This course will be an exploration of the metaphysics of time and modality from a contemporary analytic perspective. Our primary focus will be on questions surrounding the metaphysical status of the past, the future, and the merely possible; as well as on what it takes for a state of affairs to be genuinely contingent and temporary. We’ll start by gaining familiarly with the contemporary debates surrounding these issues: We’ll examine A-theories and B-theories, presentism and eternalism, and varieties of modal realism and actualism. We’ll then move to consider some meta-metaphysical questions surrounding these debates: What’s at stake in the ontological disputes in these areas? What does it take to be a realist about temporal passage and metaphysical contingency? And finally, what should we make of the deep structural parallels between the temporal and modal domains?

Readings will be drawn primarily from contemporary work in analytic philosophy. Students registered for the course will be required to submit a final paper. The course will be taught in English.