"Scattered In Times": An Augustinian Meditation on Temporal Fragmentation, Imagination, and Climate Change. Issue 1 (17th February 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Stewart‐Kroeker, Sarah
• Is Part Of: Journal of religious ethics. Volume 48:Issue 1(2020)
• Page Start: 45
• Page End: 73
• Publication Date: 2020-02-17
• Subjects: Augustine -- time -- imagination -- moral psychology -- climate change -- environmental ethics; Ethics -- Periodicals; Religious ethics -- Periodicals; Morale religieuse; Religion; Théologie; 205
• DOI: 10.1111/jore.12303
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0384-9694

Abstract

Abstract: Climate change is a temporally fragmented phenomenon: the causes and effects at work are dispersed over a remarkably long time period. Climate change exceeds human ability to forecast and quantify its effects in time. This creates serious epistemic, moral, and psychological difficulties and poses challenges to generating adequate ethical responses. Augustine's understanding of time as a measure of imagination emphasizes the way in which human beings actively shape their sense of time. He sees "looking forward" in time as a matter of spiritual vocation that collects the self out of dispersion and connects to a transgenerational collective. A notable example of how this "looking forward" may be practiced is singing the Psalms. The Augustinian "temporal imagination" links the imaginative, affective, moral, and vocational dimensions of measuring time. This offers some preliminary avenues for reimagining a sense of time responsive to climate change's temporal fragmentation.