Kairos vs Chronos

Discussion

David J. Temple:

"The ancient Greeks had a word (an archetype, really) for this kind of time: kairos, meaning “a chance, penetrable opening” in the flow of time, which allows for something truly new to emerge. It is a potent time of meaning-making and transformation. This is contrasted with chronos, which is linear time, duration, and clock time. Understanding that we have stepped outside of “normal time” is important because the meaning of what is possible can be re-evaluated.

On the inside of normal time, chronos, are the events of our lives, the rhythms of civilization, the seasons, the normal course of things.

On the “inside” of kairos are the portals to new worlds—the non-linear influxes of creativity, disruption, and opportunity. Kairos tells us that within the vast linear fabric of chronos there are “penetrable openings” at certain points, chinks in the regimented armor of time from which the truly new can emerge. Kairos refers to the time within time, the special times, pregnant times, times when the unimaginable is imagined, when the impossible becomes realized. One hour in this time is not worth the same as any other."

(Source: CosmoErotic Humanism, draft review, Spring 2023)