Von Wright's work has been characterized by an intense interest in the logic and the philosophy of time, dating back to his famous articles in the mid-sixties, "And Next" (1965), "And Then" (1966) and "Always' (1968), and to a paper that has been widely discussed in Italy, namely "Time, Change and Contradiction" (1969), which seemed to suggest the possibility of a formalization of dialectic logic in a moment in which Marxism held a strong grip on many Italian intellectuals. I think it is safe to assume that von Wright's interest in temporal logic was spurred both by his interest in modal logic — temporal and modal concepts have strong structural analogies and can be given a similar semantics — and by his concern for a theory of human action which could make room for a genuine notion of change and for our freedom (1980).