Operatoric Research Corpus
Studies in World-Formation
Section V
Work and Emergence Economy
Volume 12
Eigenzeit and the Ontology of Poverty
The present volume brings together two contributions that pursue a common foundational question: under what conditions can world become binding at all, and what follows when this condition is structurally destroyed. The point of departure is the diagnosis that many contemporary crises of modern societies—political incapacity to act, the reproducibility crisis in science, the simulation of responsibility in administration and technology, and the expansion of structural poverty—share a common but rarely articulated cause: an inadequate ontology of time.
The first contribution develops the concept of Eigenzeit as a categorical alternative to dominant models of time, particularly to the widespread assumption of a block-like continuum of world-time. Eigenzeit does not denote subjective duration or a physical measure, but an ontological operation: the non-delegable instantiation of world-time in human action. Time appears here not as a neutral container of events but as the effect of irreversible closures in structurally open worlds. Decisions do not merely produce changes within an already given temporal framework; they bind world irreversibly. From this perspective, far-reaching consequences emerge for science, politics, and human rights. Reproducibility proves to be a property of closed world-conditions; politics reveals itself as structurally incapable of deciding Eigenzeit collectively; and rights appear insufficient insofar as they implicitly address the human being without protected Eigenzeit as an administrable object.
The second contribution examines the social consequences of this ontological structure. Building on the concept of Eigenzeit, poverty is interpreted not as a socio-economic condition of scarcity but as the ontological consequence of systematically withdrawn world-binding. Modern systems of work, markets, and social security increasingly organize action in procedural time while structurally preventing irreversible world-binding. Poverty thus appears as a permanent impossibility of living Eigenzeit. This condition is conceptualized as existential prohibition (Existenzverbot): a structural constellation in which life remains formally permitted, yet the possibility of performing actions that bind and carry world is effectively withdrawn.
Taken together, the contributions show that central societal conflicts arise not primarily from moral or organizational deficits but from a temporal-ontological blindness toward irreversible world-formation. The volume therefore does not propose Eigenzeit as another model of time, but as a necessary categorical complement wherever reality is not presupposed but brought into being through responsible decision. From this perspective, poverty, political paralysis, and the simulation of responsibility appear as symptoms of an order that administers time while failing to protect the conditions under which time—and thus world—can come into existence.
Download PDF: https://zenodo.org/records/18999898
