nunc stans

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin nunc (“now”) + stāns (“staying, remaining”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌnʌŋkˈstænz/, /ˌnʊŋkˈstænz/

Noun

nunc stans (uncountable)

1. (Christianity, philosophy) Eternal existence as an attribute of God.
   • 1651, Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan:

     But they will teach us that eternity is the standing still of the present time, a nunc-stans, as the schools call it; which neither they nor any else understand, no more than they would a hic-stans for an infinite greatness of place.

   • 2009, Patricia Bowen-Moore, Hannah Arendt’s Philosophy of Natality:

     In other words, at the point where the infinite past and the infinite future collide into the present of a nunc stans they spark into existence, as it were, the mental phenomenon of a timeless present which overcomes all ordinary time constructions.

   • 2005, Robert Spaemann, Happiness and Benevolence:

     In its radical transcendence of all finite states the subject enters into the space of a nunc stans, in the face of which all temporality becomes an unreal appearance.

Related terms

• hic stans