Against the Block: A Realist’s Rejection of the Block Universe

Eternalism, or the block universe theory, maintains that past, present, and future events all exist equally in a four-dimensional spacetime. This paper presents a comprehensive critique of eternalism’s weaknesses across metaphysical, epistemological, phenomenological, and empirical dimensions. Metaphysically, eternalism’s commitment to all times being equally existent (in contrast to Existential Realism’s distinction between existence and reality) is argued to be an ontologically inflationary leap that raises problems of change and becoming. Epistemologically, we question how knowledge can extend to events that, under eternalism, “exist” beyond any possible observation. Phenomenologically, the block universe is at odds with the immediacy and flow of temporal experience, treating the vivid present as an illusion. Empirically, we challenge the common presupposition that the formalism of relativity theory straightforwardly entails eternalism – a philosophical extrapolation from physics rather than a necessary conclusion. Throughout, we engage with key voices: Einstein’s relativity-driven eternalism, van Fraassen’s empiricism, Markosian’s and Crisp’s defenses of a tensed reality, among others. We contrast eternalism with Existential Realism, a recent framework distinguishing existence (present, observable being) from reality (including past and future structures). This distinction preserves the empirical primacy of the present while affirming the causal reality of the past and the openness of the future. We argue that Existential Realism provides a more coherent and experientially anchored ontology of time. The critique is organized into numbered sections, each concluding with references. It is, in short, an anchored approach to time — one that preserves experiential reality without ontological excess.