Rethinking time through the episode of the Sleepers: from Aristotle to Abū’l-Barakāt al-Baġdādī

Abstract

The article proposes to consider the use of the episode of the Sleepers in the philosophical investiga-tions on the status of time. First quoted in Aristotle’s Physics to demonstrate the dependence of time on motion, which the soul numbers, the episode is cited – through the mediation of Avicenna – in the Kitāb al-Mu’tabar or The book about what has been established by personal reflection by the philosopher of Jewish origin Abū’l-Barakāt. In his text he proposes to remodel the original history, to imagine a different scenario that accounts, ultimately, for the inevitable time–movement fracture: more than being an accident of movement, time is, in Abū’l-Barakāt’s innovative reading, the meas-ure of existence.