On Borrowed Time

by Weinrich, Harald; Rendall, Steven

• ISBN13: 9780226886015
• ISBN10: 0226886018
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-12-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Life is short. This indisputable fact of existence has driven human ingenuity since antiquity, whether through efforts to lengthen our lives with medicine or shorten the amount of time we spend on work using technology. Alongside this struggle to manage the pressure of life's ultimate deadline, human perception of the passage and effects of time has also changed. InOn Borrowed Time, Harald Weinrich examines an extraordinary range of materialsfrom Hippocrates toRun Lola Runto put forth a new conception of time and its limits that, unlike older models, is firmly grounded in human experience. Weinrich's analysis of the roots of the wordtimeconnects it to the temples of the skull, demonstrating that humans first experienced time in the beating of their pulses. Tracing this corporeal perception of time across literary, religious, and philosophical works, Weinrich concludes that time functions as a kind of sixth sensethe crucial sense that enables the other five. Written with Weinrich's customary narrative elegance,On Borrowed Timeis an absorbingand, fittingly, succinctmeditation on life's inexorable brevity.

Author Biography

Harald Weinrich is chair of Romance literature at the Collège de France and the author of many books, including The Linguistics of Lying and Other Essays. Steven Rendall has translated numerous books, including Weinrich’s Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting.

Table of Contents

Life is Short, Art is Long	p. 1
Medical Aphorisms and the Movement of Time	p. 1
Philosophical Remarks on the Brevity of Life	p. 9
Domestic Economy and Time Management	p. 12
Teaching Time Management in London and Paris	p. 15
The Midpoint of Life	p. 18
Midway on Life's Journey	p. 18
Rejuvenation in Rome-through Rome	p. 26
The Physician's Art of Prolonging Life	p. 30
A Long Life with Faust	p. 33
New Art and Another Life	p. 39
Magic and Style in Life-Time	p. 43
Every Day Is a Sonnet	p. 50
Untimely Death or Venerable Old Age	p. 53
Revocable and Irrevocable Time	p. 58
Limited Time in this World and in the Next	p. 64
Yet a Little While	p. 64
In Purgatory, Time Is Precious	p. 69
More Time for a New World	p. 74
A Purgatory in This World	p. 79
Revolutionary Historical Times, in Rapid Fire	p. 81
Short and Shortest Times	p. 89
Two Gods of Time: Chronos and Kairos	p. 89
Stars and Hours	p. 93
Between Austerlitz and Waterloo	p. 97
The Economy of Limited Time	p. 101
Three-Day Friendship: Hospitality	p. 101
Classicism as Economy of Time	p. 105
Living Faster, Talking Less	p. 110
The Drama of Time in Short Supply	p. 114
Epic Is Long, Drama Is Short	p. 114
How Long Is Twenty-Four Hours?	p. 116
Time out of Joint	p. 118
Saladin Learns to Take His Time	p. 123
Time and the Oeuvre	p. 126
Finitude, Infinity	p. 130
Curiosity-Thirst for Knowledge-Science	p. 130
A Nothingness of Time in Exchange for Eternity	p. 134
Too Little Time, Too Much World	p. 137
Anthropological Experiences of Shortage	p. 141
Living with Deadlines	p. 144
Clocks, Calendars, Appointment Calendars	p. 144
Deadlines in Everyday Life	p. 149
Deadlines in Law, with a Brief Glance at "Abortion Limits"	p. 153
"... but for the Present, not Yet"	p. 158
Short Stories About Short Deadlines	p. 164
Saved from Death at the Last Minute	p. 164
A Ballad about Friendship and Deadlines	p. 168
A Devil's Pact with Deadlines	p. 171
The Traps and Labors of Deadlines	p. 173
Deadlines of Honor, Prussian Style	p. 176
Deadlines for Honor in Imperial Austria	p. 178
A Short Time to Be Humane	p. 181
Fifteen Minutes' Delay for Death	p. 185
Everyman's Last Reprieve	p. 188
A Short Epilogue in the Emergency Room	p. 191
A Race around the World	p. 193
Short Time, Comic Style	p. 195
A Twenty-Minute Deadline: Lola Runs	p. 197
Epilogue on the Sense of Time	p. 200
Notes	p. 211
Index	p. 233
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