Illusory Time

Explorations into temporality have been undertaken since the very inception of philosophical inquiry. Beginning in the 20th century, the introduction of scientific accounts of the topic has fueled discussion between philosophers and physicists alike, leading to an ongoing distillation of time’s own standing in reality from its more readily accessible realization through our own perception. My aim in this essay is to examine the compatibility between Baruch Spinoza's philosophical conception of time and contemporary physical theories. I seek to establish a parallel between Spinoza's view, which regards both time and temporal flow as being illusory, with some of the major perspectives in modern physics which present time as being an emergent phenomenon, and to ultimately show that Spinozistic time finds itself aligned with modern physics in numerous ways.