Age as the Naturalization of Historical Time

Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis

Abstract

The concept of age, used to describe historical time, is dual in nature: it refers both to the time of human existence and the time of a human collective. By examining what happens when historical time, or collective communal time, is viewed from the perspective of individual human existence, we first trace the history of various conceptions of time. We demonstrate how the concept of historical time has developed along-side the physical-scientific and mythical-religious concepts of time. By revealing their fundamental differences, we illustrate how the mythical concept of natural-cosmic time has influenced the understanding of historical time for many centuries. This blending of historical and mythical times has been expressed in two ways: religiously, by imagining historical time as subordinate to transcendent powers, or anthropomorphically, by drawing an analogy with the time of human life.

In this article, we defend the idea that comparing historical time with the ages of human life is a specific way of mythologizing it. We call this the myth of modernity, or ideologism, based on Roland Barthes’ analysis of the myths of modernity. This framework allows us to show how social time is always brought closer to nature, creating the illusion that societal processes are inevitable, necessary, eternal, unchanging, not accidental, and not dependent on human will and freedom, thus seemingly beyond change and transformation. By expanding on Barthes’ insights, we argue that the mythologization of historical time through naturalization is possible because natural-scientific and mythical-religious time share a common feature, despite their functioning as opposites: both operate on static periods of time, whether idealized (as in myth) or abstracted (as in ancient physics). To substantiate our claim, we present theories of the ages of man as they have functioned in Western thought, revealing that these ages have always been conceived by analogy with natural time (such as the seasons or phases of celestial bodies) or biological laws. Consequently, this tendency extends to historical time when it is compared with human ages: social historical time becomes naturalized, biologized, and thus mythologized.

In the second part of the article, we analyze how the concept of human age has been expressed in visual arts, focusing on some of its most famous representations, particularly the enigmatic paintings by Titian. Our analysis shows that Titian did not merely create mythical allegories where human age functions as ideal types. In one of his works, a completely different notion of time emerges: the inner time of the soul or human perception. Titian’s originality lies in his portrayal of the composite threefold time of the soul, encompassing the present, past, and future, and relating it to different generations and ages of man – elderliness, maturity, and youth.

This connection allows us to view the relationship between different generations not as a simple linear sequence, but as a complex interaction, analogous to the interplay between the present, past, and future that the present considers. Most importantly, compared to the idealized states of mythologized nature, this understanding enables dynamic interaction both between states of consciousness and between different human ages.

The analysis of Titian’s allegorical treatment of time suggests how the danger of mythologizing historical time through naturalization can be avoided. This is possible if Time is not reduced to a sequence of static states but is seen as a continuum where temporal states pass into and affect one another, just as different generations or age groups do not merely succeed each other but interact dynamically.