In the description of the origin of time from the self-alienation of eternity, also, the guiding idea is still the ancient contrast typology of the bustling inquisitiveness that forgets its own business. But here an attempt at motivation does after all show through clearly: The reposeful presence of eternity is perceived as a reservation, awakening the vaque idea of a possible greater possession, which seems graspable by the bold venture of self-appropriation (idiosis). Thus the repose of possession gave rise to motion, in which eternity 'temporalized' itself. The world arises from eternity's venturing forth into time as a result of a restless passion for the incommensurate, a passion that, as it were, produces its own objects and in its enjoyment of them goes outside itself. If this mysterious unrest in the essential self-sufficiency of the eternal is the origin of the hypostatic surplus, as which the cosmos is now conceived--and thus defined, in terms of its origin alone, as the object of an equally mysterious recollection of the truth of its origin, by which the degenerate being is awakened to itself and brought back.

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age