presentisme

Presentism is a position in the philosophy of time that holds only the present moment and the things that exist now are real. In this view, past and future objects and events do not exist in any ontologically robust sense; they are not part of the world’s current inventory. Past things may be remembered, recorded, or described, but they do not endure as existing entities once the present moment has moved on. The present is considered ontologically privileged, and the flow of time is understood as the ongoing becoming of what exists.

Presentism is commonly contrasted with eternalism, which holds that past, present, and future events all exist in some sense, and with the growing block theory, which posits that the past and present exist while the future does not. Most presentists align with A-theory of time, which emphasizes tensed properties such as past, present, and future as real features of reality. To account for statements about the past, presentists typically appeal to truth conditions, memory, records, or relational facts that are anchored in the current present.

The approach faces several philosophical and scientific challenges. A central issue is the conflict with the relativity of simultaneity in special relativity, which undermines a unique, global present. Some presentists respond with a relativized or local presentism (presentness defined relative to observers or frames of reference) or by proposing a preferred foliation of spacetime. There are also subtler debates about how to handle history, causation, and persistence within a presentist framework.

In addition, the term presentism is used in historiography to describe a bias toward interpreting the past through present-day standards, a concern for methodological rigor in historical interpretation.