Pier Damiani, il cinema e la modificabilità del passato

Peter Damian, Cinema and the Transformability of the Past. Is it possible to modify the past? One is naturally inclined to answer this question in the negative. The past has already occurred, and what has occurred appears necessarily fixed – it could not have been otherwise. The necessity of the past implies the necessity of the present: if the past were subject to change, the present would be as well. In the history of philosophy, the first thinker to attribute to God the capacity to alter the past appears to have been Peter Damian. Although Damian affirms this possibility, he does not provide a clear account of how such a modification could occur, nor of the effects it might have on the world. Scholars have proposed various interpretations of his position, and imaginative fictions – particularly those portrayed in movies involving time travel – can help us envision what altering the past might entail for the present.