Presentism
Presentism holds that only the present exists — the past has ceased to be and the future has not yet come into being, making the razor-thin "now" the totality of reality. C. D. Broad's 'Scientific Thought' (1923) developed a "growing block" model in which the past and present are real but the future is not, though strict presentists reject even the past's continued existence. Arthur Prior's 'Past, Present and Future' (1967) gave presentism its most rigorous logical framework through tense logic, a formal system in which tensed statements ("it was the case that," "it will be the case that") are irreducible primitives rather than disguised references to timelessly existing events. Presentism stands in direct opposition to the "block universe" of eternalism, insisting that the passage of time is ontologically real and not merely a subjective illusion.
Worldview
The presentist lives entirely in the now — not as a spiritual discipline but as an ontological conviction. The past is genuinely gone, not stored somewhere awaiting retrieval, and the future is genuinely open, not already laid out in a block universe. This produces a distinctive phenomenology of urgency and vividness: each moment is the entirety of what exists, a razor-thin edge of actuality poised between two voids. Memory is real as a present mental state, but it is not a window into a still-existing past; anticipation is real as a present orientation, but it does not reach into a pre-existing future. The presentist finds the here-and-now inexhaustibly rich precisely because it is all there is. The framework classifies this as None: presentism takes no stance requiring a personal deity or cosmic ordering principle; the metaphysics is exhausted by what is present. The framework reads this as Constructed moral authority: with no fixed past or future to anchor norms in, what counts as authoritative is constituted by present communities of practice deciding here and now — no Scripture, Tradition, or eternal Reason carries weight independent of the living moment.
Moral Implications
Presentism intensifies moral urgency by insisting that only present actions and present suffering are real. One cannot defer moral responsibility to the future or rationalize present harm by appeal to a "bigger picture" that spans all of time. Justice must be done now, because now is the only moment that exists. This orientation supports an ethics of immediate responsiveness — attending to present needs, present crises, present injustices — rather than utilitarian calculations that sacrifice present well-being for speculative future gains. Forgiveness, too, takes on a distinctive character: since the past no longer exists, the presentist asks whether clinging to past wrongs serves any purpose in the only moment that is real.
Practical Implications
Presentism challenges planning-oriented cultures that treat the future as a real domain to be colonized and optimized. While the presentist does not deny the usefulness of planning, they insist that plans are present mental states, not descriptions of a pre-existing future. This orientation can support mindfulness-based approaches to well-being, immediate humanitarian response over long-term development ideology, and a healthy skepticism toward promissory technologies that demand present sacrifice for future rewards. Environmentally, presentism demands attention to the present state of ecosystems rather than abstract projections of future sustainability.
I. Time
Time is emergent and finite — only the present moment is real. The past has ceased to exist and the future does not yet exist; both are mere conceptual extrapolations from the living now. Time is continuous, linear, and uni-directional, but its reality is exhausted by the present instant. Presentism makes time the most metaphysically thin of all dimensions: a single, razor-edge moment of actuality.
Attributes
II. Space
Space is emergent and finite — it exists only in the present moment. Since only the present is real, space is the current spatial configuration of present entities and nothing more. It is flat, local, and three-dimensional, reflecting the ordinary common-sense structure of the world as it exists right now.
Attributes
III. Matter
Matter is emergent and finite — only presently existing matter is real. Past states of matter no longer exist; future states do not yet exist. Conservation holds in the sense that currently existing matter persists from moment to moment, but the presentist cannot appeal to a permanently existing material substrate stretching across time.
Attributes
IV. Observer
The observer can only exist in and perceive the present, because only the present is real. Past events have vanished and future events have not yet come into being; the observer occupies a single, fleeting now in a single location. Knowledge is limited to what currently exists — memories are present mental states, not windows into a still-existing past. Because past realities no longer exist, there is nothing to fully retain; what the observer "remembers" is a trace in the present, not a preserved record. The observer is embodied and active, engaged with a world that is constantly coming into and passing out of existence. Multiple observers share the same present moment, each experiencing the only slice of reality there is.
Attributes
V. Energy
Energy is emergent and finite — only presently existing energy is real. Conservation holds as a regularity of present experience, but the presentist cannot ground it in an eternal physical law spanning a non-existent past and future. Dispersibility is irreversible within the present flow of experience.
Attributes
VI. Information
Only present information is real — information about the past no longer exists except as present traces, and information about the future does not yet exist. Information is emergent and non-conserved. The framework places this as non-conserved at both scales: past cosmic information is not real (only the present is), and no personal-identity pattern persists beyond present existence — when the present moment of a life ends, nothing of that life remains in being.
Attributes
Experiments This School Responds To (7)
Films Reading Through This School (8)
Works that name Presentism in their embodiments
Foundational texts that draw on this school, with each work's declared weight.
Personas with Presentism as a declared influence
How Presentism resolves each dilemma
56 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 3 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 1 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas, all mainstream
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.