I see no grammatical form or semantic meaning in had have had , and googling (a mere 11,000 hits when I tried it) produces not one grammatically reputable webpage. I can envision I'd have had being misinterpreted as had have had by those who

Dear milky. Sorry for my slow reply. I promised you to make a rough sketch of P.Ricoeur's thesis a few days ago ... but I cannot ! It will be not fair to P.Ricoeur, if I use his thesis as invoking my argument: . I consider some of his

Dear Milky The core meaning is not the etymology? Kind regards Goldmund

... thank you ! ... Then it must be "What is time?".

Are you sure he didn't ask "What is time"? "What is the time?" is correct English. I think "invoking" is the word you seek.

I've forgot to add: my quote was from Book XI. I think you're interested more in P. Ricoeur's thesis, milky. I need some time to extract from Ricoeur's philosophy something invocable. (in passing ... is this my English correct..?) I'm

Hello, milky. In response to your request, I add (i) some data from Augustine's Confession, (ii) rough sketch of P.Ricoeur's thesis. As to (ii) I need more time, so I quote here only (i). The following is a quite arbitrary extract from Augustine's

!? ... it's not so easy, milky ... ! First of all these matters are very easily misunderstood. And second, I know almost nothing about your concept of time ( I got an impression that your point of view is similar to Augustine's, though ... ).

But there's available another position ... that is ... it's language, not our perception of time (or situations), which makes the concept of time meaningful. > Could you expand on that before I respond?

Hello milky, can I make a digression here? (It will be important for me, probably, to make my standpoint clearer.) The following passage is from Time and Narrative , vol.1, written by Paul Ricoeur: The Aporias of the Experience of Time