This feature was first published in March 2025 in My Mensa Weekly, our exclusive newsletter for Mensa members. Find out more about becoming a Mensa member here.
Words: Andrew Cattanach
Throughout history, philosophers have sought to define time – to uncover a universal framework that explains how we experience it. Yet, the more we explore, the clearer it becomes that time resists such simplification. Time is not merely a neutral backdrop to human existence, it’s shaped by power, culture, gender and technology. Three modern-day thinkers – Hannah Arendt, Elizabeth Grosz and Yuk Hui – offer compelling perspectives that challenge conventional understandings of time.
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was a German-American political philosopher who lived through some of the most turbulent events of the 20th century, including both world wars. Born to a Jewish family in Linden, near Hanover, she fled Nazi Germany after being briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo in 1933 for her anti-fascist activities. Arendt eventually settled in the US, where she wrote extensively on totalitarianism, power and human rights.
In her seminal work The Human Condition (1958), Arendt distinguishes between three fundamental human activities: labour, work and action – each with its own relationship to time. Labour, bound to biological necessity, is repetitive and cyclical, ensuring survival but never truly reaching an end. Work, which produces lasting objects and shapes the human world, follows a linear, goal-oriented trajectory. Action, however – the realm of politics, speech and new beginnings – unfolds in an unpredictable, open-ended temporality. For Arendt, action represents the highest and most profound expression of human freedom, where individuals reveal their unique identities and shape the course of history.
A core tenet of Arendt’s mature thought is her rejection of the idea that history follows an inevitable, linear path – a belief rooted in Enlightenment notions of progress and the Hegelian-Marxist view that historical events unfold necessarily, each determined by what came before. In Between Past and Future (1961), she argued that human action disrupts historical continuity, introducing new and unpredictable outcomes. This challenges the idea of time as a passive, preordained flow. For Arendt, time is inherently political, shaped not by inevitability but by human decisions and collective will. Her work resonated with the political upheaval of the late 1960s, particularly among student movements, which embraced the power of action to challenge the status quo.
Australian feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz (b. 1952) presents time as a realm where the new can emerge. Writing against the backdrop of neoliberal politics – including her time in the US during the Bush administration – Grosz developed her influential works on time, notably The Nick of Time (2004) and Time Travels (2005). Drawing on Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze, she challenges the dominant Western assumption that time is purely linear and causal. Instead, she reframes time as a dynamic, generative force: one that shapes bodies, identities and social structures in unpredictable ways.
For Grosz, Western thought privileges space – seen as rigid and static – over time, which she presents as dynamic and generative. She challenges the idea that gendered identities are fixed, arguing instead that identity continuously unfolds through time. Time, she suggests, is not a neutral backdrop; it actively shapes our bodies, subjectivities and social roles. In this view, time becomes a force of becoming – constantly generating difference rather than merely recording it. What is more, we have an opportunity to be active agents in this non-rigid alternative; there is hope for change and opportunity for freedom.
Yuk Hui (b. 1985), a philosopher from Hong Kong, similarly interrogates the Western notion of linear, progressive time. He studied computer engineering at the University of Hong Kong and philosophy at Goldsmiths College in London, where he wrote his doctoral thesis. In his major work The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics (2016), he argues that Western modernity has imposed a singular, universal timeline – one that often suppresses non-Western conceptions of time, contrasting with China, where philosophers have never really felt the need to address the question of time.
Hui advocates for a rediscovery of diverse temporalities, grounded in the cultural and technological traditions that shape them. He introduces the concept of cosmotechnics – the idea that technology is not neutral but influenced by a culture’s cosmology, its overarching worldview. By reclaiming non-Western perspectives on time, Hui envisions a more pluralistic, decentralised understanding of temporality.
These thinkers demonstrate that time is far from a universal, objective phenomenon. Arendt reveals time’s political dimensions, Grosz reframes it as an engine of identity and becoming, and Hui exposes the cultural biases embedded in linear models of progress. Together, they challenge us to rethink time – not as a passive measure of existence, but as something that is actively shaped by, and shaping, human life.
Explore academic Claire Perkins’s deep dive into Elizabeth Grosz’s groundbreaking work on time, evolution and identity. From Darwin to Deleuze, discover how Grosz redefines our understanding of temporality and becoming.
