SOURCE: “Time and the Self in McTaggart's System,” in Mind, Vol. XXXIX, No. 154, April, 1930, pp. 175-93.

In the following essay, Oakeley questions McTaggart's proposition in the second volume of The Nature of Existence that the self can exist in reality simultaneously with the unreality of time.

It is proposed in this article to examine the problem which confronts us throughout the second volume of The Nature of Existence. Is it possible consistently to combine a doctrine of the reality of selves with rejection of the reality of time? It might be supposed that the history of philosophy had shown that these two positions can be consistently held together. There is the great example of Leibniz with whose treatment of time that of McTaggart has important affinities. I should, however, argue that Leibniz's pluralism of selves, in spite of the fact that his whole philosophy seems to be involved...