Defence of Eternity

Before refuting time, Hladík summons its adversaries. This first volume of his great philosophical work traverses twenty-five centuries of thinking about eternity, from Parmenides's seamless Being to Hinton's geometric past, by way of Aristotle, Boethius, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel and Einstein's relativity: a history of the ways men have tried to withdraw something from passing time. The man Borges made the hero of The Secret Miracle here unfolds the range of his reading without ever parading it. French text established from the Hladík autograph (Národní archiv); the German original in appendix. The great work of philosophy of the Bibliotheca Hladikiana.