La durata dell’essere. Benet Perera sul tempo

The paper deals with the doctrine of time exposed in the De communibus omium rerum naturalium principiis et affectionibus (1576) by Benet Perera. What is the nature and status of time? How does time belong or may it belong to the being? Answering these questions and referring to Aristotle, Augustine and Averroes, Perera remarks on the existence of two different traditions in the field of scholastic philosophy: the first tradition underlines the objective reality of time considering it extrinsically and identifying time with movement that is quantitatively measurable; the second tradition states the noetic reality of time considering it intrinsically, i.e. belonging to the mind and its operations. From his own point of view, Perera gives an “ontological” solution to these problems, thinking of the nature of time not only as duration of movement of beings in respect to before and after, but also (and above all) as intrinsic duration of every existing thing. In this sort of “transcendental” meaning, time is co-extended with eternity (i.e., the duration of the eternal being which has neither beginning nor end) and aeviternity (i.e., the duration of intelligent and angelic beings which have a beginning and end).