The Albumen A: Time

Abstract

Part III closes our book with an account of Stoic ethics. “Albumen A” considers the third and final incorporeal: time. First we contrast Stoic time with time in Plato in Aristotle, delving into the fine grain details among them. We find that the Stoics see time as a single double-sided incorporeal surface. Following Victor Goldschmidt’s terminology, we identify what Deleuze calls aion and chronos as the two sides of one surface. While some scholars are confused by what seems like two theories of time in Stoic writings, the Deleuze-Stoic encounter shows that aion and chronos are the sides of a single incorporeal: time. We distinguish chronos and aion through their different senses of the present – the chronological “now” and the aionic “instant” – before considering the twisted genealogies of chronos and aion, and then articulating how time also has that same strange double-sided structured: chronos is the extensive side of facing limited and determinate bodies, and aion is the extensive side facing away from organized bodies or toward disorganized matter.