Aenesidemus’ Time as Air

To contrast such a rigid take on reality and time, this chapter explores Aenesidemus’ unusual Pyrrhonian idea that time is air. Against Aristotle’s partitioning of reality and time, Aenesidemus suggests that time is aerial, that is, it is, like reality itself, radically undifferentiated, unstable, and undecidable. Time rushes by at great speed or painfully drags on to no end. Like gushes of wind, time takes us by surprise and takes us all away at death and this, irrespective of how we experienced it in life. This does not reduce time to either one of the four prime elements or to a series of human experiential events. When no logical and ontological differentials are imposed and when no non-contradictory partitioning is foisted upon it, time simply reveals itself in all its aerial splendour as what cannot be mastered and must therefore be “apprehended” differently. Aenesidemus’ unusual and long-forgotten comparison radically challenges both scientific and human-centred experiences of time in rather unexpected ways.