Introduction

This chapter presents the argument that Pyrrho and Aenesidemus are two early Greek authors whose fragments should be re-examined anew if one is to consider the topic of time today. Against the view that time is either an abstract parameter obeying the mathematical scansions of the clock or an inner-temporal phenomenon for which a subject temporalises themself through remembrance, experience, or anticipation, Pyrrho and Aenesidemus’ thoughts suggest an alternative so at odds with these perspectives that it was lost to history as a mere proto-scientific and illogical set of statements not worthy of attention. And yet, this introductory chapter argues that these statements were not altogether unimportant. In them, there is a unique view: Against time as measure or as inner-temporal phenomenon comes time as total instability. How can one make sense of this? This introduction also includes the path undertaken to defend their long-lost ideas and the way they still surprisingly defy a key contemporary thinker of time today, Quentin Meillassoux. The reading of these early Greek authors is also an attempt to challenge Meillassoux’s thought-provoking ideas about time and come up with a more embodied alternative.