Reality, Existence and the Present Moment

  From The Philosopher CXIIII No. 1 Spring 2026 

By Tenzin Trepp

The Ancients often insisted that only the present moment – the ‘now’ – truly exists, that the past is gone, while the future is not yet real. Some even thought that time itself was just an illusion. And yet… if the past is truly nothing and the future a fantasy, why do they weigh so heavily on us? We live through time so intimately, yet when we stop to analyse it, we risk losing our grip on what it means. In this essay, I will argue that there are two ways to see time, and that they are both incomplete

Philosophers have long debated the reality of the past and future. Saint Augustine confessed his bafflement 1,600 years ago: “I know what time is if no one asks; but if anyone does, then I cannot explain it.”

One intuitive view – sometimes called presentism – says that only the present moment is real; anything in the past no longer exists, and anything in the future does not exist yet. On this view, reality shrinks to the here and now. It sounds sensible at first: after all, we only directly experience the present. But taken strictly, presentism draws a hard line through time – yesterday and tomorrow become nothing more than ideas or memories. If only the present exists, it becomes mysterious how we can still be guided by the past or obligated to the future. How can a prior event that no longer exists continue to leave effects, memories, or records in its wake? And how can we prepare for a future that’s truly non-existent? Reducing reality to a flickering now threatens to make a mockery of our experience of continuity and responsibility.

At the opposite extreme is the view known as eternalism, which holds that the past, present, and future all exist, and all do so in an equally real sense. Time becomes a four-dimensional “block” in which every event – from the age of the dinosaurs to your future grandchildren – is fixed. If presentism was intuitive, eternalism can be mind-bending. Some find solace in the idea that the past and future have a lasting footing. But eternalism comes with new puzzles. If tomorrow already exists out there, why can’t we see it or reach into it? Why are we apparently locked into experiencing only a single moment – this one – if all moments exist equally? In a fully eternalist world, the flow of time and the special feeling of “now” become hard to explain at all. 

Credit: Astronomy: Roen Kelly, after Steven Savitt

Presentism fits naturally with our ordinary sense that only the present is fully alive and immediate. But it struggles to explain how the past can still matter so deeply, or how modern physics complicates the idea of a single universal “now”. Eternalism, or the block universe view, fits neatly with certain ideas in modern physics. But this neatness comes at a cost: it treats every moment in time as equally real, making it harder to explain why the present feels so special and alive to us. In relativity, there is no single universal present shared by everyone. What counts as ‘now’ can depend on perspective and motion. But this does not mean that the difference between past, present, and future disappears. It may simply mean that the present is always tied to a particular situation rather than to one cosmic moment stretching across the universe.

It sits uneasily with the all too real difference between past, present, and future that is our everyday experience.

Modern physics has complicated the old idea that there is one single ‘now’ shared by the entire universe. What counts as the present can depend partly on perspective and motion. But this does not mean that the present is unreal. Instead, it may simply mean that the present is something experienced from within particular situations rather than as a single cosmic moment stretching everywhere at once. Whatever the physicists tell us, ordinary people still live with a deep difference between what is happening now, what has already happened, and what has not yet happened. Eternalism tries to explain this by treating all moments as equally real, but we may still feel that this misses something important about the special role of the present in ordinary life. Our experience of time passing, along with the sense that reality is unfolding, becomes difficult to account for. So, instead, we may still seek philosophies that allow the present to remain special without denying the reality of the past or reducing time to a frozen block.

At the moment, one view privileges the present at the expense of past and future, while the other preserves an all-encompassing timeline at the expense of the very notion of a flowing, living present. Each side captures an intuition about time, yet each does so by denying something else we know to be true in our lives.

It is no wonder that many people, and not just philosophers, feel torn about how to think of time. Are we supposed to act as if only this instant matters, treating our memories and plans as illusions? Or should we imagine that every moment – even ones long gone or yet to come – exists in a static eternity, with our sense of ‘now’ being a kind of stubborn illusion? Neither option sits well with how we actually experience things. The present is uniquely vivid, the arena of our immediate experience and action. And yet the non-present – what has been and what will be – still calls out to us, still shapes us. Somehow, it seems that we need a way to make sense of this: to understand how the past and future can matter so much. But hold on, is it possible that all the time we’ve been framing the question poorly? Perhaps the mistake has been assuming that we must choose between denying the reality of the past and the future or denying the uniqueness of the present moment.

Real but Not Present: A Different View of Time

Perhaps one way to dissolve this impasse is to distinguish more carefully between what it means to exist and what it means to be real. Much of the debate assumes that whatever is real must also [note deletion] exist. But that assumption is precisely what is in question. In everyday terms, ‘existence’ could be reserved for what is here right now, while ‘reality’ extends beyond the present moment. The past and future don’t exist in the present – you can’t telephone Napoleon, nor even shake hands with a future grandchild today – yet those times are still real insofar as they constrain what is true, possible, or mistaken in relation to the present.

This is why I argue that part of the disagreement comes from treating ‘what exists now’ and ‘what is real’ as exactly the same thing. Instead, I argue that these notions must be separated. Existence can refer to what is happening now  — what is concretely present in the world — while reality can include events that no longer exist or do not yet exist but nevertheless belong to the structure of the world.

Once we start looking at the problem this way, the whole discussion begins to shift. The issue ceases to be whether the past and future somehow reach forward or backward to affect the present. Instead, the question becomes whether these moments – future or past - still have the power to shape what is possible, meaningful, or mistaken in our lives now. Put this way, the disagreement between presentism and eternalism may not be as absolute as it first appears. Presentism captures something important about the vividness of …the present. But eternalism captures something important too: that the past and future can never simply be treated as nothing. The past remains real as what has occurred and helped shape the world that now exists, while the future is real not as something already finished, but as a range of possibilities that shape what may happen next.

What does it mean to say that something is real but not present? It means that something can belong to the structure of reality even when it is not presently occurring. Think of a childhood trauma, a joyous wedding day, last year’s scientific discovery – these things do not exist now, not as events happening. But they are undeniably real as past facts. They have left traces in the world and in us. They can constrain what’s possible going forward, and they certainly orient our present choices (through lessons learned or lingering responsibilities). In a similar way, the future matters to us not because it somehow reaches back to affect the present, but because it shapes which of our expectations, hopes, and fears will turn out to be justified.  When astronomers predict a solar eclipse next year, they are not fantasizing. Though the eclipse has not happened yet, we still treat it as something real enough to prepare for and talk about in advance. Nevertheless, the anticipated future possibility already structures your present emotions, plans, and responsibilities. Present action becomes organized around a future that is not yet actual.

In this way, reality is not limited to what exists at this moment in time. Yes, the present is the only place in which events concretely occur and action is possible. But past events no longer occur, yet they remain real insofar as they belong to the structure of what has happened and continue to constrain the present. Our plans, promises, and expectations would make little sense if the future were simply nothing at all. Reality therefore extends beyond the presently existing moment without requiring that all times exist equally. To sum up: only the present moment exists in the strictest sense, but other times can still be real without being presently actual. By separating existence and reality in this way, we allow the past and future to matter without pretending that they are current. A past event does not become nothing simply because it isn’t happening now. It’s real – it occurred, and its consequences are woven into the present– even though it does not exist in the present. Likewise, a future event can be real as a possibility that is already taking shape, without yet existing as an actual event.

Crucially, this approach doesn’t violate our common sense that only action in the present can change things. It agrees that we can only do things now; the present remains the exclusive domain of existence and action. But it also validates our sense that we are not cut off from the rest of time. We live in a continuum where what was and what could be constrain what counts as correct, mistaken, and possible in the present.

Our practices of memory, responsibility, and historical recognition make sense because the past remains part of reality even after it no longer exists in the present. For example, consider memory and history: We keep photographs of loved ones who have passed away because their lives remain part of reality even after they no longer exist in the present. Their actions, relationships, and consequences continue to shape the world that now exists. We build memorials and write history books because past events, though not present, remain part of reality and demand our recognition. Similarly, think of responsibility and regret: if you broke a promise to a friend last week, that moment is gone – you cannot find it anywhere now. But its reality confronts you in the form of guilt and the resolve to make amends. You feel responsible for that past deed precisely because, though the deed isn’t happening anymore, it is real enough to have moral weight. The world in which you broke the promise is the same world you live in today, and that fact calls for repair.

Now consider anticipation and promise. Every time we make a plan or a promise, we are treating the future as a kind of reality we can interact with. Imagine you promise a child a trip to the amusement park next month. That future day doesn’t exist yet; you couldn’t go there with a time machine and find it. But it is treated as a genuine future possibility that already organizes present commitments and responsibilities. You organize your schedule and save money because of that not-yet-existent day. If the day comes and you break your promise, you feel you’ve done wrong – even before it comes, you would feel anxiety at the thought of disappointing the child. Our commitments only make sense because human action is continuously oriented toward future possibilities that may later become actual or fail to do so. Likewise, we fear future dangers (climate change, nuclear war – or just a looming deadline!) and hope for future goods (a graduation, a cure for an illness) because the future is experienced as a range of real possibilities rather than as sheer nothingness. The future is real not as something already completed, but as an open and unfinished range of possibilities that gives meaning to what we do now. Human life is shaped both by what has already happened and by what might still happen.  

This way of thinking reframes the earlier tension.

Living in Real Time

By now, this perspective likely feels intuitive: it hasn’t given us a new dogma about time so much as permission to trust our lived experience of it. Let’s call it Existential Realism. The label matters less than the insight it tries to capture: that existence belongs only to the present, while reality extends across time as the larger structure within which present events are situated. The payoff is not that it eliminates every mystery about time, but that it clarifies why the opposition between presentism and eternalism may be less absolute than usually assumed. It tells us that our ordinary sense of being stretched between past and future is not a mistake or a metaphysical oddity, but a clue to how time really works for us.

Existential Realism can finally explain why, for example, we feel moral weight from the past. A wrong you did years ago doesn’t haunt you because you’re irrationally clinging to a non-existent phantom; it haunts you because the deed is real in the world’s timeline and in your own story. You cannot alter the fact that it happened, but you can respond to its reality – apologise, make reparations, learn and change. Likewise, the future can guide and inspire us without being “already here.” Its reality lies in the realm of possibility and expectation. We hope, plan, and fear precisely because we sense that the future is not just a blank nothingness. We know our plans can succeed or fail, and our warnings can be heeded or ignored.

The future matters because what we do now helps shape what eventually becomes real. Present action is always oriented toward possibilities that have not yet become actual. As the philosopher Hannah Arendt observed, human beings survive the uncertainty of the future by making promises – creating ‘islands of security’ in the ‘ocean of uncertainty’ that the future inherently is. And we cope with the unchangeability of the past through forgiveness which, as Arendt says, serves to release us from what is done, so that we aren’t forever prisoners of a single past act. Without the ability to be forgiven, she warns, we “would remain the victims” of our past deeds forever; without the binding force of promises, we would be “condemned to wander… without direction” in an unpredictable future. Our lives constantly reach backward and forward in exactly these ways, repairing the past and preparing for the future.

Acknowledging that the past and future are real (even if only the present exists) reorients us to why time matters at all. Time is not just something that carries us along helplessly. It is also what allows us to grow, remember, promise, regret, hope, and change. The present is where we live and act, but it doesn’t float in isolation. It emerges from a past and opens onto a future that are also real, though in a different way. Understanding this deepens our appreciation for how we should live our lives. It reminds us why the past can still claim us and why future possibilities can guide us – why sacrifices made by those before us still hold meaning, why visions of a better world, or alternatively of looming dangers, force choices long before those possibilities become actual. And finally, it illuminates how we, as individuals and communities, live forward through time: not in a disconnected series of present moments, but through an unfolding reality that we inherit, sustain, and bequeath. We live in real time – a time in which each present moment grows out of a real past and opens toward a future that is still unfinished. And that makes our fleeting present all the more significant, understanding it is the ever-moving frontier within which reality grows.