The Temporal Asymmetry of the Present: V. What the Present Makes Possible

To say that the present makes something possible is not yet to say that it will happen.

A bridge makes crossing possible. It does not make crossing inevitable.

This distinction becomes clearer when we consider the relation between possibility and potential.

A situation may leave something open without every participant being capable of taking it up. The open door makes passage possible; whether someone can pass through depends partly upon their own capacities, inclinations and circumstances.

Possibility belongs to the field.

Potential belongs to the participant within that field.

The present therefore does not simply contain possibilities. It contains possibilities for particular participants.

This matters because the present has inherited not only objects and structures from the past, but capacities for action that have themselves developed historically.

A tool can make a new action possible. Learning can make a new use of the tool possible for someone. A new concept can make a distinction available to thought. A changed social practice can make forms of participation possible that were previously unavailable.

In each case, the present has become capable of something because relations have changed.

But possibility and potential still should not be confused.

The existence of a road does not mean that everyone can travel it. The availability of a language does not mean that every speaker can use every resource equally well. A scientific technique may exist without every researcher being ready to employ it.

The future therefore emerges from an interaction between what the present leaves open and what its participants can take up.

This gives actualisation a more precise place in our temporal picture.

A possibility is actualised when a participant takes up what the present makes possible. That actualisation may then transform the relations constituting the present, creating or removing possibilities for what follows.

The sequence is therefore not:

past → present → predetermined future.

It is:

past actualisation → transformed present → possibility and potential → actualisation → further transformation.

The present is consequently more than an inheritance from the past and more than an opening toward the future.

It is a field of possible participation, shaped by what has already happened but capable of being transformed by what participants do within it.

And this gives us a deeper sense of temporal asymmetry.

The past has become part of what the present is capable of.

The future depends upon what the present takes up.

Between the two lies neither a blank interval nor a predetermined script, but a field of possibilities in which becoming can occur.

The question now is whether that openness can itself be transformed by what comes next.

Can the future change what the present has inherited from the past?