Abstract

It is tempting to understand Hegel as a philosopher belonging to the tradition which began with the pre-Socratics, was set in its path definitively by Plato, and culminated with Hegel himself. Hegel’s place in that tradition cannot be denied, but it must be qualified; for with this understanding goes a claim that Hegel conceived of himself as the philosopher at “the end of history.” Hegel is understood to have articulated a system of philosophy which gave us the truth for all time, future as well as past. Time is annulled, cancelled, negated and, at least in philosophy, we are faced with eternity. This interpretation of Hegel, however, leaves us with too many problems. In general, it must either ignore or deny the radically temporal aspects of Hegel, relegating them to “a young Hegel,” either identifying time and eternity or simply denying the essentiality of time for Hegel. All of these strategies, and the eternalist interpretation which necessitates them, must be rejected as onesided; for the interpretation leaves unaddressed Hegel’s rejection, in his “mature” years, of such an eternalism. Furthermore, the interpretation is based upon an unexamined presupposition that if we are going to have metaphysics, then we must have a system which either transcends or absorbs history and time. This was not a presupposition shared by Hegel, at least not in its usual sense.