Abstract

On a closer examination, Severino’s reflection on the meaning of eternity requires us to understand his conception of ‘temporality’ in a more articulate and less univocal way. Indeed, in Severino’s attempt to fully understand the restless nature of happening, it seems that different possibilities (and conceptual options that are not entirely reconcilable), are presented together at the same time. What is time? What is happening in its most dynamic appearance? Is it only contradiction? Or is it the (time of) resolution of contradiction? In any case, how can contradiction and non-contradiction be presented at the same time in the unquiet nature of temporality? Through Severino’s (sometimes limited, but instructive) critical confrontation with certain moments of Aristotelian and Hegelian reflection, it is possible to draw a broad picture of the opportunities, but also of some of the main difficulties, encountered by the thinker in relation to his personal, controversial and in some ways scandalous (but fascinating) conception of temporality. This contribution attempts to define this theoretical setting.