Time is money, Benjamin Franklin once said, and in a reading of European philosophy, this text shows how true this adage is. A history of philosophy of time, and a comparison of ways of conceiving the temporal, this work attempts to unravel the theoretical frameworks that have given time its shape in Western civilization. It analyzes the social and political processes involved in conceptions of time in ancient and medieval tradition and sets them in the context of contemporary political and philosophical debates centering on the thought of Kant and Marx. It forces the reader to re-evaluate the philosophical and historical status of time in Western culture.