Fortbestehenden

Fortbestehenden is a term used in German-language philosophy of time and ontology to describe objects that persist through time by enduring as a whole, remaining numerically identical at different moments. In English-language discussions, these entities are often called endurants. The concept stands in contrast to perdurant objects, which are said to persist by having temporal parts or stages across time.

According to fortbestehende (endurant) theories, an object such as a chair remains the same object from one moment to the next and is wholly present at each moment of its existence. Change and motion are explained without attributing new temporal parts to the object; identity is preserved through persistence rather than through a succession of time-slices.

Perdurant theories, by contrast, claim that objects are extended in time and can be divided into temporal parts. For a perdurant, a chair at different times might be considered distinct temporal parts of a single four-dimensional object. This approach helps to model certain aspects of change and motion but raises questions about what counts as the same object across time.

The term fortbestehenden appears in discussions of persistence, identity criteria, and the metaphysics of time, particularly in German translations and analyses of endurantism and four-dimensionalism. It is closely related to debates about how objects endure, how they can change, and how to distinguish their persistence from mere appearances of continuity.

Related concepts include endurantism, perdurantism, temporal parts, four-dimensionalism, and the broader problem of identity over time.