This teaching note introduces Francis Wolff’s proposal in 'Le Temps du monde' (2023), which reopens the question 'What is time?' beyond the usual aporetic opposition between physical time and phenomenological time. Wolff develops a descriptive metaphysics of time, focusing on the 'time of the world' rather than the time of nature or consciousness. Given that time is a primitive entity, thus prone to circular definitions, it is conceived by Wolff by proxy through its manifestations: permanence, succession and simultaneity. Partially inspired by classical John McTaggart’s series A and B (1908), Wolff seeks a third analytical (mid-)way, a conception of time that avoids both eternalism and presentism. Central to this view is the 'now' ('le maintenant', in the original), described as the 'engine of time' ('the perpetual being-other of the now'). and as the world’s objective present. Time becomes the necessary order of the alteration of the 'now', while the future is critically understood as 'absolute non-being'.

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