the window here. Or the this-ness of this pulse-beat? That it is this now. Here and now make up the this-ness of a this. What is the now? What should sense certainty say about the now? What is there for sense certainty to say about the now other than to say what the now immediately is—with reference to the being which just now makes up the now? The now is just this afternoon, "now" it is afternoon.* Or considering the now, the now was, just as Hegel was interrogating sense certainty about the now, when he wrote the text: the now is night.
"Now" is afternoon. This is an incontestable truth. We preserve this truth by writing it in chalk on the blackboard. When the janitor comes to the lecture hall early tomorrow morning at eight o'clock, to see if everything is all right and if the blackboard is clean, and he reads the sentence "Now is afternoon," then he will not admit at any price that the sentence is true. Overnight the sentence has become false: The being which was the now, the now which from what was regarded as morning by the janitor was yesterday afternoon, is for a long time already no longer in being. It has no permanence. But "now," when the janitor reads the sentence, is also "now." However, "now" the now is morning. But since it does happen that professors make mistakes, and on the other hand the janitor also belongs to the university, he will in this case lend a hand and correct the sentence. He writes "now" the truth which he will defend at all cost: Now is morning. At one o'clock the janitor comes to the lecture hall and sees his truth standing there. Truth? "Now" is midday.
Which is then "now" actually true or in being? Each time it is "now," and each now is "now" already other, no longer what it was earlier. The now remains constant and is "now" each time in each given moment. But how does the now remain the now, and as what does it remain? The now remains the now in that what is the now in each case—morning, noon, afternoon, evening, night—is in each case not. The now is always not-this. This not always removes the immediate this—night, day—whatever happens to be the now. What is immediate is sublated, mediated. In order for the now to be able to remain the now that is, this constant negation belongs to the now. But how interesting that this constant sublation, this continuous change, does not disturb the now at all. It remains simply now and remains simply indifferent to what it is "now," be it day or night. As simple as this or as that, it is, however, never only this or exclusively that. This simple which is permanent in and through mediation is the "universal."
The question was: What is the this, or what constitutes this-ness? The answer: The now. And what is the essence of the now? The universal just
* [The word (the) now translates the German noun (das) Jetzt; the word "now" (in quotation marks) translates the German adverb jetzt.)