trawny_peter - the future of time - reflections on the concept of time in hegel and heideger

8/9/2019 TRAWNY_Peter - The Future of Time - Reflections on the Concept of Time in Hegel and Heideger

1/29

The Future of Time:Reflections on the Concept of Time

in Hegel and Heidegger

PETER TRAWNY

Bergische Universtät Wuppertal

1. “Our” Time?

In Heidegger’s reections on “The Overcoming of Metaphysics” one encoun-

ters the thought that Hegel’s philosophy would be the “beginning of the com-

pletion of metaphysics” while Nietzsche’s thinking would be its end; the

complete completion, as it were, is thus brought to expression.1

Approximately a decade previously in the penultimate paragraphs of Being and Time , Heidegger had endeavored to show just how far Hegel’s conceptionof time corresponded to a “vulgar understanding of time.”2 The “vulgar under-

standing of time” would take time as “a sequence of ‘nows’ that are constantly

‘present-at-hand’, simultaneously passing away and coming along,” even as

mere “now-time.”3 Accordingly, Heidegger notes, Hegel would have missed the

authentic signicance of “ primoridial time ,” i.e., “temporality,” which “temporal-izes itself primarily in terms of the future.”4 Decisive here is Heidegger’s empha-

sis that Hegel has left the question “unexamined” as to “whether the way inwhich Spirit is essentially constituted as the negating of a negation is possible

i th th th b i f i di l t lit ”5


2/29

THE FUTURE OF TIME 13

to just what extent Hegel thinks time from the “Now.” The passages that

Heidegger refers to in his discussion all stem from the philosophy of nature, the

philosophy of history, or the Phenomenology of Spirit . The philosophy of religionis left out. With this, Hegel’s oft emphasized identity of “Spirit” and “God” is

left out as well. Of course, this identity holds for the entirety of Hegel’s system.It is of great importance that Hegel sees this identity as coming to itself in

“completed [ vollendeten ] religion,”7 that is, in Christianity.On the whole Heidegger appears to have devoted little attention in Being and

Time to the relationship between “God” and “time.” A statement of Heidegger’sfound in a footnote remains puzzling; it runs: “If God’s eternity can be ‘con-

strued’ philosophically, then it may be understood only as a more primordial

temporality which is ‘innite.’”8 The derogatory tone against a philosophy that

claims credit for “‘construing’” “God’s eternity” is unmistakable. Heideggerexcludes from the outset that such a philosophy could think this in a sensiblemanner . Nonetheless, Heidegger points out that “God’s eternity” must be under-stood from “primordial time,” if at all, and thus from out of the future. The

future is the “‘innite’ temporality” because it refuses every end and self-closure.

Heidegger’s bluntly polemical aversion to Christianity is a late phenomenon.

To take this aversion as the nal word would most probably be a supercial

interpretation (I will come back to this). In the Winter semester of 1920–21

Heidegger gave a lecture in which he remarked the following: “The Christianexperience lives time itself (‘to live’ understood as verbum transitivum ).”9 If we maybe allowed to bring in the puzzling statement from Being and Time above, thenone could suppose that the “Christian experience” of “time itself” is determined

by “primordial time” and thus by the future. Beyond this, in regard to the

rhetorical question put to Hegel, the temporality of Spirit as a “negating of

negation” could be grounded from out of the future as well.

As the “beginning of the completion of metaphysics,” Hegel’s thinking under-

stands the relationship between Spirit and time from out of the “now” or thepresent. This means that the temporality of God is likewise understood from

the “now.” Hegel’s philosophy of religion begins with the fact that for “us,”

insofar as “we”10 are Christians, God is completely present. Opposed to this,

Heidegger evidently holds it as Christian to think the temporality of God from

out of the future.

It would be boring—even when necessary—to ask which conception of

Christianity is veried in the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament. The

question poses itself to “us” otherwise. If “we” are Christians, if “we” have notleft the historical age (Zeitraum) of metaphysics behind, then is “our” relation to


3/29

14 PETER TRAWNY

Christianity then be possible?11 And what would this mean for Heidegger’s

thinking of the “overcoming of metaphysics”? The present essay situates itself

somewhere in the midst of these questions. Doubtless, they are all not entirely

answerable.

2. Time and History in Hegel’s Thinking

Just how much of a problem the question concerning time presents for Hegel—

a problem that goes far beyond the limits of the philosophy of nature—is indi-

cated by a remark from the introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy.It tries to bring to the clarity of a simple phenomenon the fact that philosophy

has a history at all. Hegel sees this as grounded in the “appearance of the Idea

itself.” Indeed, Hegel recognizes that for the question concerning a possiblebeginning or end of history or that of a necessary development of the Idea in

history, such a detail remains barren. For this reason he says: “The most imme-

diate question that can be asked about it [about the application of universal con-

cepts to history] concerns this diV erence in the appearance of the Idea itself . . . —

the question as to how it comes to be that philosophy appears as a develop-

ment in time and has a history. The answer to this question enters into the meta-physics of time , and it would be a digression from the purpose at hand were

anything more than the mere moments pointed out which concern the answerto the question here raised.”12 Hegel’s reference to a “metaphysics of time ” isobscure. Whatever the case, he never treated any such thing. Thus it is not so

certain that his discussions of time in the context of the philosophy of nature

should be taken up as “metaphysics,” for the concept “meta physics ” nonethelessalready says that the former cannot be so simply separated from the latter. A

“metaphysics of time” is peculiarly inappropriate for those parts of the system

having to do with the philosophy of history and religion. It is also hard to place

in the Logic , without being able to entirely deny its importance there as well.On the whole it appears to proclaim an implicit presence. Given this, the

“metaphysics of time” could simply appear as the place in which the tempo-

rally determined relationship between Spirit and God could correspondingly be

observed. “Metaphysics of time” would then be the title for the factual, indeed

extant ( Vorhandene ) unity of the philosophy of history, the philosophy of religion,and the logic.

Surely the gure of speech most frequently used by Hegel for the relation-

ship between Spirit and time runs: “the whole of the development of Spirit

falls . . . into time.”13 It is diYcult to ascertain just what this metaphorical way


4/29


But Spirit does not entirely “fall” into time. Spirit does not entirely bring

itself to time. It brings its “development” to time [ verzeitlicht seine ‘Entwicklung’ ].That it “falls into time” means by and large that it “develops” itself. With this,

one might think that the “development” of Spirit is merely its temporalization

[ Verzeitlichung ]. As necessary as “development” is to Spirit—if Spirit is to entirelycome to itself, and only by so doing is to actualize itself—there corresponds to

this “development” of Spirit the eternity of Spirit that holds itself back from all

such temporalization.

In a history that is still thought of and experienced as open, which is there-

fore at the same time still past and futural, there can indeed be knowledge con-cerning the eternity of Spirit, but not of its “development” in addition to this.

The possibility that there could be knowledge of Spirit, which is simulta-

neously both eternal and develops itself, is founded in that perspective which isable to look down on history as something “settled.” The knowledge of the eter-

nity and “development” of Spirit is necessarily a knowledge of the whole. For one

can only speak of “development” where there is a “goal.” While this is nally

reached only at the very end, with respect to cognition of the whole it is rst.

To be sure, the “result” is not “the actual whole, but rather the result togetherwith the process through which it came about [ mit seinem Werden ];”14 but onlybeginning from a “result” can one speak sensibly of a “becoming” ( Werden ). The

knowledge of a “result” therefore is presupposed in thinking Spirit as simulta-neously both eternal and self developing. Nevertheless, the knowing of a

“result” is itself something temporal in an exceptional way. Hegel remarks:

“Whatever is true exists eternally in and for itself—not yesterday or tomorrow,

but entirely in the present, ‘now’ [ itzt ] in the sense of an absolute present.”15 Aknowing ( Wissen ) that cognizes ( kennt ) the origin, “development,” and “result” of history, i.e., the temporalized side of Spirit, is an “absolute knowing.” This says:

any such knowledge concerning Spirit is the knowing of Spirit itself. “We,” the

members of the “community,”16 nd “ourselves” in a temporality that isin a position to make totally and completely present the whole of the past,

a temporality for which nothing any longer remains outstanding. And this

precisely because everything in and likewise arising out of this past has ful-

lled itself in the possibility of a future no longer to be taken as uncertain, since

nothing diV erent or new is any longer to be expected. Insofar as “our” Dasein

is indeed “below,” that is, insofar as we exist in a worldly manner, “we” are

temporally constituted. The temporality properly “ours,” however, is an

“absolute present.”In order to explain what it means for something to be “absolutely present”


5/29

16 PETER TRAWNY

of this line of thought. The project displays a certain coarseness in the stepwise

progression of its thinking, which in this respect is hardly to be compared with

the relatively clear implementations of the later writings. An interpretation that

devotes itself to the former sequence of steps therefore is at each and every

moment in danger of losing its way.The “mechanics” section of the “Jena system project” concerning “natural

philosophy” from 1805 begins with the presentation of the “Idea,” as it appears

in nature. Its natural manner of appearance is as “absolute matter or aether .” The“aether” is “being ,” which has “annulled [ getilgt ] di V erence as di V erence in itself andleft it behind.” It is consequently that “self-equivalency” [ Sichselbstgleichheit ] inwhich all further “moments” of nature are contained. It is “the pregnant mat-

ter, which, as absolute movement in itself, is gestation.” The “aether” is thereby

this absolute instant to which the collected “moments” of nature are accorded,giving unity to these. It is “the Concept [ Begri V ] as pure Concept in itself.”18

Hegel’s analysis of time is only understable when it is seen that time is alreadyconceptualized . Hegel thinks from the perspective of the “paralyzed unrest[ paralysierten Unruhe ] of the absolute Concept.”19 It is the “absolute present” inwhich “we” already know “ourselves.”

“Space” and “time” in this order are the rst “moments” of the “aether.” It

would not be Hegel if in what follows “the immediate unity of time and space”

were not grasped as “movement.”20 Here, solely Hegel’s discussion of “time”will be considered.

Time is, as Hegel says, “pure quantity as diV erence existing purely for

itself.”21 With time there appears “diV erence,” which still plays no role in the

indiV erence of space. That time is on the whole “quantity” is reminiscent of

the Aristotelian determination of time as riymòw kin®sevw. It is the possibilityof distinguishing “before” and “after.” Time is numeric because it everywhere

opens up the succession of countables. For Aristotle, that through which and

with which time is diV erentiated and, so to speak, counted, is the nèn, for Hegelit is the “one” or the “Now” ( Itzt ).

This “one” or “Now,” as “this relation to itself, [this] equivalency [ Gleichsein ]to itself,” is “negating of others .”22 Because the “one” constitutes the series of in-dividual occurrences —i.e., separates the individuals from one another, diV er-

entiates them, or is di V erence itself ( überhaupt )— time is “of a negative character.”23

The process of the one following upon the other, the one thereby supplanting

the other, is to be understood as the negativity of time. To state it more rigor-

ously: time is negativity.The consideration of the essence of time begins with the “one” or “Now,”


6/29


being is the “undetermined immediate” or the “abstract relation to self,”25 so is

the individual, simple “Now” of time nothing other than immediacy itself.

Both of the other “dimensions” of time, future and past, unfold for Hegel

from out of the “Now,” the “rst dimension”26 of time. The “Now” is negated

by a coming “Now;” a coming “Now” destroys the presencing one; thusthere emerges the “second dimension,” the “future.” This step is signicant

insofar as Hegel’s analysis of time understands the “present” initially from out

of the future. That it is the future and not the past that rst comes into viewfor Hegel is not without importance. The future is the coming ( das Kommende )that negates the present, and thus is present. However, this cannot mean that

the future simply destroys the present. Consequently, the future does not

merely pass into the present negatively. It is as “this negative, to immediately

negate and be its non-being, it is itself Now.”27 It appears that the present is thedoubled, or absolute, negation of the future.

It would be one-sided to say that the future ( die Zukunft ) is the coming ( das Kommende ), which doubly negates itself in bringing forth the present. The com-ing is itself not outside of the “Now.” Hegel writes: “Consequently, the future isimmediately in the present, since it is the moment of the negative in same.”28

Hegel can point out that the “limit”29 (Aristotle: p¡raw, ÷row ) of the present isitself from the present. The crossing over of that which is coming into the

“Now” is consequently “Now.” The negativity that on the whole is appropri-ate to time is thus not the negation of the future, but rather the negation of

the “Now.”

Consequently, the thought that the future would have its own being, one

delimited against the present, is disallowed, for such is not the case. The future

itself has no being, this is merely ascribed to it. So says Hegel: “The future will

be ; we represent [stellen . . . vor ] it as something; we ourselves transpose the being of the present upon it. Its true being is to be Now.” 30 If the future is “some-

thing” that will occur then it is something “represented” ( Vorgestelltes ). It existsnow not as itself. Or it only exists now.

Announced here is a thought against a possible being of the future that Hegel

will also assert in the context of the philosophy of religion. The future becomes

on the whole merely something “represented.” Thinking may be inattentive to

such a “representation,” insisting that the future as the “moment of the nega-

tive” is “immediately in the present.” “Representing” for this reason misses this

negativity, because, in the truest sense of the word, it puts something forth (vor-

stellt ). It is unable from the outset to meet with the future, which Hegel rstunderstands simply as a coming. And while it is surely impossible to show a


7/29

18 PETER TRAWNY

“representable”? Can “representing” “represent” sheer coming? Is the future at

all “something”? Is the suggestion that the future would indeed be thought now ,in the same way that everything is thought now, not itself an argument? An

argument that the mobility of the transition from future into present—that the

coming to the “limit” of the “Now”—would perhaps too quickly be brought toa standstill? Might this be a starting point from which to begin to doubt He-

gel’s analysis of time? Even before this, in the manuscript entitled “Logic,

Metaphysics, Natural Philosophy,” Hegel had thought of the “present” as a

“diV erent relation” in order to sublate this thought into the “self-equivalency”

of conceptualized time.31

The present now emerges immediately from the future as absolute negativity.

The future itself consequently is. To be sure, there is yet a further moment of

the “Now.” The “Now” is also that “which the immediate negating Now hassublated.” In this sentence the word “sublated” must be stressed. It stands in

relation to Hegel’s previous statement: “its concept is an other than that of the

authentic immediate Now.” Here one cannot help but think that with this sup-

posed third way of the “Now,” the rst way, too, comes back into play. The

twofold negation that falls from the future into the “Now” and is this, becomes

something past through its conceptualization. The conceived present is the past.

But once again, not as having gone away, but rather as present. Since the past

is evidently a conceptualized present, it is “completed time.”32 It is completedbecause it is held fast and as such can no longer alter itself; it is “the pure result,

or the truth of time.”33 What “we” are is the “result” of a development. Who

“we” consequently prove to be, that is the “truth” of what has gone before.

Indeed just for this reason, the past that raises itself out of the negation of the

“present” now is a “totality.” It is also, like the future, not in itself; like the

future, the past as such is now.

The “Now” as the “rst dimension” is evidently the “unity”34 in general of

three-dimensional time. What is past, is now past, has arrived in the now andhas enriched this through negation, that is, through sublation. As a result, the

“Now” is the “stilled place” ( beruhigte Ort ) or “the unmoved.”35 Hegel’s thoughtthat “the past [is] the goal” says as much as that time has grasped itself, con-

ceived itself, and thus has “paralyzed” its own movement. Time as something

gone by is not beyond the “Now.” That which will be futural, is ascribed to

the future from out of the now. “We” represent how “something” will be.

There is therefore no future as such—if there is, it is now.

Such a “Now,” construable, on the one hand, as a simple dimension of time,on the other hand can be elevated in an “absolute perspective” (absolute


8/29


Time is conceptualized time. Otherwise stated: the mobility ( Bewegtheit ) of time appears to be tied to the process of conceptualization, indeed, ultimately

time is the “Concept” [ Begri V ] itself. This thought, which already providesthe basis for the Jena projects, is more precisely unfolded by Hegel in the

Phenomenology of Spirit . One must keep in mind that the transition out of the“Philosophy of Nature” into the “Philosophy of Subjective Spirit” requires, as

it were, another perspective. And yet it would be completely mistaken to fun-

damentally separate the system’s two parts, Nature and Spirit.37 Hegel writes in

the Phenomenology: “Time is the Concept itself that is there and which presents itself to consciousness as empty intuition; for this reason, Spirit necessarily appears

in Time, and it appears in Time just so long as it has not grasped its pureNotion, i.e. has not annulled [ tilgt ] Time.”38 That the “Concept” “is there” or

that time is the “existing Concept” ( daseyende Begri V ) means that the “Concept”has brought to concretion the “indeterminate immediate” of Being. Existence

is “a determinate Being,” something “concrete .”39 What is conceived is actual( wirklich ). Beyond this, however, the “Concept” sets in motion the coming to self of Spirit. The “Concept” is the “element” of the dialectical movement of Spirit;

that is, it conducts the ordered movement of negation.40

As time, the “Concept” presents itself to consciousness in the manner of an

“empty intuition.” With this term an allusion is made to Kant’s determina-

tion of time in the Critique of Pure Reason as a “pure form of sensible intuition”(B 47). Nevertheless, Hegel cannot simply mean the same thing. He speaks of

this at the beginning of the Logic , stating there that Being is “only this pureempty intuiting itself.”41 To be able to even speak this way presupposes some-

thing, namely, that there would be an “intuiting” and “thinking.” Starting from

the “Concept,” Being is thought as “that absolute unity of being and reection.”42

But at the same time “objective logic ” is “the genetic exposition of the Concept .”43

Clearly, in the above mentioned thought of the Phenomenology, the Concept is

more precisely to be related to the “determinate Being” of “existence” ( Daseyns ).This is a “concrete ” Being, i.e. one that indeed permits of “a number of deter-minations, distinct relations.”44 As long as the “Concept” is justiably tempo-

ral, simply “is there,” then it has something to do with distinctions and

determinations. What is intuited, however, remains unconceived, as does the

intuition itself. The emptiness of the intuition is its complete immediacy, which

comes to it through the mere “existence” of time. Spirit depends on develop-

ing and actualizing itself, and insofar as it does so, the abstract essence of the

“Concept”—i.e., that it merely “is there ” as an “empty intuition”—achieves afullness. In order to become richer, more concrete, it must “necessarily” appear


9/29

20 PETER TRAWNY

within itself.”46 But it is “complete,” and thus has it endured its “destiny”—his-

tory. To the “fall” into time there follows its overcoming.

Spirit or “the true,” as Hegel explains in regard to Spinoza in the Preface to

the Phenomenology of Spirit , is not only the “substance” but also the “subject” of

Being.47 Spirit thinks itself as self-consciousness, and knows that it is that whichputs history to work ( ins Werk setzt ). That it can know this, however, indicatesabove all else this overcoming of time. As necessarily as the “Concept” places

itself into time, and there, so to speak, exhausts itself, just so necessarily does it

return to itself. Hegel writes in the Encyclopedia : “The Concept, however, in itsfreely self-existent identity as I = I, is in and for-itself absolute negativity and

freedom. Time, therefore, has no power over the Concept, nor is the Concept

in time or temporal; on the contrary, it is the power over time, which is this

negativity only qua externality. Only the natural, therefore, is subject to time inso far as it is nite; the True, on the other hand, the Idea, Spirit, is eternal .”48

The “Concept” is “absolute negativity.” Its temporalization is at rst only a

simple “negation.” The “fall” of Spirit into time is the simple “negation” of its

authentic ( eigentlichen ) eternality, i.e., timelessness. This “fall” is thus to be under-stood as a proof of freedom. It is, economically-trinitarianly thought, “THE

GRACE” ( DIE GÜTE ) of God’s becoming human as institution of the world.Negativity rst becomes “absolute” in once again negating this rst, necessary

negation. The sublation of temporality is, so to speak, the greatest triumph of freedom, of the battle against the “power of time.” The “subject” of Spirit—

self-consciousness—is not like “natural” things “subject to time”; the “Concept”

or “self-consciousness” 49 is beyond time. Insofar as we are rational, and know

that we are so, do we know that there is the past and future only as present.

“We,” as thinking, are in the “absolute present.” The presence ( Anwesenheit ) of God, the being-full ( Erfülltsein ) of time, is the self-knowing knowledge of the pre-sent. Knowing, as carried out in philosophy, is the constant presentication

( Vergegenwärtigung ) of this presence. If “we” think, we think “sub specie aeternitatis .”In the Jena system fragment from 1805–1806, Hegel had already briey

called attention to the role and error of “representation,” which represents what

will be and thereby misses the “negative character” of time. Previously Spinoza

had declared that there is not only one but rather diV erent ways to consider thingsin relation to time. He distinguishes in the Ethics between an undetermined kindof knowledge arising from the senses or experience and a knowledge of a rea-

son ( ratio ) not yet related to God itself. This reason, however, is diV erentiated yet again from the intuitive knowledge of God ( scientia intuitiva ) (Part II,Proposition 40, Scholium 2). Only the rst kind of knowledge can be deceptive,


10/29


Proposition 34, Proof )—or we consider them as they are in God and follow

from the necessity of divine Nature ( ex necessitate naturae divinae ) (Part V,Proposition 29, Scholium). The rst point of view corresponds to the rst two

kinds of knowledge, sensible and rational knowledge. Only the second point of

view corresponds to the third kind of knowledge, hence to that “scientia intuitiva ”which is philosophy itself for Spinoza.

Now for Hegel, too, there is the possibility of understanding things from out-

side of the philosophical self-knowing of Spirit. He remarks: “Furthermore, in

Nature where time is a Now , being does not reach the existence of the diV erenceof these dimensions; they are, of necessity, only in subjective imagination

( Vorstellung ), in recollection ( Erinnerung ) and fear or hope .”50 Insofar as that which ispast is recollected, the present feared, and the future hoped for, distinctions will

be made that do not exist in Nature. And insofar as Spirit knows sublatedNature, it likewise will not cognize these distinctions. When something is

remembered, in order to preserve it against forgetfulness, or when something

is feared that one could surprisingly encounter, or in the case that something

is hoped for that possibly could be better than that which is already familiar,

then these are “subjective representations” ( Vorstellungen ). It is impossible tocarry such distinctions into philosophy, but it is to be borne in mind that Hegel

does not proclaim these distinctions to be false. They are in currency there

where “we” represent—in religion among other places. Thinking, however, hasrecognized them as irrelevant. Remembering, fearing, and hoping do not cor-

respond to the character of reason. Spirit, too, “re-collects” ( er-innert ). To besure, in “recollection”51 Spirit goes into itself, it experiences and knows the pre-

sent of its absoluteness, that is, its eternality.

Appropriate to this going-into-itself of Spirit is a certain mobility. Hegel had

very often explained that the movement of Spirit is equal to a “circle.”52 With

this he takes up in a modied way a thought that is to be found in all of the

important Greek philosophers: the circle describes the most perfect geometricalgure, the ball the best and most beautiful body, and circularity the consum-

mate movement.53 Without doubt, Aristotle’s thought here assumes the utmost

importance. In his lectures on nature Aristotle discusses the appearance that

time would be “somehow a circle” ( kaÜ gŒr õ xrñnow aétow eänai dokeÝ kæklow tiw.233b28f.). In the lectures that “we” commonly gather under the title

Metaphysics , he explains just how far God—to whom noèw is appropriate(1074b15V .), who is thought as zÓon ýdion riston (1072b28), as the eternal,

best living being—performs the most complete motion, namely that of the circle(1072a21). These thoughts nd their way almost unaltered into Hegel’s


11/29

22 PETER TRAWNY

however is likewise the “totality in itself,” it breaks through the respective “re-

striction of its element” and goes over into the adjoining “part.” Thus the whole

forms a “circle of circles.”54

The movement of the circle is closed. Spirit has stepped through all the nec-

essary steps of its development and has returned to its origin at a higher level.It will repeat none of the steps. There is no reason, even in the Phenomenology of Spirit , to suppose that Spirit could repeat its path. Perhaps Spirit enjoys watch-ing the manifested steps repeated; to realize itself, however, it needs nothing

further. In the “community,” the “last supper” symbolizes the repetition of the

nal assembly of Jesus with his disciples.55 The presence ( Gegenwärtigkeit ) of Godis repeatedly acknowledged, though not originally realized. Spirit comes to rest.

“Complete rest” ( Vollendruhe )56 reigns in history, as Hölderlin wrote. The Spirit

that moves history, necessarily moves itself in time. It “produces” ( zeitigt )57 his-tory. However, insofar as it concludes history, time and motion end. Complete

motionlessness, though, cannot come to Spirit. The type of motion that comes

closest to standing still, however, is a self-circling [ ein Kreisen in sich ].58

3. Hegel’s Understanding of Time in Regard to the Philosophy of Religion

The temporal constitution of Spirit is the “absolute present.” In the “absolute

present” historically realizing itself, temporality becomes a “subjective repre-sentation” as “lived” in the everyday manner of rememberance, fear, and hope.

But the relationship between eternity and time does not yet seem to be entire-

ly cleared up. It is problematic to think that time would eternalize itself in the

self-temporalization of eternity. Just as unlikely is it that the eternity of Spirit

would simply annihilate time. The “reconciliation” of Spirit with itself that

Hegel sees occurring at the end of history must also include Spirit’s temporal-

ity. It is the thesis of this essay that this “reconciliation” is expressed in the phi-

losophy of religion. An eminently important point of departure for the Hegelian philosophy of

religion may stem from the gospel of Mark. Handed down there is Jesus’ state-

ment: kaÜ l¡gvn ÷ti pepl®rvtai õ kairòw kaÜ ggiken ² basileÛa toè yeoè.59 “Andhe [ Jesus] spoke: the time is fullled and the reign of God is at hand”

(Mk 1:15). God, i.e., Jesus Christ, has come into the world. Salvation [ Das Heil ]is there, time ( kairñw ) is “fullled.” The becoming human of God is that holyoccurrence from which “we” experience time as “fullled.” The pl®rvma is the

key to understanding Hegel’s concept of time.The word pl®rvma has both an active and a passive sense. It indicates that


12/29


Galatians, and Ephesians as well. The pl®rvma tÇn kairÇn is the fullness of thetime, which has arrived with Christ and the Spirit ( pneèma ) (Eph 5:18). Christ— indeed, in bodily form (Col 2:9)—and the Spirit are consequently themselves

also pl®rvma. But not only these. The Epistle to the Ephesians grasps the

church itself ( ¤kklhsÛa ) as the body ( sÇma ) that fullls everything in everything ( tò pl®rvma toè p‹nta ¤n pŒsi plhroum¡nou ) (Eph. 1:23). So understood, thepl®rvma yeoè (Eph. 3:19) becomes central for Hegel.

Indeed, as fundamental as the writings of the New Testament may be for

Hegel, a student of the Tübingen Stift , it is equally probable that his under-standing of pl®rvma is not based, or at least not solely, in an exacting study(of the Epistle to the Ephesians, for example). It is more likely Hegel’s con-

frontation with Neo-Platonic philosophers, and among these, above all, with

Philo of Alexandria,61 which passed onto him the full meaning of pl®rvma.Thus one nds the following passage concerning Philo in Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy: “The First is therefore the primordial light [ Urlicht ], theessence, the substance, which lls and encompasses everything. He is full of

Himself, aétow ¥autoè pl®rhw ( pl®rvma ). Everything else is needy and empty.This empty negative he lls and encompasses. He is Himself One and All.

[The] One is the abstract, [the] All is absolute fullness. This fullness, however,

is itself still abstract, not yet concrete. The concrete is the lñgow. God lives only

in the ƒAiÅn, in the model [ Urbild ], in the pure Concept of time.”62 It is thetrinitarian movement from the departure or becoming human of God and the

developed return into the pouring forth of the Holy Spirit, the movement from

abstract to concrete, from empty to whole, from unconceived to conceptualized,

which Hegel sees conceived as pl®rvma in Philo.Hegel’s full understanding of pl®rvma rests nally upon the following con-

sideration. On the one hand, Hegel thinks that Spirit must necessarily enter

into and complete its course through time, but on the other hand, Hegel shows

that the “Concept” “eradicates” ( vertilgt ) time. Spirit “eradicates” time in that itsuccessively inltrates time with eternity. Finally, this is “fullled.” The “fullled

time,” however, is neither eternity nor time, but rather something else. Could

it be possible that Hegel thinks pl®rvma as the reconciliation of eternity andtime? The pl®rvma is not eternity in the medium of representation ( Vorstellung ).The pl®rvma, the “fullled time,” is a time concentrated and intensied, frometernity, which results in the completion of the whole.

It is now necessary to further clarify the problem of the Hegelian theory of time in regard to the experience of time characterized as Christian. It is imme-

diately obvious that Hegel contradicts an essential character of the Christian


13/29

24 PETER TRAWNY

judgment,” for example. Hegel’s philosophy of religion gives up the aÞÅnm¡llvn (Mt 12:32) (the hesitant-futural aÞÅn ), it renounces eschatology.

According to Hegel, the Spirit of the “community” “is itself present as such

and requires a fullled present.” The belief in a paradise, past and again to be

attained, or in a future and expected kingdom of God is for Hegel a “confusedimage”—essentially characteristic of the subject, to be sure, though cognized by

philosophical thought as untrue.64 The self-knowing Spirit, insofar as it is

absolute, is necessarily completely present, time has streamed into it. The future

in which, unlike the past, nothing has yet occurred is absolutely “nebulous.”65

The eschaton of revealed religion in the Phenomenology of Spirit is thus a directobjection against this religion. An understanding of the present is appropriate

to religion, an understanding that is founded upon a world that “has still to

await its transguration.”66 But the world of “absolute knowing,” the worldinto which the Holy Ghost has poured, is transgured . Hegel dares to make a con-sequence of the present that which in Christianity remains reserved for the future.

This imposition is expressed in what Hegel translates from the New

Testament. For the further course of the upcoming discussions, the following

claim by Jesus is of the utmost importance: metanoeÝ te: ggiken gŒr ² basileÛatÇn oéranÇn (Mt 4:17). This perfect form of the verb ¤ggÛzein Hegel translatedin the present: the kingdom of Heaven “is here .”67 However it is simply to be

translated: “For the kingdom of God has nearly come forth.” Hegel interpretsnearness ( Nähe ) ( ¤ggæthw ) into the present. The diV erence between nearness andthe present, as slight as it may appear, is nonetheless decisive. For it is to be

shown just how far the Christian experience of time is determined by the near-

ness of the kingdom, by the nearness of the time of its arrival, and thus by the

nearness of God.

To be sure, one could immediately object here that it need not be entirely

wrong to think pl®rvma as the essence of the Christian understanding of time.

Christ is in the world, time is “fullled.” Was Hegel not perfectly right to putaside the eschatological dimension of Christianity? Further still: has Hegel not

in all correctness pointed out a contradiction in Christianity? How do pl®rvmatÇn kairÇn and ¤ggæthw yeoè t together?

We have already indicated that Hegel himself formulates a contradiction by

taking for granted the fulllment of time, on the one hand, and the annullment

of time, on the other. A possible solution to this contradiction is found in

Hegel’s identication of the fulllment of time with the coming of the reign of

God. Without a doubt Hegel had this in mind.

The trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit rounds itself


14/29


sion of Christian belief is thought of as a mere “imagining” ( Vorstellen ). Forthought itself, the central event is the resurrection of Christ, the “DEATH OF

DEATH,”68 and its conrmation in the pouring forth of the Holy Spirit. Time

is “fullled,” the world is reconciled, God makes Himself present: “the

transgured divine World—is this appearing.”69

4. A Thesis on the Historicality of Time

Time is, according to Hegel, the “destiny” of Spirit. It must take on time in

order to bring itself to itself, in order to make itself absolute. This movement

of coming to oneself ( Zusichselbstkommen ) however is a movement of the“Concept.” In that the “Concept” claries more and more the systematic out-

line of the whole, it “annuls” time, i.e., it reaches a place at which negativitycompletes itself: the “Concept” conceives itself. Now the past and the future

can only be spoken of as sublated; they are still there, in that they are now .Spirit knows itself in its “absolute present.”

According to Hegel, this “absolute present” points to no timeless place.Thought in regard to the philosophy of religion, time is fullled. God is Spirit

that is present to itself, that is, is wholly [ überhaupt ] present. “We” are in the“fullness” of God, in a “transgured divine world.”

Hegel is also capable of expressing this historical condition in a much sim-pler fashion. This condition is manifest in that it is possible to claim that the

actual is rational, the rational actual.70 This much contested formula of Hegel’s

says nothing more than that Spirit has made itself present ( vergegenwärtigt ) andthat the present has consequently spiritualized ( vergeistigt ) itself. Actually this isonly what “we” understand and know. The irrational is there wherever possi-

ble; but never in the order of the actual. There is madness, but actuality itself

will never be mad.

Phenomenology is able to lend support to such a thought. Namely, Hus-

serl’s meditation upon the “life world” touches upon the phenomenon of “nor-

mality,” itself constitutive for the existence of the “life world.” “Normality” is

a “purpose structure”71 that makes possible a “normal fulllment” of “our”

“practical interests.”72 It is by no means limited to the practical, however.

“Normality” is a “fundamental concept drawn from essential sources [ Wesen-squellen ].” Its signicance is one founded “according to Being” ( seinsmäßig ), “fromessential grounds [ Wesensgründen ], which have their own absolute signicance.”73

These converge with “science.” According to Husserl, the “life world” “reposes”

along with “science” “upon one single ground ” The permit for such a found-


15/29

26 PETER TRAWNY

Thus in relation to the “life world” Husserl thinks from an identity of prac-

tical and theoretical consciousness. In no way did Husserl ever reject “science”

as the wholly appropriate “method” for the self-presentication ( Selbstvergegen-wärtigung ) of reason as such. What he objects to is “the postivistic reduction of

the idea of science to a mere science of facts [ Tatsachenwissenschaft ].”This identity between (transcendental) theory and practice, necessary for the

“normality” of the “life world,” corresponds to Husserl’s assumption and inter-

pretation of an “inner time consciousness.” It can surely be said that with this

Husserl had steadfastly adhered75 to a priority of the “continual present”

( beständigen Gegenwart ).76 Over and against this, it rst appears inconsequentialwhen Husserl seems to accept that the completion of the course of history in a

rational endposition ( Endstand ) is still pending, and that “teleological reason”77

therefore still has to wait upon its “nal institution” ( Endstiftung ).“Normality” converges with the “continual present” because the factual self-

consciousness living in the “life world” is, in fact, at rst interested in its exist-

ence ( Bestand ). By itself it has to care for the security of “normality.” Any falling out of this “normality” would be equivalent to a deactualization ( Entwirklichung ),even an annihilation. The “rationality of practical self-preservation”78 wants or

needs “normality” because in this “normality” the living being that pursues

such “self-preservation” is able to rst know itself as completely at home.

This description of modern consciousness, at bottom already expressed byHegel, again renders recognizable the extent to which the future and past dis-

appear behind the supremacy of an “absolute present.” Now too little is said if

this is merely pointed out as a “metaphysical” theorem in order to thereby show

that through such a signier “we” would already have nothing more to do with

the signied. Without a doubt, Hegel and Husserl are located in a philosophi-

cal tradition that fundamentally privileges “eternity” above the transiency of

time, which, roughly put, proclaims “eternity” to be the place of “truth.” What

is supposed to be said by this? And if something is said, are certain philoso-phers then to have been obsessively xed on some sort of “metaphysics”?

The author of this essay has reached the conclusion—beginning from Hegel’s

conception of time—that in respect to the “life world,” the incessantly pro-

claimed primacy of the “continual present” is wholly and entirely legitimate, is

even “good.” We live in the “continual present.” The natural phenomena that count for an experience of time, such as the

diV erence between night and day, sleeping and being awake, season and phase

of life, and between birth and death as well, are here in no way suppressed.They are “normalized” as “nature” and never achieve the status of determin-


16/29


surprises us, gives or steals from us. The “normality” of the “life world” has lib-

erated itself from this. Time is powerless. It no longer comes forth in decisive,

hurtful, painful ways. This means we have, as it were, forgotten time as we have forgotten a long past pain.

If history is temporal, then time is historical.

5. The Time of the Future

The understanding of time in Hegelian thought is grounded in the “now-time,”

grasped as pl®rvma. Heidegger frankly might have regarded this as an extremeof the “vulgar conception of time,” of the understanding of time in metaphysics.

It contradicts without a doubt that thought of Heidegger’s, according to which

the “Christian experience” “lives” “time itself.” In thinking this as an “experi-ence” of “primordial time,” understood from the future—as a time experience ,not theory—Heidegger has in mind precisely that which is commonly termed

eschatology. As a matter of fact, Jesus’ sermons speak uniquely of the future. It is as if the

coming of the future was, so to speak, their heart.

That the future is a coming of events, people, things, a coming of the end,

cannot be regarded as a common thought. On the contrary: the common way

in which “goals” are present, for example—they do not of themselves come tohumans, but rather are to be reached by humans—appears much more to

speak against a coming of the future, as does the view that the human has plans

or projects; this sounds more like a going forward into the future than a com-

ing on the future’s part. It is the “will” that gives rise to the appearance that

the future would be a space into which one steps. Nevertheless, it remains

reserved for the future to abrogate goals, plans, and projects. Insurances and

guarantees by means of which the common eventualities are prepared for in

advance are a sign of this nal authority of the future. For the most part they

attempt to intercept, so to speak, that which comes. They are unable to pre-

vent that which no one can prevent. The future is consequently, as the theolo-

gian Karl Rahner writes, that “which comes to us from out of itself—when it

will.” This “when it will” is a thoroughly threatening, but also fortunate, coun-

termove to the human will. It corresponds to Rahner’s so-called “inaccesability”

( Unverfügbaren ) of the coming or, as the theologian writes, of the “arriving future”(ankünftigen Zukunft ).79 With this term, it is at once said that the future arrivesas precisely such an adventual moment ( adventliches Moment ). That there is thefuture—this alone is the eéagg¡llion


17/29

28 PETER TRAWNY

thought whether and just how far the rst can be identied with the past and

the second with the future.

This adventual and essential characteristic of the future as such indicates

where this thought nds its legitimation. If, as Schelling once wrote, Christian-

ity is the “religion of the future,”80

or as Rahner notes, even the “religion of the absolute future,”81 it is such because God himself is the future. And in fact,so is it named in the Revelation of John, God is “the coming one” ( õ ¤rxñmenow )(Rv 1:4).

Before “we” apply “ourselves” more closely to the words of Jesus, the ques-

tion must be repeated: Was Hegel not entirely right in pointing out the con-

tradiction in speaking at the same time of a pl®rvma tÇn kairÇn and a ¤ggæthwyeoè? Was it not right to bring this contradiction up for decision? How can it

be shown that here it concerns an apparent contradiction? In truth, the relation-ship between pl®rvma tÇn kairÇn and ¤ggæthw yeoè can be sensibly interpreted.

Precisely that which will be is “near”; in the Christian horizon this is the rule

of God. “Future” in its New Testament sense means the nearness ( ¤ggæthw ) of thekingdom of God. The eschaton of the rule of God however does not refer to

a completely delivered world. With the arrival of Christ in the world, salvation

( Heil ) has occurred. In the passage from crucixion and resurrection as well asin the pouring forth of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit, i.e. God, is presently present

( anwesend gegenwärtig ). Nevertheless the rule of God remains outstanding. Time isalready fullled, though the promise has not yet wholly occurred.82 This relation-ship between already and not yet consequently characterizes the conception of thefuture in the New Testament. The pl®rvma of time is there, but this is not yet everything. The phenomenon of nearness appears to best bet such a condition.Something still remains outstanding, is still denied to “us”—and indeed “we”

are able to wait for it, because it brings itself near . The reign of God is, as it istermed by Matthew, “nearly arrived” ( ggiken gŒr ² basileÛa tÇn ouranÇn ). This

sentence is one among many announcements that all refer constantly to the“nearness” ( ¤ggæthw ) of the rule of God,83 though never to its completed pres-ence. Michael Theunissen, in reference to the theologian Eberhard Jüngel,84 has

thought this nearness as “ prolepsis ”: “The present, conceived with Jesus as thenearness of the nearing kingdom, posesses a proleptic structure, insofar as what

happens in the present, is determined by the incidence [ Vorfall ] of the future init.”85 By reason of a salvation ( Heil ) already occurred, “we” are allowed to antic-ipate such a “fullled time” that is on the way to “us,” has already announceditself, and indeed has not yet wholly exhausted itself. Located between an alreadyand a not-yet-whole, such a between provides a place from which the “Christian


18/29


Jesus’ many parables, as witnessed in the Gospel of Luke among others, para-

bles, incidentally, which “also and above all,” according to Jüngel, must “be

understood as eschatological speech.”86 Luke 21:29–31 reads: “And he told to

them a parable: look at the g tree and all trees. If it has already ( dh ) come

into leaf, so do you all see it and note that already ( dh ) the summer (or fall,y¡row ) is near ( ¤ggæw ). Therefore if you see all this, also recognize that the king-dom of God is near ( ¤ggæw ).”87 What this parable stands for, what the “g tree”could possibly represent, is not essential.88 In any event, the more important

thing is the structure of Jesus’ analogy itself. The activity of the trees, which

occurs here and now, announces the nearness of summer, of fruition. But that

which announces itself there—the summer that brings fruition— is coming . Thusit must be borne in mind that the nearness and coming of summer and the

nearness and coming of the reign of God are one and the same. The coming God brings himself near in his rule. The rule of God lies in its approach.89

Further, the Revelation of John contains hints that deepen the eschatologi-

cal relation between nearness and coming. These conclude with the statement

(Rv 22:20): l¡gei õ marturÇn taèta. naÜ, ¦rxomai taxæ. The adjective taxæw means“fast,” but also “soon.” What comes soon is not yet, but indeed nearly there.

To nearness and coming there corresponds the Soon ( die Bälde ), which namesthat which only barely holds itself back, but nevertheless still holds itself back.

Decisive for understanding this simultaneously transitory and neverthelessabiding structural relation is the place ( der Ort ) it occupies, the place towardwhich the Coming is headed, the place of exposure. An expectant person is

dependent upon a coming and possible arrival. He or she welcomes the com-

ing of the future, the coming of God as gift ( Gabe ).90

One can foresee just how far astray the concept of a “proleptic structure”

can lead. The nearness of the reign of God, precisely thought, may not, indeed

cannot, be “anticipated.” This is seen in that starting from the fulllment of

time, which now already is, the “anticipation” of the coming leads to thethought developed by Hegel, that of the absolute present. In so far as that

which is outstanding is “anticipated,” that which is fullled is able to receive its

conrmation and be brought to a conclusion, thereby obstructing the near-

ness and the soon coming of the future. Consequently, to speak of a prñlhciwharbors a certain danger. If there were such a word, one would sooner be

permitted to speak of a prñdosiw —meant here as a gift in advance (Vorgabe)— if that which is expressed in the eschatological communications of the New

Testament is more decisively to come into view.“Living” time means therefore, to experience this relation of nearness, com-


19/29

30 PETER TRAWNY

all that is present. The nearness to the coming reign of God that holds itself

back is no in-between state that is to be overcome. “We” experience “time itself ”in so far as “we” take up residence in this between, in so far as in this between

“we” welcome that which is given to “us.”

In this way, what Heidegger stresses in Being and Time also gains a certainclarity: Hegel had neglected to ask “whether the way in which Spirit is essen-

tially constituted as the negating of a negation, is possible in any other manner

than on the basis of primordial temporality.” From the future, there is the pre-

sent. The coming lets the present be.

6. The Opening of the Future in Heidegger’s Thinking

Hegel’s theory of time can not be conrmed by the writings of the NewTestament. This should not come as a surprise, since this probably shows just

how far Christianity has distanced itself from the word of the New Testament

by loading itself up with Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic philosophy. It could

most likely even be made clear that the metaphysical concept of “eternity” from

Plato, Augustine, and Boethius91 (to name only the most inuential spokes-

people in this connection) is foreign to “primordial” Christianity. But whether

in turning back to the Gospels and Epistles themselves an “authentic” Chris-

tianity is to be found remains to be seen.Nonetheless, it could be said in regard to Heidegger’s supposed polemic

against Christianity that this objects most strongly to the latter’s metaphysical

transformation. Against the doctrine of the eschaton, Heidegger once noted:

“All ‘eschatology’ lives on a belief in the security of a new state of aV airs. In

the thinking preparatory to Beyng-historical thinking [ Im Vordenken des seynsgeschichtlichen Denkens ], however, the grounding ground of Da-sein is this Da-seinitself.”92 It is obvious from the outset that “belief” is not “preparatory think-

ing.” In the Beiträge zur Philosophie , in the context of an “essential knowing,”Heidegger thinks it possible that this “knowing” appear as “belief ”93 within the

perspective “of representing and having representations” ( des Vorstellens und Vorstellungsbesitzes ). If this is taken into consideration it becomes obvious thatthe previous thought amounts to something else entirely. The essential objec-

tion strikes at the “object” of eschatology: “Beyng-historical thinking” ( seyns- geschichtliche Denken ) does not have as its goal the “security of a new condition.”“Da-sein” as the “grounding ground” is in itself at the same time the “abyss”( Ab-grund ).94

In fact it is not to be forgotten that the last book of the New Testament, the


20/29


more actual. This appears to contradict the interpretation of the sermons of

Jesus according to which time is simply the nearness of the rule of God, thoughnot the overcoming of this nearness. Everything comes down to an eschatolog-

ical founding of the state. The future bears a technical character. The rule of

God would become a “representation” of something already accomplished.Thus prevails the need for “security” mentioned by Heidegger. The talk would

then no longer be of a future in the sense of an inaccessible ( unverfügbaren ) coming.Consequently “we” may proclaim that Heidegger does not at all speak out

against the “Christian experience” of the nearness to a coming, but rather

against a denite objectication of this “experience.” Heidegger’s supposed war

against Christianity could probably be understood simply as a resistance against

such common objectications in Christianity.

It can be shown that Heidegger himself expresses the “experience” of thenearness to something coming in “Beyng-historical thinking” [ seynsgeschichtlichen Denken ]. At one point in Die Geschichte des Seyns he asks how it could be possiblefor modern thought “to know Beyng, and knowing it as a coming, to experi-

ence it?”95 This “coming” is further spoken of as “the most coming of the com-

ing from out of the distance of the most near.”96

There is obviously a question as to what then this “most coming” would be.The uncommon superlative is explained to the eV ect that here a coming is

thought whose coming is of a unique necessity and signicance. For this rea-son, speaking about the “coming” itself appears unavoidable. Heidegger, too,

was more than aware of this diYculty. In the course of the “Evening

Conversation in a Prisoner of War Camp,” one of the two speakers asks who is

awaited in this “waiting” which the other speaker has previously indicated as a

“letting come.” The answer runs: “What do we let come in pure waiting other

than the coming?”97 With this, though, the last word is not yet spoken. This

“pure waiting” upon the “coming” is further claried: “that our essence rst

becomes free in such a waiting, since in the simple experience of all this, thesalvatory [ das Heilsame ] that has been given us is at once imminent.98 If “wait-ing” is a liberation of “our essence,” then it holds that the impossibility of being

able to wait signies unfreedom. If in the future of the “coming” ( Zukunft des “Kommens ”), “the salvatory is imminent,” then there lies in the absence of thefuture the foundation of the unwholesome ( Unheiles ). This absence, and along with this a growing impossibility to wait, points to the temporal condition of

metaphysics. When Heidegger considers the dimension of the “coming,” it is a

matter of abandoning this metaphysical condition along a path that opens fromout of the future. In so far as “we” wait, the “salvatory” is imminent to “us,”


21/29

32 PETER TRAWNY

But Heidegger does not leave it at that. He has elsewhere spoken otherwise

of the “most coming of the coming.” It is named in a long passage from the

end of the thirties: “The Gods in coming ground the ground of the deepest his-

tory and are the heralds of the last God [ des letzten Gottes ], whose nality [ Letztes ]

[is] his coming. He brings nothing, and if he were to then it would only behimself; but also only as the most coming of the coming. Ahead of himself, he

bears the future, his time-play-space in Beyng, which itself awaits that the God,

coming, fulll it and in the coming come.”99 The “most coming of the coming”

is the “last God.” His “coming,” that is, the openness of the future, is his

“nality” ( Letztes ). Does anything remain left for “us” other than to hold thisthought to be an objectication of the rst, by which the “coming” itself

promises the nearness of something “salvatory” ( eines Heilsamen )? Above all, is

not the thought that would attribute a “nality” ( Letztes ) to this God a repeti-tion of Christian eschatology?100

Ultimately these questions should be turned back to precisely those who pose

them. For Hegel, and in another way also for Schelling, it was undeniable that

“we” are Christians.Heidegger—and this is the case—takes this in earnest, pre-

cisely in that “we” forget Christianity in the long history of metaphysics. 101 The

question remains whether “God” thereby escapes “us,” and who then “we”

really are.

Translated by Andrew Mitchell State University of New York at Stony Brook

NOTES

1. Martin Heidegger, “Überwindung der Metaphysik ” in Vorträge und Aufsätze (Pfullingen: GüntherNeske Verlag, 1954), 76V . Translated under the title “Overcoming Metaphyiscs” in The End of Philosophy, ed. and trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973), 84V . Also, Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Hegel—Vollendung der abendländischen Metaphysik ?” in Hegel— Hölderlin—Heidegger ed. Helmut Gehrig (Karlsruhe: Katholische Akademie der ErzdiözeseFreiburg, 1971), 11: “It is truly not rst a formulation of Martin Heidegger’s that Hegel pre-

sents the completion of Western metaphysics. All too clearly does the language of historical

facts establish that with Hegel’s system and its swift collapse in the middle of the nineteenth

century, a two thousand year tradition that had lent the stamp of metaphysics to Westernphilosophy has come to an end.”

2 M ti H id S i d Z it E t Hälft 3 d d (H ll d S l : M Ni


22/29


5. SZ , 435/485–86.6. SZ , 428/480.7. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion. Teil 3: Die vollendete

Religion, ed. Walter Jaeschke, new ed. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1995). Translated by R.F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart with H. S. Harris, under the title Lectures on the

Philosophy of Religion. Vol. 3: The Consummate Religion, ed. Peter C. Hodgson (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1985). Hereafter VPhR with German/English pagination.

8. SZ 427/ BT 499 n. xiii.9. Martin Heidegger, Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens. 1. Einleitung in die Phänomenologie der Religion.

2. Augustinus und der Neuplatonismus. 3. Die Philosophischen Grundlagen der mittelalterlichen Mystik , eds.Matthias Jung, Thomas Regehly, and Claudius Strube, vol. 60 of Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt

am Main: Vittorio Klosterman, 1995), 82. Gesamtausgabe hereafter cited GA followed by vol.

number.

10. The question concerning the “we,” surrounding the subject and necessarily determining it, had

occupied Hegel as well as Heidegger: Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie . Teil 1. Einleitung in die Geschichte der Philosophie. Orientalische Philosophie , ed. Walter Jaeschke new ed. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1993), 6; (hereafter VGPh ): “But in fact,what we are we are at the same time historically, or more precisely, just as the past is only oneaspect in this region of the history of thinking, so is communal immortality inseparably bound

up with that which we historically are.” Cf. also Martin Heidegger, Die Geschichte des Seyns. 1. Die Geschichte des Seyns. 2. Koinñn. Aus der Geschichte des Seyns , ed. Peter Trawny, GA 69 (Frankfurtam Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1998), 8: “What is called ‘being’? ‘Are’ we because we, and

insofar as we, so encounter ourselves, like we encounter a tree or a house. And do we encounterourselves so? And supposing this as well, do we thereby hit upon the manner of how we are?”

11. Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Marburg Theology” in Heidegger’s Ways , trans. JohnW. Stanley (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 29–43. Heidegger had spoken

with Bultmann on this question. A yet-to-be-published correspondence between the two will

provide information on this.

12. VGPh , 29.13. VGPh , 221: “If Spirit makes advances, the whole must advance as well; the external side falls

into time and thus the whole of the development of Spirit falls into time; the thought, the prin-

ciple of a time is the one Spirit that pervades all. This has to advance into consciousness of

itself and this is the development of the whole mass, the concrete totality, which falls into ex-

teriority and hence into time. The thought is essentially a result, it must be produced [ hervor- gebracht ], and the production falls toward the side of the appearance in time, according tothe given reasons.”

14. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes . Vol. 9 of Gesammelte Werke , ed. Wolfgang Bonsiepenand Reinhard Heede (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1980), 10. Translated by A. V. Miller

under the title Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit . (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 2, §3,translation modied. Hereafter PdG with German/English pagination and section number.

15. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte . Bd. 1: Die Vernunft in der Geschichte ,ed. Johannes HoV meister. 6th ed. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1994), 182. Translated by

H. B. Nisbet under the title Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction: Reason in History,

Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics (London: Cambridge University Press,1975), 150.

16 Cf H l VPhR 69V /133V


23/29

34 PETER TRAWNY

18. G. W. F. Hegel, Jenaer Systementwürfe III: Naturphilosophie und Philosophie des Geistes , ed. Rolf-PeterHorstmann new ed. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1987), 3; hereafter JS III .

19. G. W. F. Hegel, Jenaer Systementwürfe II: Logik, Metaphysik, Naturphilosophie , ed. Rolf-PeterHorstmann new ed. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1982), 210; hereafter JS II .

20. JS III , 16.

21. JS III , 10.22. JS III , 10.23. JS III , 12.24. JS III , 10.25. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion. Teil 1: Einleitung. Der Begri V der Religion.

New ed. Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1993), 304V . Translated by R. F.

Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart with J. P. Fitzer and H. S. Harris under the title

Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Vol. 1: Introduction and The Concept of Religion, ed. PeterC. Hodgson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 409V .

26. JS III , 11.27. JS III , 11.28. JS III , 11.29. JS III , 11.30. JS III , 11.31. JS II , 208.32. JS III , 11.33. JS III , 12.34. JS III , 12.35. JS III , 19.

36. JS III , 12.37. Cf. this misunderstanding of Jacques Derrida’s “Ousia and Gramm : Note on a Note from Being

and Time ,” in: Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,1982), 29f.

38. PdG , 429/487, §801, (translation modied).39. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik . Erster Teil: Die objektive Logik . Erster Band: Die Lehre vom

Sein. vol. 21 of Gesammeltewerke , ed. Fridrich Hogemann and Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: FelixMeiner Verlag, 1985), 98. Translated by A. V. Miller under the title Hegel’s Science of Logic , ed.H. D. Lewis (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1969), 110, §2.A.a.

Hereafter WL I with German/English pagination and section number.40. PdG , 45–46/40, §66, (translation modied).41. Cf. WL , I 69/82, §1.A: “There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting;

or, it is only this pure empty intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or it

is equally only this empty thinking.” (translation modied)

42. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik . Zweiter Band: Die subjective Logik (1816), vol. 12 of Gesammelte Werke , ed. Friedrich Hogemann and Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix MeinerVerlag, 1981), 12. Hegel’s Science of Logic (op. cit.), 578, “The Notion in General” (translationmodied). Hereafter WL II with German/English pagination and section number.

43. WL II , 11/577, “The Notion in General,” (translation modied).

44. WL I , 98/110, §2.A.a.45. WL II , 16/582, “The Notion in General,” (translation modied).46 PdG 429/487 § 801


24/29


title The Encyclopaedia Logic (with the Zusätze). Part I of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences with the Zusätze (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1991) and Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature . Being Part Two of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), trans. A. V. Miller(Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1970), 35, §258 Remark, (translation modied). Hereafter EpW with German and English pagination (English by Encyclopaedia part I or II) and section number.

49. WL II , 17–18/584, “The Notion in General”: “It is one of the profoundest and truest insightsto be found in the Critique of Pure Reason that the unity that constitutes the nature of the Concept is recognized as the original synthetic unity of apperception, as unity of the I think , or of self-consciousness.” (translation modied)

50. EpW , 249/II: 37, §259, Remark (translation modied).51. PdG , 433/492, §808. [Translator’s Note: Paraphrasis in English translation, “recollection, the

inwardizing .”]52. VGPh , 217: “The absolute development,the life ofGod, of Spirit, is only aprocess,a universalmove-

ment, and, as something concrete, a series of developments. This series is not to be represented as

a straight line, but rather as a circle, as a return into itself. This circle has at its periphery a great

number of circles; a development is always a movement through many developments.”

53. Parmenides, Fragment 1: AlhyeÛhw eékukl¡ow trem¢w ·tor. Fragment 5: junòn d¡ moÛ ¤stin,õppñyen rjvmai: tñyi gŒr p‹lin ájomai aïyiw. Fragment 7 (8): the ¤òn eékæklou sfaÛrhw¤nalÛgkion ögkvi. Heraclitus, Fragment 103: junòn gŒr rx¯ kaÜ p¡raw ¤tÜ kæklon perifereÛaw.(To this, the clarifying Fragment 113: junòn ¤sti psi tò fron¡ein.) Then Fragment 100: Ërawaá p‹nta f¡rousi. Cited according to Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker , ed. WaltherKranz, vol. 1, 18th ed. (Zürich and Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1992.).

54. EpW , 56/I: 39, §15: “Each of the parts of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle thatcloses upon itself; but in each of them the philosophical Idea is in a particular determinacy or

element. Every single circle also breaks through the restriction of its element as well, preciselybecause it is inwardly [the] totality, and it grounds a further sphere. The whole presents itself

therefore as a circle of circles, each of which is a necessary moment, so that the system of its

peculiarelements constitutes the whole Idea—which equally appearsin each single one of them.”

55. VPhR , 88V ./152V .56. Friedrich Hölderlin, “. . . Der Vatikan . . .” in Sämtliche Werke (Große Stuttgarter Ausgabe), ed.

Friedrich Beißner, vol. 2: Gedichte nach 1800 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1951), 253,line 45. [Translator’s Note: Two popular English translations: Michael Hamburger, “Rest of

perfection,” in Poems & Fragments (London: Anvil Press Poetry Ltd, 1994), 613; and RichardSieburth, “Consummate peace,” in Hymns and Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1984), 205].

57. Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache , ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann GA 12 (Frankfurt amMain, Vittorio Klostermann, 1985), 201: “Die Zeit zeitigt.” [Translator’s Note: The Englishtranslation, “time times” in On the Way to Language , trans. Peter D. Hertz (San Francisco: Harper& Row, Publishers, 1971), 106, while more literal, misses the sense in discussion here.

58. Another essay would throw a bridge from the “beginning of the completion of metaphysics”

to the completed completion, to the Nietzschean thought of an “eternal recurrence of the

same.” As diYcult as it may be to construct this bridge on stable pillars, so inevitably does the

thought arise that here there would be a necessary connection. Consequently, a “boredom”

must come to expression that would have to be considered as mood of the world ( Weltstimmung ).Cf. Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegri V e der Metaphysik: Welt—Endlichkeit—Einsamkeit , ed.F i d i h Wilh l H GA 29/30 (F kf M i Vi i Kl


25/29

36 PETER TRAWNY

59. All Bible citations according to the Novum Testamentum Graece . Post Eberhard et Erwin Nestle. Apparatum criticum novis curis elaboraverunt Barbara et Kurt Aland. 27th ed. (Stuttgart:

Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993).

60. Cf. on the meaning of the word Josef Ernst, Pleroma und Pleroma Christi. Geschichte und Deutung eines Begri V s der paulinischen Antilegomena (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1970), 2V .

61. Cf. Ernst, 39V .62. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie . Teil 3: Griechische Philosophie . II: Plato

bis Proklos , ed. Pierre Garniron and Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1996),171 (translation modied).

63. G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft imGrundrisse, ed. Eduard Gans, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Verlag von Duncker und Humblot, 1854), 423.Translated by H. B. Nisbet, under the title Elements of the Philosophy of Right , ed. Allen W. Wood,Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press,

1991), 372, §341; hereafter GPR with German/English pagination and section number.64. VPhR , 167/237.65. VGPh , 324: “One can truly claim to worry himself about the future; one can claim to proph-

esize this or that from the future—the future is a yearning [ Sehnsucht ]—, this indeed happens;[but] the future is nebulous.”

66. PdG , 421/478, §787.67. G. W. F. Hegel, Hegels theologische Jugendschriften, ed. Herman Nohl, unaltered reprint of 1907

Tübingen edition (Frankfurt am Main: Minerva GmbH, 1966), 395. [Translator’s Note: This

“interpretation” is not only Hegel’s—among English translations, the King James Version, the

Amplied Bible, the Rheims New Testament, the New American Standard Bible, the New

International Version, and the New American Bible all repeat it. Only the New Revised

Standard Version uses the perfect, “has come near.” The “Entwürfe zur ‘Geist des Christentums und sein Schicksal ’” from which the above citation is taken is omitted from the English translationof the book.]

68. VPhR , 67/131 (translation modied).69. VPhR , 4/64 (translation modied).70. GPR , 17/20, “Preface.”71. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie .

Ergänzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachlaß 1934–1937, vol. 29 of Husserliana, ed. Reinhold N.

Smid (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), 302 V . Hereafter Hua 29.

72. Hua 29:8.

73. Hua 29:157.

74. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie.Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie , vol. 6 of Husserliana, ed. Walter Biemel, 2nded. (The Hague: Martinus NijhoV , 1962), 115. Translated by David Carr, under the title The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 113.

75. Cf. Rudolf Bernet, “ Die ungegenwärtige Gegenwart. Anwesenheit und Abwesenheit in Husserls Analyse des Zeitbewußtseins ,” in Zeit und Zeitlichkeit bei Husserl und Heidegger , ed. Ernst Wolfgang Orth (Freiburg:Verlag Karl Alber, 1983), 30f.: “The epistemologically oriented analysis of time further extends

the naturally presupposed priority of the currently present [ jetzigen Gegenwart ]. This, however,serves for an unnatural reduction of the past present to a present memory (‘Vergegenwärtigung’ )f h ll f h f i (‘E i ’ ) f h


26/29


the reduction of all being to a possible givenness for a present transcendental consciousness,

which is absolutely present to itself, appears to be inseparably bound up with this metaphysi-

cal understanding of time.” Indeed this “appearance” can be cleared up to a certain extent,

insofar as it can be shown that “retention,” in not being intended as such , belongs necessarilyto “time consciousness.” Then it would have to be stressed that a nonintentional moment nec-

essarily belongs to “intentional consciousness.” In this case, it would be unavoidable that onemake a decisive modication to the time-form of consciousness as “continual present” and thus

to the entire Husserlian conception of consciousness itself. Such a revolution of “transcend-

ental phenomenology,” however, Husserl would not allow. Cf. also Bernet, 56.

76. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität . Zweiter Teil: 1921–1928, vol. 14 of Husserliana, ed. Iso Kern (The Hague: Martinus NijhoV , 1973), 221: “I am in the continual

present. I can not actually say I was, in the sense that, I am past [bin vergangen].”

77. Cf. Hua 29:326V .

78. All-Einheit. Wege eines Gedankens in Ost und West , edited and Foreward by Dieter Henrich

(Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag, 1985), 8.79. Karl Rahner, Fragmente aus einer theologischen Besinnung auf den Begri V der Zukunft , in Rahner,Schriften zur Theologie , vol. 8 (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1967), 558.

80. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Philosophie der O V enbarung , vol. 2. Unveränderter repro-grascher Nachdruck aus dem handschriftlichen Nachlaß herausgegebnen Ausgabe von 1858

(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990), 129.

81. Karl Rahner, Marxistische Utopie und christliche Zukunft des Menschen, in: Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie , vol. 6 (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1965), 79.

82. Cf. the theological explanations of Oscar Cullmann, Christus und die Zeit. Die urchristliche Zeit-und Geschichtsau V assung (Zollikon: Evangelischer Verlag A. G., 1946), 74. Cullmann speaks there

of an “adjacency between the ‘already fullled’ and ‘not yet fullled.’”83. On ¤ggæw cf. Oscar Cullmann, Heil als Geschichte. Heilsgeschichtliche Existenz im Neuen Testament

(Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck] Verlag, 1965), 178f.

84. Cf. Eberhard Jüngel, Paulus und Jesus. Eine Untersuchungen zur Präzisierung der Frage nach demUrsprung der Christologie , 3rd ed. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck] Verlag, 1967), 175:“When Jesus speaks of the rule of God, then he speaks without exception of the nearing of

the rule of God, so that the nearness of the rule of God appears as an expression of its essence .”85. Cf. Michael Theunissen, Negative Theologie der Zeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag,

1991), 327. Cf. also Cullmann, Heil als Geschichte , 187: “Therefore we hold it to be the case

that the coexistence of a kingdom already anticipated in Jesus and a kingdom still of the future,corresponds to a holy-historical [ heilsgeschichtliche ] conception of time: God is the Lord of time;on the one hand he already anticipates the kingdom in the present, in Jesus, and reveals to

the disciples in this manner the nearness of the coming kingdom; on the other hand, he with-

holds the xing of the point of time for the completion.”

86. Cf. Jüngel, Paulus und Jesus , 102.87. Cf. also Luke 12: 54–56: “But he spoke to the people: When you see a cloud rise up in the

west, then you immediately say: it will rain, and so it happens. And when you see the south

wind blow, then you say: it will be hot, and so it is. Hypocrite, you can examine the face of

the earth and of heaven, how can you then not examine this time [ kairñw ]?” On this, see

Cullmann, Heil als Geschichte , 186V .88. Cf. Das Evangelium nach Lukas , übersetzt und erklärt von Eduard Schweizer (Göttingen:


27/29

38 PETER TRAWNY

90. Cf. Jüngel, Paulus und Jesus , 184: “The reign of God comes wonderfully from itself, as theparable of the self-germinating seed explains to us. This means, however: the human can only

welcome the rule of God as the new beginning.”91. Here the obligatory loci classici: Plato, Timaeus , 375d: eÞkÆ dƒ ¤penñei kinhtñn tina aÞÇnow

poi°sai, kaÜ diakosmÇn ‘ma oéranòn poeÝ m¡nontow aÞÇnow ¤n ¥nÜ katƒ riymòn Þoèsan aÞÅnion

eÞ kñna, toèton ÷n d¯ xrñnon Ènom‹kamen.; Augustine, Confessions , XI, 14: “Praesens autem sisemper esset praesens nec in praeteritum transiret, non iam esset tempus, sed aeternitas.”;

Boethius, Philosophiae consolationis V.vi: 25–31: “Quod igitur interminabilis uitae plenitudinemtotam pariter comprehendit ac possidet, cui neque futuri quicquam absit nec praeteriti

uxerit, id aeternum esse iure perhibetur idque necesse est et sui compos praesens sibi sem-

per assistere et innitatem mobilis temporis habere praesentem.” The determination of “eter-

nity” by Boethius, since it shows a astonishing nearness to that of Hegel, may be translated

here: “Whatever therefore comprehends and possesses at once the whole fullness of bound-

less life, and is such that neither is anything future lacking from it, nor has anything past

owed away, that is rightly held to be eternal, and that must necessarily both always be pre-

sent to itself, possessing itself in the present, and hold as present the innity of moving time.”

(Boethius, The Theological Tractates. The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. H. F. Stewart, E. K.Rand, and S. J. Tester, The Consolation of Philosophy trans. S. J. Tester, The Loeb ClassicalLibrary [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973]). To be sure, for Hegel, “the whole full-

ness” cannot be conceived of as highest quantity.

92. Martin Heidegger, Besinnung , ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann GA 66, (Frankfurt amMain: Vittorio Klostermann, 1997), 245.

93. Martin Heidegger, Die Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm vonHerrmann, GA 65 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), 369: “Therefore if one

takes ‘knowing’ in its sense up until now of representation [ Vorstellens ] and the having of rep-resentations [ Vorstellungsbesitzes ], then essential knowing is surely no ‘knowing,’ but rather a‘believing.’ However, this word then has an entirely diV erent meaning.”

94. Heidegger, GA 65:380f.

95. Heidegger, GA 69:31.


97. Martin Heidegger, Feldweg-Gespräche ( 1944/45 ), ed. Ingrid Schüßler, GA 77 (Frankfurt amMain: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995), 217.



trawny_peter - the future of time - reflections on the concept of time in hegel and heideger

Documents