The Problem of ‘Living in the Present’
These days, many of us would rather not be living in the present, a time of persistent crisis, political uncertainty and fear. Not that the future looks better, shadowed by technological advances that threaten widespread unemployment and by the perils of catastrophic climate change. No wonder some are tempted by the comforts of a nostalgically imagined past.
Inspiring as it seems on first inspection, the self-help slogan “live in the present” slips rapidly out of focus. What would living in the present mean? To live each day as if it were your last, without a thought for the future, is simply bad advice, a recipe for recklessness. The idea that one can make oneself invulnerable to what happens by detaching from everything but the present is an irresponsible delusion.
Despite this, there is an interpretation of living in the present, inspired by Aristotle, that can help us to confront the present crisis and the perpetual crises of struggle and failure in life. There is an insight in the self-help slogan that philosophy can redeem.
The beginning of wisdom here is to think about what we are doing. We engage in all sorts of activities: reading an article in the newspaper, reflecting on life, attending a protest, preparing a report, listening to music, driving home, making dinner, spending time with family or friends. Though all these activities take time, there is a crucial difference in how they relate to the present moment.
Using terminology from linguistics, we can distinguish activities of two fundamental kinds. Telic activities — from “telos,” the Greek word for purpose — aim at terminal states, by which they are completed. Think of reading this article or driving home from work. Once you arrive at the goal, you are finished: The point of the activity has been achieved. You can do it again, but only by way of repetition. Not all activities are like this. Some activities are atelic: They do not aim at terminal states. However much you reflect on life or spend time with your family, you cannot complete these activities. Though you will eventually stop doing them, they do not aim at a point at which there is no more of them to do.
Aristotle made the same distinction, contrasting two kinds of action or praxis: kinesis and energeia. Kinetic actions are telic and therefore incomplete. As Aristotle wrote in his “Metaphysics”: “If you are learning, you have not at the same time learned.” When you care about telic activities, projects such as writing a report, getting married or making dinner, satisfaction is always in the future or the past. It is yet to be achieved and then it is gone. Telic activities are exhaustible; in fact, they aim at their own exhaustion. They thus exhibit a peculiar self-subversion. In valuing and so pursuing these activities, we aim to complete them, and so to expel them from our lives.
Atelic activities, by contrast, do not by nature come to an end and are not incomplete. In defining such activities, we could emphasize their inexhaustibility, the fact that they do not aim at terminal states. But we could also emphasize what Aristotle does: They are fully realized in the present. “At the same time, one is seeing and has seen, is understanding and has understood, is thinking and has thought.” There is nothing you need to do in order to perform an atelic activity except what you are doing right now. If what you care about is reflecting on your life or spending time with family or friends, and that is what you are doing, you are not on the way to achieving your end: You are already there.
What would it mean, then, to live in the present, and what do we gain by doing it?
To live in the present is to appreciate the value of atelic activities like going for a walk, listening to music, spending time with family or friends. To engage in these activities is not to extinguish them from your life. Their value is not mortgaged to the future or consigned to the past, but realized here and now. It is to care about the process of what you are doing, not just projects you aim to complete.
The advice is easy to misread. To live in the present is not to deny the value of telic activities, of making a difference in the world. That would be a terrible mistake. Nor can we avoid engaging in such activities. But if projects are all we value, our lives become self-subversive, aimed at extinguishing the sources of meaning within them. To live in the present is to refuse the excessive investment in projects, in achievements and results, that sees no inherent value in the process.
To live in the present is to appreciate the value of atelic activities like going for a walk, listening to music, spending time with family or friends. To engage in these activities is not to extinguish them from your life. Their value is not mortgaged to the future or consigned to the past, but realized here and now. It is to care about the process of what you are doing, not just projects you aim to complete.
To focus on the telic is to focus, all too often, on the distance and precariousness of our goals: to provide health care for all, to halt the resurgence of white supremacy, to limit global warming to 2 degrees. Consequences matter, as do activities that aim at them. The point of political protest is to change the world. And yet the process matters, too. The value of standing up for what is right, of going on strike or marching in the streets, is not exhausted by the value of its effects. It is not wholly erased by failure. We protest in part because we see no better way to make a difference, in part to make the present count for something, whatever the future holds.
Kieran Setiya is a professor of philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of the forthcoming “Midlife: A Philosophical Guide.
Taking a look at these resources:
Now in print: “The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments,” an anthology of essays from The Times’s philosophy series, edited by Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley, published by Liveright Books.
