Foi, é e será? Usos da fórmula da eternidade para falar do tempo na filosofia pré-socrática

The so called Eternity Formula is found both in Homer and Hesiod. The speeches of a seer and of the muses are said to inform the things “that are, will be and were”. Versions of this formula were also used by presocratic philosophers to describe the temporal aspect of central concepts within their cosmologies. Generally, they use it to convey the eternity of an entity by the affirmation of its existence throughout past, present and future. That is the case of fire in Heraclitus’ linear and reciprocal conception of time, of hate and love in the cyclical time of Empedocles, of the intelligence living in an eternal now in Anaxagoras’ cosmos, and of the eternal being in Melissus and Parmenides. Nonetheless, each use of the formula has its own peculiarities. The aim of this article is to make a comparative analysis of them, both within the thought of each philosopher as in face of one another. At the end I will propose a general formula of eternity in the presocratic philosophy that points towards an absolute conception of time. Furthermore, I hope to show that such an absolute treatment of time ends up by denying it implicitly or explicitly in a particular type of eternal present.