If the past no longer exists, what exactly is my regret about?
I served twenty-two years in the army, the last part on the DMZ. There are a few decisions I regret, none of them dramatic, all of them still with me. Reading about the philosophy of time has given me a strange new question about that regret.
If presentism is right and only the present exists, then the decisions I regret are not anywhere. They are not real. My regret seems to be about nothing, or only about a memory, which is a present thing in my head. Augustine said something like this: the past exists only in memory. But my regret is not about my memory. It is about what I did to other people.
If eternalism is right, the past is as real as the present, just located earlier. Then my decision is still "there", permanently, in the block of time. That gives my regret a real object, but it also means nothing I do now can touch it. It is fixed forever.
Neither seems right. On one view my regret has no object; on the other its object is permanently beyond repair. I would like to hear how others think about this, especially people whose traditions have thought about repentance and repair. Is there a view of time in which the past is real but not closed?