Kairos
The Kairos is a concept which, assistant of the Aion and the Cronos , makes it possible to define the Temps. These concepts appeared at the Greek .
Definition
Kairos is the time of the convenient occasion. It qualifies one moment.
- “Now is the good moment to act. ”
For Aristote, in the Man of Genius and the Melancholy (translation, presentation of J. Pigeaud, Payot, Shores, 1988, p. 88), “The Mélancolique is the man of the kairos, of the circumstance. ”
Kairos, a dimension of time having nothing to do with the concept linéraire Stopwatches, pourraît being regarded as another dimension creating depth in the moment.
Kairos is a young Greek beautiful young man who carries only one tuft of hair on the head. When it passes to our proximity there are 3 possibilities: 1) one does not see it; 2) it is seen and nothing is done; 3) at the time or it passes I tighten my hand and I seized his I and tuft of hair stop it (I stop time). Kairos gave in Latin Opportunitas (opportunity, to seize the occasion)
Kairos in arts and trades
Kairos is a time whose understanding is paramount in many fields:
Room towards the temporal one while passing by right measurement, the kairos had many more or less established and compatible significances. One often translates it by “occasion” but the term restores only very partially a rich concept of all its displacements. It is not possible to find a term French are equivalent which can mark all the relationships that the Greek concept knew.
The kairos operates the meeting of two problems: that of the action and that of time. All its meanings are not temporal (in particular those which refer to “right measurement” and “suitability”) but they contain and supplement as we will see it the germs of a specifically temporal significance. The kairos implies a vision of the time which can be reconciled with a requirement for effectiveness of the human action. The kairos is one moment, but if one only includes/understands “moment” as one measurable duration which extends from a point has at a point B, one is certain to miss it. It is all the more trying to speak about a time suitable for the kairos that the Greeks made an often associated temporal divinity of it, to see confused with Chronos.
The kairos is attached to a certain type of actions which must be accomplished “in time” and tolerate neither the delay, nor the hesitation? If the concept of kairos is indissociable Greek word, it is also indissociable of a context which is that of Greece of IVe and Ve century before J. - C. has one time when the action becomes autonomous and does not depend any more divine will, the need for observing the kairos was released for the Greeks from their experiments in multiple fields:
The medical field: Hippocratiques released the concept of crisis, moment critical where the disease develops towards the cure or death. They is precise at this time which the intervention of the doctor takes a character necessary and decisive.
The military field: The good strategist knows that the victory is not a numerical simple matter of superiority and that one moment ago when the attack related to the adversary will bring panic and will give a final exit to the battle.
The field of navigation: where kairos, associated with tuche makes it possible to the navigator to move while thwarting the traps of the sea. It is more particularly in this context than one finds it mongrel or intelligence of the trick.
The political arena: In the Peloponnesian War, Thucydide makes an important place with the kairoi which crosses the history. These moments which engage the fate of the cities: declarations of war, negotiations or ruptures of alliances.
In rhetoric, “the kairos is the principle which controls the choice of an argumentation, the means used to prove and, more particularly, the adopted style”. It indicates also the moment when it is necessary to draw the attention of the listeners to achieve a reversal of persuasion.
The artistic field: it is the negligible nuance, the tiny correction which makes successful work. It became consequently the moment when an artist must stop and let his work live his own life.
The moral field: at the Tragedies, the kairos preserves us disproportion and teaches us that suitability should be respected. In the ethical treaties of Aristote the direction of the concept is reduced to become the category of the Good according to time.
The kairos thus has a very broad field of application. Hésiode says to us that it is “all that there is best” and Euripide that it “is best guides in all undertaken human”. It is however not given to everyone to seize it; it belongs to the specialist who, having general knowledge, is able to integrate into it the factors of the moment which will enable him to seize the characteristic of the situation. The kairos concerns a reasoning and it is not subjected to the play of the chance, however it plays a decisive part in the unforeseeable and unusual situations.
All the meanings of kairos are not directly related to time but all are related to the effectiveness. Whatever the field considered (medicine, strategy, rhetoric…) it reverses the situations and gives them a final exit (the life or death; victory or the defeat). It is the condition of the successful action and it teaches us that paradoxically, the success is due to almost nothing. If it is so difficult to define it, that also comes from what it raises of “almost nothing” (Vladimir JANKELEVITCH, certain something and almost-nothing, Paris, PUF, 1957).
He constantly escapes the definitions which one tries to apply to him because he is always at the joint of two concepts: the action and time; competence and the chance; the general and the private individual. He is never entire on a side or another. This indetermination is related to its decision-making power. It retains for each case the relevant elements to act but it does not merge with them. It is “free” to change and therefore it is as difficult to seize in practice as to include/understand in the theory.
Kairos in other cultures
The Chinese have a concept of time that one can bring closer to Kairos: Che.
See too
Kairos is also the name of a group of investment founded in 2006.Related articles
- Cronos (philosophy)
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