Time Clipping Cupid's Wings (1694), by Pierre Mignard — Used here as a symbolic representation of the dominant modern metaphysical conception of time (Chronos) — Chronological — linear and measurable. Disciplining life and experience under the logic of control, prediction, and utility. Cutting off the wings Cupid — the representation of love, connection and authentic being within modern experience.
To imagine another worldview is to tear through the gravitational pull of one’s own assumptions. In other words, one is entering a metaphysical, mental, black hole. The metaphor of a black hole is used to describe the act of imagining another worldview, because one does not merely translate another’s beliefs but must traverse a different dimensionality of thought. A black hole is an object which seems to defy the laws of our universe. The matter drawn into it seems to lead somewhere and not just disappear into nothingness. The question then becomes; does this metaphor conform to the physical implications of the so- called event horizon of a real-life black hole? – Where gravity is so strong that it creates a one-way trapping point of no return, from which light cannot escape. I.e. are two people of differing worldviews able to transfer complete knowledge between each other?
The diversity of metaphysical worldviews is not a threat to truth, but a gateway to a deeper understanding of oneself and the universe. It reminds us that reality is more mysterious, beautiful and complex than what a single rigid story of reality is able to comprehend.
Modernity does not merely think scientifically; it lives under the metaphysical reign of Chronos. If Chronos seeks to devour time by reducing being to a mere mechanism, then this thesis calls us to re-enchant reality — through the poetic, the embrace of inherent emptiness, and a general opening toward other ways of being.
Mathias Glasdam Jensen
Bachelor’s thesis in philosophy 02/06 – 2025
University of Copenhagen
