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Eternalism

Eternalism is a philosophical theory in the ontology of time positing that all points in time—past, present, and future—are equally real and exist simultaneously in a four-dimensional spacetime structure known as the block universe.^[1]^[2] Unlike presentism, which asserts that only the present moment has ontological reality, eternalism denies any privileged status to the "now," treating time as a static dimension akin to space.^[1]^[3] This view implies there is no objective passage or becoming of events; instead, all temporal locations coexist timelessly.^[4] Eternalism gained prominence through its compatibility with special relativity, particularly the relativity of simultaneity, which demonstrates that what counts as simultaneous—and thus "present"—depends on the observer's reference frame, undermining the idea of a universal now.^[2]^[3] Introduced conceptually by Hermann Minkowski in 1908 as a unified spacetime manifold, the block universe model supports eternalism by portraying reality as a fixed, unchanging whole where events are eternally located rather than fleeting.^[2]^[4] Philosophers such as Hilary Putnam and C.W. Rietdijk have argued that this relativity entails the co-reality of spacelike-separated events across time, challenging presentist intuitions about a flowing present.^[2] The theory raises significant implications for metaphysics, including the truth conditions of statements about the future, which eternalists hold can be tenselessly true based on their fixed positions in spacetime, and debates over free will in a determined block.^[1] It also intersects with perspectival realism, suggesting that our sense of the present arises from subjective frame-dependent perspectives rather than objective features of reality.^[3] While eternalism aligns well with modern physics, it contrasts with growing block theories that allow the future to be open and unreal, highlighting ongoing tensions between scientific and phenomenological accounts of time.^[1]^[4]

Overview

Definition

Eternalism is a metaphysical theory in the philosophy of time that asserts all moments—past, present, and future—are equally real and coexist within a unified four-dimensional spacetime structure.^[5]^[6] According to this view, every event, from the Big Bang to the distant future, possesses the same ontological status, without any temporal moment being more or less existent than another.^[5] Central to eternalism is the "block universe" conception, which portrays time as analogous to the three spatial dimensions, forming a static, unchanging block where all points in spacetime are fixed and equally actual.^[6] In this framework, there is no objective flow of time or a privileged "now" that divides reality into becoming and ceasing to be; instead, temporal relations are treated like spatial ones, with events located eternally in the block.^[5] Eternalism emphasizes that objects persist through time by having distinct temporal parts at different moments, all of which exist equally.^[6] For instance, the temporal part of a person at age 5 and at age 50 are both fully real components of their extended four-dimensional self, rather than stages in a process where only one is currently existent.^[5] As a tenseless theory of time, eternalism contrasts with tensed theories by denying that facts about time change as moments pass; propositions about events, such as "the Battle of Hastings occurred in 1066," have fixed truth values independent of the speaker's temporal perspective.^[6] This differs from presentism, which holds that only present objects and events exist, excluding the past and future from reality.^[7]

Comparison to Other Theories of Time

Eternalism stands in sharp contrast to presentism, the view that only present entities exist simpliciter, thereby denying any reality to past or future events.^[8] This presentist ontology creates challenges for truthmaking, as statements about the past—such as "Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon"—appear to require the existence of non-present entities to ground their truth, yet presentism forbids such entities.^[8] Eternalism avoids this by positing that past events, like Caesar's crossing, persist as fully real, just located at earlier times.^[8] Unlike the growing block theory, which affirms the reality of past and present events while deeming the future unreal or indeterminate, eternalism treats all temporal points as equally existent within a static structure.^[9] In the growing block theory, reality expands progressively as future moments become present, incorporating new events into the block while the yet-to-come remains non-existent.^[9] Eternalism rejects this asymmetry, viewing the future as already real alongside the past and present, without any dynamic growth.^[9] These theories align along the divide between A-theories and B-theories of time: presentism and the growing block theory qualify as A-theories, emphasizing a dynamic, tensed passage with an objective present that alters the ontology over time.^[8]^[9] Eternalism, by contrast, exemplifies the B-theory, which is tenseless and static, relying on enduring B-relations like "earlier than" or "later than" to order events without privileging any moment.^[8]^[9] Eternalism's tenseless framework extends to language, where events at any time are described uniformly using tenseless verbs such as "is," supplemented by temporal locators—for instance, "Caesar is crossing the Rubicon at time t," where t is earlier than the present.^[10] This approach contrasts with the tensed verbs ("was," "will be") prevalent in A-theories, allowing eternalism to depict the temporal world without inherent bias toward the present.^[10] Eternalism is often illustrated as a "block universe," a four-dimensional spacetime where all moments coexist like points in space.^[9]

Historical Development

Ancient and Medieval Precursors

In ancient Greek philosophy, Parmenides of Elea (c. 515–450 BCE) presented one of the earliest arguments suggesting a static, unchanging reality that prefigures eternalist ideas. In his poem On Nature, Parmenides posited that true Being is eternal, indivisible, and motionless, while notions of change, becoming, and temporal distinctions arise from the deceptive senses and are thus illusory. He argued that what is cannot come from what is not, nor can it perish, leading to a conception of reality as a timeless, unified whole where past, present, and future distinctions dissolve. This monistic ontology emphasized that motion and plurality are mere appearances, implying an eternal block of existence beyond temporal flux.^[11] In contrast, Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535–475 BCE) championed a doctrine of constant flux, where "everything flows" and no entity persists unchanged, serving as a foil to Parmenides' stasis.^[12] His famous river analogy—"You cannot step twice into the same river"—illustrated that all things are in perpetual transformation, governed by strife and opposition.^[13] However, Heraclitus' concept of the logos—an underlying rational principle ordering the cosmos—has been interpreted by some scholars as encompassing all temporal phases in a unified, eternal structure, bridging flux with underlying permanence.^[14] This tension between change and hidden unity highlights early debates on time's nature that later eternalist views would resolve by integrating both. During the Hellenistic period, Neoplatonism advanced these ideas through Plotinus (c. 204–270 CE), who envisioned eternity as a timeless, all-encompassing whole in his Enneads. Influenced by Plato's Timaeus, Plotinus described the One—the ultimate source of all reality—as beyond time and multiplicity, from which the Intellect emanates as an eternal realm containing all forms simultaneously.^[15] Time, for Plotinus, emerges with the soul's descent into the sensible world, as a "moving image of eternity," but the higher realms remain in a static, atemporal unity where distinctions of before and after vanish.^[16] This hierarchical ontology portrayed the cosmos as an emanation from eternal principles, prefiguring medieval syntheses of timeless divine reality. In medieval Christian philosophy, Boethius (c. 480–524 CE) articulated a view of divine eternity in The Consolation of Philosophy that resembles eternalism by positing God's atemporal perspective. Boethius defined eternity as "the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of boundless life," where God perceives all moments—past, present, and future—as co-present in an endless now. This resolves paradoxes of divine foreknowledge and human freedom by viewing time from outside its flow, much like an observer surveying an entire landscape at once rather than traversing a path sequentially. Boethius' framework, blending Platonic and Aristotelian elements, influenced scholastic thought by treating temporal events as eternally present to the divine intellect.^[17] Islamic philosophy extended these concepts through Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980–1037 CE), whose emanation theory in The Healing integrated time as a dimension within an eternal divine structure. Avicenna argued that the universe emanates necessarily from the Necessary Existent (God), beginning with the First Intellect, which eternally contemplates divine essence and produces the cosmos without temporal origination.^[18] Time, as an accident of motion in the celestial spheres, exists within this emanative chain but is encompassed by the timeless necessity of the divine intellect, where all possibilities coexist eternally.^[18] This Neoplatonically inspired model treated the temporal world as a perpetual outflow from an atemporal source, echoing earlier static views while adapting them to monotheistic theology.^[19] These ancient and medieval ideas laid groundwork for later eternalist conceptions, such as the modern block universe, by emphasizing reality's timeless wholeness.

Modern and Contemporary Formulations

The modern formulation of eternalism emerged prominently in the early 20th century through J.M.E. McTaggart's seminal 1908 paper "The Unreality of Time," where he distinguished between the A-series, which involves tensed properties like past, present, and future, and the B-series, characterized by tenseless relations of earlier-than and later-than.^[20] McTaggart argued that the A-series leads to contradictions and thus cannot be fundamental, while the B-series provides a coherent, static structure of time, aligning with eternalism's view that all events exist equally regardless of tense.^[6] This distinction positioned eternalism as a form of B-series realism, influencing subsequent debates by framing time as a dimension akin to space rather than a flowing present.^[21] In the early 20th century, Bertrand Russell and other analytic philosophers adopted tenseless language in their metaphysical analyses, further embedding eternalist ideas within logical and scientific frameworks. Russell's 1914 work Our Knowledge of the External World emphasized a neutral, relational understanding of temporal facts, treating events as enduring entities related by objective "before" and "after" relations without privileging a present moment.^[22] This approach, shared by figures like C.D. Broad, reflected a broader shift in analytic philosophy toward event-based ontologies that avoided tensed predicates, promoting eternalism as compatible with empirical science.^[6] Post-World War II developments refined eternalism through integrations with modal logic and possible worlds semantics, notably by John Perry and David Lewis in the 1970s and 1980s. Perry's work on indexicals, such as in his 1979 paper "The Essential Indexical," highlighted how self-locating beliefs interact with a tenseless temporal structure, supporting eternalist accounts by resolving apparent tensed attitudes without ontological commitment to passage. Lewis, in pieces like "Attitudes De Dicto and De Se" (1979) and "Index, Context, and Content" (1980), extended possible worlds semantics to time, arguing that temporal possibilities are analogous to modal ones, where all times exist concretely in a block universe.^[23] These contributions bolstered eternalism by providing formal tools to analyze temporal discourse within a static, relational ontology. Contemporary formulations continue to emphasize four-dimensionalism, as articulated by Ted Sider in his 2001 book Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time. Sider defends the view that persisting objects have temporal parts spread across time, much like spatial parts, thereby committing to eternalism where past, present, and future stages all exist equally.^[24] This temporal parts theory addresses puzzles of change and identity over time by positing spacetime worms—extended entities whose slices at different times constitute diachronic existence—offering a robust metaphysical foundation for eternalist realism.^[25] In 21st-century analytic metaphysics, debates have explored hybrid views that incorporate eternalist elements while addressing criticisms, as seen in Dean Zimmerman's work blending A-theoretic dynamism with B-series structures. Zimmerman's essays, such as those in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics (2004 onward), propose models where a moving "now" highlights subsets of an eternalist block, allowing tensed facts to supervene on tenseless relations without full commitment to pure presentism.^[26] These hybrids aim to reconcile intuitive passage with relativity-inspired eternalism, though they remain contested for potentially reintroducing the contradictions McTaggart identified.^[6] The uptake of eternalism in modern philosophy was partly influenced by special relativity's relativity of simultaneity, which suggests no absolute present and supports a four-dimensional spacetime where all moments coexist.^[6]

Philosophical Foundations

Core Arguments for Eternalism

One of the primary philosophical arguments for eternalism is the truthmaker argument, which contends that statements about the past and future require existent entities from those times to ground their truth, a requirement that presentism struggles to meet without resorting to abstract or non-concrete proxies. For instance, the proposition "Dinosaurs existed" is true, but under presentism, where only present entities exist, there are no concrete dinosaurs to serve as truthmakers, leading proponents to argue that eternalism better accounts for such truths by positing the reality of past entities. This argument emphasizes that truth supervenes on being, such that every true proposition demands a corresponding existent to make it true.^[7] Another key argument highlights the absence of an objective "now," asserting that there is no privileged present moment in reality, as the notion of "now" varies arbitrarily depending on the observer or context, much like "here" in space. Without a metaphysically special present, all moments in time stand on equal ontological footing, supporting eternalism's view that past, present, and future are equally real. This perspective aligns with the B-theory of time, where temporal relations are tenseless and no unique "now" enjoys ontological priority. Theodore Sider articulates this by noting that the indexical nature of "now" does not confer objective privilege, rendering the present no more real than other times. The semantic argument for eternalism posits that tensed sentences, which appear to privilege the present, can be adequately paraphrased into tenseless forms without loss of meaning, eliminating the need for an ontologically distinct present. For example, the tensed sentence "Einstein is discovering E=mc²" can be rephrased tenselessly as "Einstein discovers E=mc² in 1905," preserving truth conditions through eternalist relations like earlier-than or later-than. This approach, rooted in the B-series framework, demonstrates that language about time can function effectively under eternalism, where all temporal facts are expressed relationally rather than through irreducible tense. Finally, the temporal symmetry argument treats time analogously to space, maintaining that just as all spatial locations exist equally regardless of an observer's position, all temporal locations exist equally, with any perceived asymmetry in time arising from subjective perspective rather than objective ontology. Under this view, the reality of events does not depend on their temporal position, paralleling how distant places are no less real than one's current location. This symmetry underscores eternalism's commitment to a four-dimensional spacetime block where past and future slices are as existent as the present. David Lewis supports this by arguing that temporal parts and locations mirror spatial ones, yielding a unified ontology without temporal bias.

Ontological Commitments

Eternalism posits that reality is fundamentally four-dimensional, with objects and events extended across spacetime rather than confined to instantaneous slices. In this view, everyday objects are not three-dimensional entities wholly present at a single moment but instead "spacetime worms" composed of temporal parts that span durations, such as a person's life tracing a continuous four-dimensional path from birth to death.^[27] This four-dimensionalist ontology aligns with the block universe, a static structure encompassing all times equally. A key aspect of eternalism, particularly in its four-dimensionalist interpretations, is its common association with perdurance as an account of persistence through time. Perdurantism holds that objects persist by having distinct temporal parts at different times, much like a worm has segments along its length, allowing the object to occupy multiple moments without being wholly present at any one. In contrast, endurantism—that objects endure by being entirely present at each instant they occupy—is less straightforwardly compatible with eternalism's static spacetime, as it struggles to accommodate the equal reality of all temporal locations without invoking a privileged present.^[27] Eternalism in this form thus often employs perdurance to explain how entities maintain continuity across the block universe without implying a flow of time. Eternalism rejects the notion of temporal becoming, denying any objective process by which events come into existence or pass away. Instead, all events coexist eternally, ordered by static, tenseless relations such as "earlier than" or "later than," which function like spatial relations between locations. Change, in this framework, is not a dynamic transition but a variation in properties across different temporal parts of an object within the unchanging block. Regarding personal identity, eternalism implies that an individual's persistence over time arises from the spatiotemporal continuity of their temporal stages, rather than a single, unchanging self enduring through instants. Identity is preserved through relations among these stages, often analyzed via temporal counterpart theory, where later stages are sufficiently similar to earlier ones to count as stages of the same person.^[27] This avoids positing a persistent, atemporal essence, treating the self as a four-dimensional entity whose "life" is a unified whole across all times.

Scientific Intersections

Compatibility with Special Relativity

Eternalism aligns closely with the framework of special relativity through the concept of Minkowski spacetime, introduced by Hermann Minkowski in 1908, which describes the universe as a four-dimensional continuum where time functions as a dimension on par with space.^[28] In this model, events are fixed points within the spacetime manifold, forming a "block universe" where past, present, and future coexist equally, without an absolute division into temporal slices.^[28] This structure eliminates absolute simultaneity, as different inertial frames yield varying sets of simultaneous events, supporting eternalism's view that all moments are equally real rather than privileging a single "now."^[3] The relativity of simultaneity, a core prediction of special relativity, further bolsters eternalism by demonstrating that observers in relative motion disagree on which events occur "now."^[3] For instance, two spacelike-separated events deemed simultaneous in one frame may appear sequential in another, undermining any universal present and aligning with eternalism's rejection of a privileged temporal perspective.^[3] This frame-dependence challenges theories reliant on an objective "now," as the absence of a preferred simultaneity plane in Minkowski spacetime favors a static, all-encompassing reality where temporal relations are relative but events themselves are invariant.^[29] Special relativity's denial of a preferred reference frame is resolved by eternalism's treatment of all events as ontologically fixed within the spacetime structure, avoiding the need for an absolute time flow.^[29] By positing the entire four-dimensional manifold as equally existent, eternalism accommodates relativity's Lorentz-invariant geometry without invoking a dynamic present, ensuring consistency with the theory's postulates.^[29] Minkowski's formulation has influenced philosophers in adopting interpretations compatible with a tenseless view of time.

Relation to Quantum Mechanics

In the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, proposed by Hugh Everett in 1957, the universal wave function evolves deterministically without collapse, implying that all possible outcomes of quantum measurements are realized in branching timelines, each equally real. This wave function realism aligns with eternalism's view of a static block universe containing multiple co-existing realities, as the multiplicity of worlds mirrors the eternal co-presence of all temporal slices.^[30] Specifically, eternalism and the Everettian framework complement each other by treating both tense (now/past/future) and actuality (which world) indexically, without privileging a single present or outcome, thus providing a coherent ontology where all quantum branches persist eternally.^[30] The Wheeler-DeWitt equation, derived in canonical quantum gravity, describes the universe's wave function in a timeless manner, lacking an explicit time parameter and suggesting a static, unchanging quantum state for the entire cosmos. This timeless formulation resonates with eternalism's block universe, where the absence of dynamical time evolution supports the idea that all moments exist simultaneously, without a flowing present. In quantum cosmology, the equation's constraint implies a frozen wave function encompassing the full history of the universe, reinforcing eternalist commitments over presentist or growing-block alternatives. Interpretations of quantum mechanics involving wave function collapse, such as the Copenhagen interpretation, pose a challenge to eternalism by positing a privileged, dynamic present where measurement induces an irreversible transition from superposition to a definite outcome. Eternalist responses, particularly within the Everettian framework, counter this by arguing that no actual collapse occurs; instead, all possible outcomes eternally co-exist across the multiverse, with observers perceiving a single branch due to decoherence.^[30] This preserves the block universe's fixity, treating the apparent collapse as an illusion of perspective rather than a genuine temporal dynamism.^[30] Recent work in quantum foundations (as of 2025) continues to debate this compatibility, with some arguments suggesting quantum mechanics may favor a present-centered ontology over eternalism.^[31] Quantum indeterminacy, manifested in the probabilistic nature of measurement outcomes, appears to conflict with eternalism's fixed future, as it suggests openness to multiple possibilities rather than a predetermined block. Resolutions include retrocausal models, where future events influence past probabilities to maintain locality and determinism, allowing the entire spacetime block to remain consistent without violating causal structure. Alternatively, hidden variable theories, such as Bohmian mechanics, introduce underlying deterministic trajectories guiding quantum particles, reconciling indeterminacy at the observable level with an eternally fixed ontology. These approaches ensure compatibility by embedding quantum probabilities within a complete, timeless reality.

Implications and Debates

Effects on Free Will and Causality

Eternalism's conception of a fixed future, where all events across time exist equally and unchangingly, poses a significant challenge to libertarian accounts of free will, which require an open future for genuine alternative possibilities in decision-making. Philosophers such as C.W. Rietdijk and Hilary Putnam have argued that if the future is as real and determinate as the past, then human choices cannot alter outcomes that are already "fixed" in the block universe, rendering actions predetermined and incompatible with the ability to do otherwise. This "fixed future problem" suggests that agency is illusory, as every decision is eternally embedded in a static spacetime structure, undermining the intuitive sense of control over one's path. Compatibilists, however, respond that free will can be reconciled with eternalism by redefining it not as the power to choose among open alternatives, but as the capacity to act in accordance with one's motivations and character without external coercion, even within a determined timeline. Drawing on Humean accounts, where liberty consists in the absence of impediments to volition, or Frankfurt-style hierarchical models emphasizing second-order desires, eternalists like J. C. Brashears propose that choices "influence" outcomes by realizing the eternalist entity's intrinsic properties across its temporal extent, preserving a form of agency compatible with determinism.^[32] In this view, the block universe does not negate responsibility but relocates it to the coherent unfolding of an agent's eternal self, where apparent deliberation aligns with the fixed whole. In the eternalist framework, causality is reconceived not as a dynamic flow from past to future, but as an asymmetric structural relation between events in the block universe, where earlier events necessitate later ones through patterns of dependence rather than temporal influence. D.H. Mellor describes this as a Humean mosaic of constant conjunctions, with causation manifesting as probabilistic or deterministic links that hold eternally across spacetime slices, avoiding the need for a privileged "now" to propagate effects. This ontological shift preserves the intuitive directionality of cause preceding effect without invoking becoming, treating the universe as a complete, atemporal edifice. Eternalism's commitment to perdurantism, the view that persons persist as four-dimensional "worms" composed of temporal parts, further reshapes moral responsibility by distributing accountability across a life’s entire extent rather than isolating it to momentary stages. David Lewis's framework implies that punishing a current temporal slice for past actions affects the future parts of the same perduring entity, maintaining continuity of agency and desert in a way analogous to holding a spatially extended body responsible for its limbs' deeds. Thus, moral evaluation encompasses the unified 4D trajectory, where choices at any stage contribute to the overall character that warrants praise or blame.

Criticisms from Presentism

Presentists argue that eternalism fails to account for the intuitive experience of time's passage, which manifests in everyday phenomena such as the anticipation of future events or the recollection of past ones as having a distinct, dynamic quality. This intuition suggests a privileged present moment where events become real, contrasting with eternalism's static block universe where all times coexist equally without genuine flow or becoming. For instance, human emotions like anxiety about impending deadlines or relief upon their completion rely on the sense that the future is not yet fixed, a perspective eternalism undermines by treating future occurrences as already existent.^[33]^[34] A key objection concerns the treatment of future contingents, such as Aristotle's famous sea battle tomorrow, which presentists claim eternalism cannot adequately handle without imposing a truthmaker gap. In eternalism, the entire timeline is fixed, assigning definite truth values to statements about future events regardless of their contingency, yet this denies the intuitive openness of the future where such propositions lack settled truth due to undetermined outcomes. Presentists maintain that only present facts provide truthmakers, allowing future contingents to remain indeterminate until they occur, avoiding eternalism's commitment to a predetermined block that renders deliberation illusory.^[35] Presentism also emphasizes ontological parsimony as a virtue over eternalism, positing that only present entities exist and thereby avoiding the need to populate reality with an infinite sprawl of past and future objects that no longer or not yet obtain. Eternalism's inclusion of all temporal slices as equally real inflates the ontology unnecessarily, committing to the existence of dinosaurs and distant descendants alongside current phenomena without empirical warrant, whereas presentism aligns more closely with Occam's razor by restricting existence to the observable now.^[36] Finally, revisiting McTaggart's paradox, presentists contend that eternalism's reliance on the B-series—defined solely by permanent "earlier than" and "later than" relations—fails to capture essential tensed facts, such as the urgency of imminent events or the finality of memories. McTaggart himself argued that the B-series alone cannot constitute time, as it lacks the dynamic A-series properties like pastness, presentness, and futurity needed to explain change and temporal experience; eternalism, by endorsing only B-relations, thus inherits this inadequacy, rendering it incomplete as a theory of time.^[8]

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Presentism derives its appeal, first and foremost, from our intuition that past things have existed, but no longer do, and that future events have yet to occur.
[37]
On the Existential side of the Eternalism-Presentism Dispute
The second part clarifies why the eternalist must renounce the open future, whereas presentism is consistent with it, and considers how its rejection or ...
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[PDF] Ostrich Presentism - PhilArchive
In other words, while both the eternalist and the presentist are committed to present entities, only the eternalist is committed, in addition, to past entities.