V. — TIME AND THE HEGELIAN DIALECTIC. (I.)
By J. Ellis McTaggart.
One of the most interesting and important questions which
arise in connexion with Hegel’s philosophy is the question
of the relation between the succession of the categories in
the dialectic and the succession of events in time. Are we
to regard the complex and concrete Absolute Idea, in which
alone true reality is to be found, as gradually growing up in
time by the evolution of one category after another? Or
are we to regard the Absolute Idea as existing eternally in
its full completeness, and the succession of events in time
as something which has no part in any ultimate system of
the universe?
The succession of categories in Hegel’s Logic is, of course, not primarily a temporal succession. We pass from one to another because the admission of the first as valid logically requires the admission of the second as valid. At the same time there are various reasons for accepting the view that one category succeeds another in time. One of the facts of the universe which requires explanation is the existence of time, and it seems at first sight a simple and satisfactory explanation to account for it by the gradual development of the notion from Pure Being to the Absolute Idea. And Hegel certainly explains history to some extent by bringing the successive events under the successive categories.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that such a view is incompatible with the system. In the first place, the theory that time is an ultimate reality would lead to insoluble difficulties as to the commencement of the process. Secondly, the Absolute Idea must be held to be the presupposition and the logical prius of the lower categories. It follows that a theory which makes the appearance of the lower category the presupposition of the appearance of the higher one, cannot fully represent the ultimate reality of the process. And, finally, Hegel’s language seems to be decisively on the side of the hypothesis that the Absolute Idea exists eternally in its full perfection, and that the movement from the lower to the higher is reconstruction and not construction.
Let us consider the first of these points. Hegel, of course, maintains that the universe is fully rational. Can we regard as
