Time has always been a prominent subject of philosophical investigations. Especially in the analytic tradition time was predominantly tackled as a topic of theoretical philosophy, for example in the metaphysics of time or the philosophy of mind, and in the philosophy of physics Footnote 1. Within moral philosophy, however, it has received comparatively little attention Footnote 2. There is, of course, the ever more pressing issue of our obligations to future generations, as there are conversely controversies about morally demanded reparations for harms done in the past. But apart from these time-related concerns of moral philosophy, time as an important factor for how we lead our lives is relatively underexplored. This is the starting point of this symposium. The aim of this symposium is to examine possibilities of leading a personally good life for beings who live in time and whose lives display a particular temporality. This perspective on time and the good life has not been completely neglected, but it certainly did not figure at the forefront of philosophical debates. A German collected volume explicitly addressing normative aspects of the temporality of human life and action from a perspective of moral philosophy was published only some years ago (Dietrich et al. 2018). In English, a collected volume with a similar focus was published already in 2003 (Dyke 2003). In both these works, however, questions concerning the good life come up less than questions concerning the relationship between time and morality. Moreover, when time is discussed with respect to morality or ethics, it is striking that philosophers from the phenomenological and existentialist traditions are hardly mentioned, although they thoroughly engaged with time as a basic dimension of human experience.Footnote 3

With this Symposium, we primarily address the first of these two shortcomings. It is a collection of papers originating from an international conference at the Ruhr-University Bochum in May 2021. We asked the speakers to contribute to the very general question what it means for the possibility of a successful life that we live in time. Usually, philosophical theories of the good discuss at least one of the following three criteria for the goodness of a life: well-being, meaning, and morality. The approaches are often hybrid, normally emphasizing the aspect of well-being (Annas 1993; Bishop 2015; Fenner 2007; Haybron 2008; Nussbaum 2012; Seel 1995; Steinfath 1998; Tiberius 2008; Wolf 1999). Alternatively, autonomy is sometimes discussed as the most important necessary characteristic of a good life, which the other mentioned characteristics connect to (Harris 1985; Rössler 2017; Sumner 1996). When time is discussed in the context of a way of living, it is mostly in two respects. On the one hand, time is dealt with as the duration of life and thus as a problem of finitude with which we must grapple (cf. e.g., Williams 1973; Overall 2003; Knell 2015). On the other hand, time is also examined with respect to the fast and accelerating pace of our lives which is supposed to be problematic for leading a good life (cf. e.g., Rosa 2013; Avanessian and Mackay 2014). But beyond the finiteness and pace issue, there are at least four temporal problems with regard to ways of living, namely: the course of life (Why do we prefer a happy ending? ); the use of time (To what purpose do we use the time available to us?); locating oneself in time (How do we come to terms with the constant, irretrievable passing of time? ); the reference to different modes of time (How far in the past and future must I project myself in order to live well in the present? ).

The authors of this symposium concentrate on topics related to the third and fourth area. More precisely, they deal first with questions of “timing” and “tuning”: Norman Sieroka (2024) argues that the same isolated event is not good at all times but depends on certain forms of synchronizations; Krister Bykvist (2024) and Marya Schechtman (2024) discuss the question of how to sum up well-being at different times in life in order to evaluate the well-being of the whole life; Holmer Steinfath (2024) suggests a specific relation to one’s own future, namely one which does not focus on what is planned or to be reached but on who one becomes.

These articles can be seen as tying in with one of the few approaches to time and ethics that the analytic tradition knows: The considerations of John Rawls and his “weak theory of the good” in the last part of his magistral A Theory of Justice. According to Rawls a person is happy when she is successfully carrying out her plan of life, and the notion of a plan of life is a heavily temporal notion. A plan of life makes, as Rawls writes, “some provision even for the most distant future and for our death” (Rawls 1989; p. 410). Moreover, Rawls adheres to a strict principle of temporal neutrality. He rejects pure time preference, thus denying especially the rationality of discounting future aims solely in virtue of being in the future. On the other hand, he prefers a “rising plan” – a life with a happy end – to a “declining plan” – a life with a glorious youth followed by a steady decline – even if the total sum of enjoyments were the same in both courses of life (Rawls 1989; p. 421). These ideas were taken up by other authors, though sometimes unwittingly. Thus, twenty years after Rawls’ suggestions, David Velleman explored in depth the difference between, as Rawls had put it, “rising” and “declining” plans. His article Well-Being and Time is still an invaluable contribution to our subject. Velleman (1991) argues that the quality of a life cannot adequately be captured by adding up all happy moments and episodes experienced during the course of a life. In his view, we are not only interested in a positive balance of separated experiences but also in the diachronic shape of our life. We are aiming at giving an attractive narrative structure to our life. Almost thirty years after Velleman, Cheshire Calhoun published her book Doing Valuable Time in which she addresses connections between time and meaningful living. Calhoun emphasizes that the time which beings like us inhabit is, “unlike chronological time, not a string of separable instants but, rather, a time in which the past is retained and the future is anticipated in the present” (Calhoun 2018; p. 9). She asks what it means to have a future, distinguishes various forms of spending time, and discusses, among other things, the role of hope and of boredom in leading a life. These considerations of Rawls, Velleman, and Calhoun are three main steps of a debate that still awaits its development with more intensity, clarity, and coherence. Our hope is to stimulate such a discussion with this symposium.

The four papers of this issue open up some new perspectives. Sieroka (2024) brings together metaphysics of time and the ethics of a good life. He spells out the difference between tensed and non-tensed time and deploys both notions for a better understanding of the question of right timing: An event has to be synchronized in the right way with other events or states in order to contribute to well-being. Bykvist and Schechtman elaborate on two different problems when evaluating the well-being of the whole life of a person in contrast as well as in relation to her well-being in specific moments. Bykvist (2024) tackles the question of how to evaluate a life, given an attitude-sensitive theory of well-being in an utilitarian framework: If your attitude towards what is good for you (for example an adventurous or a quiet life) changes over time, how can we determine what is or was finally good in your life? Bykvist presents an attitudinal matrix that should help us to find a solution to this problem and suggests a satisfaction-version of attitude-sensitive theories for an adequate counting of well-being, instead of an attitude- or an object-version. Schechtman (2024), in contrast, stresses the tension that exists between what she calls a temporally extended and a temporally local perspective. The latter is associated with the idea of “living in the moment”; the first has often been explicated in terms of a narrative of one’s own life. In the here presented article, Schechtman pleads for a multi-perspectival approach in which the two relevant perspectives are not independent from each other but continuously influence and affect one another. In order to lead a good life, she concludes, one should learn to skillfully manage these different perspectives. Steinfath (2024) takes up the existing criticisms of both Bratman’s planning theory and Rawls’ idea of a life plan voiced by others and elaborates on them in his article. He questions the claim that plans and plan-like achievements are central to our self-understanding and to a good life. Instead, he highlights the temporal specifics of ways of understanding ourselves as persons. These ‘ways of being’ are to his mind more important for leading a good life than successful plans, and they exhibit a temporality that does not follow the logic of plans. Steinfath illustrates his argument with a closer look at the temporal implications of being a virtuous agent.