends with the temporal structure of agency.