in the course of the history of the universe as a whole, as well as in the course of the history of the earth and of life. Change also changes. The ways in which things are transformed into other things are themselves subject to transformation. This susceptibility to uneven and discontinuous change, including to the change of change, is what we call time. If time is not only real but also inclusive, nothing can be beyond its reach, not even the laws, symmetries, and supposed constants of nature. They, too, must have a history and be, in principle, mutable. Their mutability is consistent with the stability that they display in the cooled-down universe, with its well-differentiated and enduring structure.
The prevailing ideas in physics and cosmology take a different direction. They either equivocate about the reality of time or deny it altogether. In rejecting the idea of a fixed background of space and time against which the events of nature take place, they nevertheless reaffirm the notion of an immutable framework of laws, symmetries, or constants of nature.
If time is inclusively real, and everything is subject to its ravages, if it is the only reality that does not emerge, there can be no such unchanging framework. On the other hand, however, if there is such an unchanging framework, there then also exists a basis for a permanent differentiated structure in nature, or a typology of natural kinds, if not in the derivative and emergent phenomena studied by natural history, then in the more fundamental constituents of nature that are explored by physics.
The radical metaphysic of the overcoming of the world affirms the ephemeral character of all distinctions among types of being, at the same time that it denies the reality of time. Its similarity to the scientific view that I have described is therefore merely apparent. In this view all structure is mutable precisely because time is inclusively real. Moreover, the metaphysical conception informing this approach to existence must account for how and why we come to entertain the illusions that it dismisses. In so doing, it cannot appeal to our experience, which is thoroughly penetrated and shaped by those illusions.
By its reliance on this conception, the overcoming of the world arouses the contradiction that I earlier remarked between the theoretical and the practical antidotes to the threat of nihilism. Its theoretical answer to the fear that our lives and the world itself may be meaningless is to cast aside the beliefs, the attachments, and the engagements that prevent us from recognizing our participation in timeless and universal being. By casting them aside, however, it weakens the sole practical antidote to the threat of nihilism, which is life itself, with all its engagements and attachments. On the pretext of increasing our conscious participation in that being, it dissuades us from the complications that give an actual life its fullness. Such invulnerability as we attain risks being achieved through the demoralization and the thinning out of the only kind of experience that we can really undergo.
If time is real, the distinctions among things are historical and therefore transitory, but they are not illusory. They are real so long as they exist. We can understand them only as products of a history of transformation.
The importance of this difference between a view denying the ultimate reality of both distinction and time and a view affirming the inclusive reality of time while insisting on the historical character of transformation becomes clear when we consider its consequences for action in the world. A conception that insists on the illusory character of phenomenal distinction, of individual selfhood, and of time undermines the will from two directions. It does so, first, by attacking the seat of the will in the self. It does so, second, by discounting the reality of the habitual objects of the will. These objects assume the reality and significance of the distinctions and changes that the radical metaphysic of the overcoming of the world denies. If there are ultimately one being and one mind, there is nothing that this one being and one mind can will other than to be themselves.
The overcoming of the world thus becomes, as well, an overcoming of the will: the development of an attitude to the world that is, so far as possible, will-less. We might call this orientation to existence overcoming the will rather than overcoming the world. The dismissal of time, distinction, and individual selfhood and the supersession of the will are thus the two fixed and central points in this metaphysical conception. The campaign against the will in turn serves as a bridge connecting this metaphysical view to the ideals of serenity through invulnerability and of detached, universal benevolence that are characteristic of this approach to life.
By contrast, a view that recognizes the contingent and mutable character of all types of being and affirms the inclusive reality of time assures the will of both a basis and an object. Its basis is the real, individual self. Its object is a world of distinctions that are no less worthy of attention for being ephemeral. For such a view, history is not a shadowy backdrop to our engagement with timeless and unified being. It is the setting in which everything that we have reason to value is created or destroyed.
The metaphysical extremism of the view that denies the reality of time, difference, and individual selfhood has always had a practical as well as a cognitive foundation. Under the disguise of metaphysics, it has offered self-help. It has promised a route to happiness even more forcefully than it has offered a road to reality. This promise has taken both a minimalist and a maximalist form.
The minimalist form of self-help is the hope of becoming invulnerable, or less vulnerable, to the sufferings that result from our entanglement in the world. By no longer crediting the distinctions and changes of the world with reality, we also cease to give them value. We diminish their power over us. Our relation to a world the distinctions of which we endow with both reality and value is a relationship dominated by the will. The will at odds with a world that it cannot master is the source of all our suffering. To escape suffering we must overcome the will. The best way to overcome the will is to deny its object: the illusory world of change and distinction. In this minimalist mode, the promise of happiness is a promise of invulnerability, or of diminished vulnerability.
The maximalist form of self-help is the hope of establishing contact with the only true reality and source of value: hidden, unified, and timeless being. If there are one being and one mind, then our best hope of happiness lies in overturning the obstacles to our experience of absorption in that one being and one mind. On such a basis, we can experience our kinship with all other manifestations of the One, and express this kinship in an inclusive fellow feeling.
The metaphysical vision of the overcoming of the world has more often appeared in a qualified version than it has spoken in the language of the intransigent view that I have just discussed. The hallmark of this qualified version is the idea of a hierarchy of degrees of reality or of forms of being. In the West its earliest and most compelling expression was the middle and late philosophy of Plato: in particular, Plato’s doctrine of forms. It took another expression in the neo-Platonist view of the phenomenal world as the last stage in a series of emanations of the One.
Consider the qualified version of this metaphysic freed from the distinctive concerns and categories of Plato’s or Plotinus’s philosophy. The individual phenomena that we encounter are instances of types of being. These types are in turn formed on the model of invisible archetypes, which may be capable of representation only in the language of mathematics or of a metaphysic eschewing all reference to particulars. What is most present to our experience is less real than what is least present. Our unexamined sense of reality is a delirium brought on by our embodiment and by the consequent limitations of our perceptual apparatus.
Theory can, however, liberate us from the burdens of embodiment and present the world right side up. Once again, however, our practical reasons for adopting such a view will always seem more persuasive than our theoretical reasons. The correct understanding of the hierarchy of being and of reality should allow reason to rule over the action-oriented impulses and these, in turn, to prevail over the carnal appetites. It can equip us to curb our insatiability by overcoming the perspective of the will, entranced with the shadowy world of appearance. It offers to help us achieve serenity in the face of death, which, according to this line of reasoning, annihilates only the lesser reality of ephemeral individual selfhood. It holds open the promise of communion with what is most real and most valuable: the universal being and mind in which we share.
In both the radical and the qualified versions of the metaphysics of the overcoming of the world, the relation between the denial of time and the denial of distinction and individuality