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A Platonic Model of Time in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets

T.S. Eliot’s vision of time and eternity in the Four Quartets is distinctly Platonic, or rather Neoplatonic, although the sources which contributed to the formulation of Eliot’s vision are manifold, and the history of its generation complex. Eliot was influenced by Bergson, Augustine, Christian mysticism and theology, as well as by Dante, Chaucer, the metaphysical poets, whose works echo themes from the Platonic and Neoplatonist tradition. Evidence of Plotinus’ theory of time is unmistakable in the Four Quartets. Other elements, like the idea of the “eternal moment” which certainly impacted Schelling’s theory of time in the Weltalter, and his Munich and Berlin lectures, recall Franz von Baader’s speculative theology and philosophy. Plotinus’ treatment of Time is mainly known from Ennead III, 7, On Eternity and Time , as named by Porphyry, No. 45 in Porphyry’s chronological order. This was the second of two major discussions of time in ancient philosophers, the other being Aristotle’s (Physics IV. 10–14. 217b–224a) which Plotinus criticises in chs. 9 and 12–13. He also discusses Stoic and Epicurean views (in chs 7–10)The whole universe, in going forth from the one, is in a certain sense alienated from its source. For the soul, however this has a specific meaning Like in Plato, in Plotinus the world of sense only has meaning inasfar as it takes part in the intellectual forms. Nature lives only through the principle of Soul ; for the soul it would be indifferent, if everything bodily were destroyed (II 1, 4, 32) In Plotinus, time presupposes eternity, the diastasis of the three dimensions of time the homou panta of the absolute identity of being and thought which comprises the life of the intellect. Common themes which appear in Eliot and in Plotinus are the fragmentation of human time, and the circularity of the procession and return of time to eternity and to its source.

T.S. Eliot, Plato, Four Quartets, time, eternity, Plotinus, fragmentation, circularity

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