Concept in Definition ABC
Miscellanea / / July 04, 2021
By Javier Navarro, in Jun. 2014
Eternal is an adjective that is used to refer to the absence of time. The eternal is not subject to the temporal, it does not have a beginning and an end.
The first Western philosophers (the Pre-Socratics) began to analyze the world and the concepts that explain it in a rational way. According to them, if everything has a limited duration (people, living beings or events), this implies that there is an opposite concept: the eternal.
It is an idea that can only be applied to some concepts. God is considered eternal for most religions. The idea of the world or of time is also associated with this term. Some streams of thought They defend the idea that the world did not have a beginning, it has always existed. The same thing happens with time, which is something that we can measure with a stopwatch, but in reality it is unlimited because it has no end.
If the eternal is an adjective, its corresponding noun is eternity. The problem of eternity (the nonexistence of time) is present in religion,
philosophy and science. From all three perspectives, the eternal is a concept that goes beyond what can be observed, the world around us. Eternity exceeds the limits set by time conventional.In common parlance, eternal is used figuratively and not literally. Thus, one speaks of eternal love or an eternal wait. In both cases, a feeling or sensation psychological.
It is probably in relation to love where there are more references to the eternal. It is a kind of paradox: we know that love ends and yet the lover proclaims eternal love like the expression of an impossible wish, an unattainable dream.
Although reality is determined by the idea of time, we also say that passions are eternal, since they do not change, they are always present.
If a situation does not change, we affirm that it is eternal, implying that it does not have an easy solution. And in this sense, when a problem is repeated periodically, we consider it to be eternal and boring.
From a literary perspective, the eternal or eternity can refer to an internal sensation when it seems that time does not pass (the eternal present) or a deep desire (the eternal longing for peace ). Since literary creation the notion of eternal serves as metaphor explanatory. Something similar is what the German philosopher Nietzsche expressed with the concept of the eternal return. According to him, we should feel life with intensity, in such a way that we want to repeatedly live each moment.
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