Note on Du ‘temps’: Elements for a Philosophy of Living

The author probes Jullien on the problem of time, which is at the heart of European philosophy, while allowing himself to embrace an intelligibility of the ‘infra-philosophical’ leading to a ‘living in philosophy’. The question is both intriguing and rewarding: ‘what the Chinese have thought because they have not thought time’. Yet the author wonders: does Jullien pay more attention to the Greeks than to the Hebrews vis-à-vis China with regard to the concept of time? Jullien’s text on time of course is a piece in a much larger set of texts that bring to the fore questions of life; the author offers, with generosity, much broader thoughts on the possibility of Jullien speaking French while thinking Chinese, and the enigma of living (say in Augustine and Montaigne) within a philosophy of transcendence in the West as opposed to the immanence of philosophy of living in China.