SOURCE: “McTaggart on Time,” in Mind, Vol. XXXIX, No. 153, January, 1930, pp. 26-42.

In the following essay, Gotshalk attempts to refute McTaggart's notion against the reality of time as presented in his The Nature of Existence.

The topic of this article is McTaggart's argument against the reality of time. This important argument, first stated in this journal in 1908, and re-stated two years ago in The Nature of Existence,¹ remains, so far as I know, unrefuted. And it is considered by many to be irrefutable. The aim of this article is to examine McTaggart's argument and to sketch out, as I think I can, a refutation.

McTaggart divides his argument into two parts. In the first part he endeavours to show that the distinctions of past, present, and future, are essential to time. Time, if real at all, must form an A series: that is to say, it must form...