The future is most inadequately characterized by defining man as the "goal-setting being." The somehow remote "goal" appears as a fixed point, discontinuous with the present, whereas what is decisive is the immediate carryover of present will, feeling, and thought into the future. The living present exists in the fact that it transcends the present. With every exertion of the will, here and now, we demonstrate that a threshold between now and the future is just not real; that as soon as we assume such a threshold, we stand at once on this side and on that side of it.

DEFINE: Redefines the living present not as a boundary but as a continuous transcendence into the future, contrasting with the 'goal-setting being' definition.

DEFINE: Challenges the conventional definition of humans as 'goal-setting beings' by arguing the goal is discontinuous with the present, whereas what matters is the immediate carryover of present will into the future.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 807