Free Time versus Occupied and Unoccupied Time in a Philosophical Context

Abstract

In the paper, previous conceptions of free time and the various definitions that are connected with it are challenged. The author assumed that the subject might not have free time at his/her disposal, because that time does not concern the subject at all. The subject did not have free time in the past; the subject can neither shape it in the present nor in the future. Free time does not concern him/her at all, because free time as such does not exist at all. We have only to do with occupied and unoccupied time. The first form of time concerns the past and the present. Future time is not occupied both in that sense that it does not exist yet and that it never exists.

Moreover, the author considers the existence, understanding, and possibility of the cognition of time as such. Thus, he rejects various common theories of time. He refers to the Kantian, subjective, "self-related" conception of time and he attempts to strengthen it with the Heideggerian transcendental theory of time. According to the author, it is derived from, among other things, the considerations on [being] done by some of the ancient philosophers: Anaximander, Pythagoras and his followers, Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle.