Kairós: In Defence of Due Time

Shedding new light on the fundamental philosophical problem of time, leading Italian philosopher Giacomo Marramao offers a solution to today’s 24/7 culture.

If we were asked to name the social syndrome of our age under capitalism, it would no doubt be ＂rush＂. Intentional animals as we are, we experience the meaningless acceleration of time, which devours instants and misses its target just like its opposite, undue hesitation. For Marramao, rush and slowness or rashness and hesitation are two mirror forms of untimeliness: two unsuitable ways of seizing time.

Through engagement with sources including Heidegger, Bergson, Saint Paul the Apostle, Newtonian physics, and postmodern theory, Marramao calls for a change to how we perceive time. Delving into the Greek and Roman concepts of tempus, chronos, and aión, he argues that there should be no opposition between the scientific-objective time and the existential-subjective one. As such, he introduces his own theory of kairós, or ＂due time＂, as the notion of fertile and decisive timeliness. A timely decision, Marramao advances, is generated by the productive tension between opposites: a tension created equally by swiftness and caution, promptness and conformity with the action’s purpose.

Originally published in 1992, this updated edition of Kairós: In Defence of ＂Due Time’’includes a new preface speaking to today’s social and political climate, as well as an introduction by Marramao himself, in which he reflects on his long engagement with temporality from Power and Secularizationup until today.

Giacomo Marramao is Professor of Political and Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Rome III, Italy and Director of the Fondazione Basso. His publications available in English include The Passage West: Philosophy After the Age of the Nation-State (2012), Against Power: For an Overhaul of Critical Theory (2016), Interregnum: Between Biopolitics and Posthegemony (2020) and The Bewitched World of Capital Economic Crisis and the Metamorphosis of the Political (2023).