The Temporal Asymmetry of the Present: IV. The Present That Opens

If the present is what has become, it is also what can become.

This is the other temporal direction of possibility.

We have seen that the present inherits a transformed field from the past. But that field does not contain a single predetermined continuation. It leaves some things open and closes others.

The bridge built yesterday makes crossing possible today. But it does not determine who will cross, when they will cross, or where they will go afterwards.

The present is therefore not simply the consequence of the past.

It is also an opening onto the future.

This is what we mean when we say that something is possible. We do not mean that it already exists somewhere in the future. We mean that the present is organised in such a way that a particular continuation can occur.

Possibility is therefore neither prediction nor potential actuality waiting to be released.

It is a relation between what is and what it can become.

A seed can become a tree, but only within conditions that make such development possible. A word can acquire a new meaning, but only within a language capable of sustaining the change. A road can lead somewhere new, but only because the present arrangement of the landscape permits the journey.

The future is consequently not simply waiting for the present to arrive at it.

It is being opened by the present.

But the opening is not unlimited. The possibilities of the future are shaped by the relations inherited from the past. What the present can become depends partly upon what it has become.

This is where the two temporal directions meet.

The past has transformed the present.

The transformed present opens possibilities for the future.

Yet the second relation cannot simply be reversed into the first. What has happened is actual; what might happen is possible.

The past remains as a condition of the present.

The future remains as an opening within it.

And so the present occupies an unusual temporal position. It is actual in one direction and potential in another.

It is the result of previous becoming, but not yet the result of what may follow.

Perhaps, then, the present is best understood neither as a boundary nor as a moment suspended between two absences.

It is a field in which what has become opens onto what can become.

The question now is:

What, exactly, does the present make possible?