Hilda Oakeley’s Time Realism

Abstract Within late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British philosophy, Hilda Oakeley became the first woman philosopher to defend realism about time. In 1911, she argues for the reality of time; from 1913 onwards, she discusses the nature of time, her metaphysics exhibiting Bergsonian features. This chapter studies the origins of Oakeley’s views. Her work is important for various reasons. First, she is an early time realist, and her reasons for defending realism are quite different to