The notion of time seems to be politically quite neutral, merely a concept of something that exists in much the same way that the weather exists. We can, of course, adopt different attitudes to the weather, but there does not seem to be any great political relevance in those attitudes. Yet when one thinks about the nature of time it is clear that attitudes to it are important socially. If one experiences time as a container that inexorably directs our lives in particular ways, because we are in it, we shall place little reliance on our individual efforts to accomplish anything that runs contrary to what is often called the “river of time.” What are often called pre-modem attitudes to time are taken to be characterized in this way, where agents were ultimately pessimistic of their ability to do anything really different. In the words of Kohelet in the Bible, “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes1:9). That is taken to mean that there is pattern to what takes place in our world, and that pattern is beyond the power of human beings to alter.