Subjective experience of time

Strophic song, with its return of identical melodic structures to changed words, poses interesting questions about temporality, especially when its text ponders God's eternity and the convergence of human and divine time. In considering how strophic religious songs mediate an exploration of temporality, this paper will combine literary analysis with medieval philosophy and theology, in particular, the thoughts of Augustine and Eckhart and the so-called ‘Dominican School of Cologne’.

Modern reflections about the concept of time have been profoundly influenced by these two radical thinkers – Augustine's writings underpin medieval philosophy and theology even where other writers articulate their dissent; Eckhart's thoughts form the foundation of twentieth century philosophers from Heidegger and Husserl to Wittgenstein and Russell. As a result, both Augustine and Eckhart are often considered ‘modern’ in their focus on time as something that cannot be explained solely as a phenomenon of natural science which can be measured and regulated, but as something experienced by each of us. Russell highlights this subjectivism as Augustine's greatest achievement:

Augustine in particular highlights that time is not just an objective reality of the external world, but – at least in part – something private, in which time is the memory of my past, or my expectation of the future. For Eckhart, it is the concept of eternity which lies at the heart of his speculation, and while he is not interested in a theory of time for its own sake and does not present a systematic analysis, the relationship between the temporal and the eternal is central to his thought.