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The question of temporal becoming asks: do we live in a dynamic universe where time genuinely flows and the present is real, or in a static block universe where all times are equally real? The metaphysical status of time's passage remains one of philosophy's deepest puzzles.
From your study of the philosophy of time, you know that there are two broad frameworks for thinking about time's structure. The A-series (introduced by J.M.E. McTaggart) orders events by their dynamic, ever-changing properties: future, present, and past. These properties flow — an event that is future becomes present, then past, then ever more distantly past. The B-series orders events by their permanent, relational properties: earlier than, simultaneous with, later than. The Battle of Hastings is permanently earlier than the French Revolution regardless of when you ask. Temporal becoming is the question of whether the A-series describes anything real — whether there genuinely is an objective "now" that flows through time — or whether only the B-series is real.
A-theorists (sometimes called dynamists or presentists in their strongest form) hold that temporal becoming is a genuine, fundamental feature of reality. The present moment is not just one time among many that we happen to occupy; it is privileged, objectively "now." Time flows in a real sense: new events come into existence, the present moves, and the past is fixed and unreachable. The felt sense that time passes — that we are swept forward from the past into an open future — reflects something true about the world's structure. Among A-theorists, presentists go furthest: only the present exists; past and future are not real. The growing block view says past and present exist but the future does not — reality is a block that accumulates as time passes.
B-theorists (sometimes called eternalists or block universe theorists) hold that all moments of time are equally real — the past, present, and future are all "there," arranged in a four-dimensional spacetime manifold. The word "now" is like the word "here" — it refers to the position of the speaker, but it doesn't pick out anything metaphysically special. 2023, 2026, and 2070 are all equally real; we just happen to be located at 2026. On this view, temporal becoming is an illusion — or at best, a perspectival phenomenon arising from our position in time, not a mind-independent flow. Special relativity lends powerful support to B-theory: in relativistic physics, there is no privileged "now" across the universe; simultaneity is relative to reference frames. If physics doesn't recognize an objective present, it is hard to see how there could be one.
The phenomenological challenge to B-theory is powerful. We experience time as passing — the present feels uniquely vivid and real in a way the past and future don't. If B-theory is correct, why do we have this experience? B-theorists typically argue that the experience of "nowness" is explained by our temporal location: we have memories of the past, perceptions of the present, and anticipations of the future, which creates an asymmetric phenomenology without requiring that any moment be objectively privileged. The flow of time is, on this view, analogous to the way "here" feels special even though no spatial location is metaphysically privileged.
The deepest difficulty for A-theory is McTaggart's own argument that the A-series is self-contradictory. Every event must have all three A-properties (future, present, past) at some time, but these properties seem mutually exclusive. A-theorists respond that the properties apply at *different times* — an event is future at times before it, present at the time it occurs, past at times after it. But McTaggart argued this response is circular: it defines the A-series properties in terms of times, which are themselves A-series positions. Whether this regress is vicious or merely unavoidable is what separates A-theorists from B-theorists — and why temporal becoming remains genuinely contested at the intersection of metaphysics and physics.
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