Avere tempo. Saggio di cronosofia

To be is to have time. Yet we constantly feel that we have no time. So what, then, is this commodity we complain about not having? Perhaps it is quality time. How can we find it? According to Pascal Chabot, the peculiarity of our civilisation is to live simultaneously under four colliding temporal regimes: Destiny (a biological imperative of life until death), Progress (a future imperative), Hypertime (tyranny of the present and technocapitalism: time is everywhere and yet nowhere), and Time Limit (countdown to an ecological catastrophe). Before now, no one had ever experienced the clash of so many different concepts of time, which are incompatible with one another; most times they work against us, but we must find a balance so that we can cope with everyday life. This is because our attitude towards time deeply affects our lives: we chart a course between nostalgia for the past, reliance on the present and hope for a bright future. So which temporality should we favour? As the author writes, the challenge is to develop wisdom about time that is in line with the current challenges we face: a chronosophy.