encounterable. In general, in all his categorial explanations, Hegel does not understand the being of something simply in terms of its thought-ness. Rather, he makes this being-thought be the equal of being. Because the pure thinking of the punctiformity of space thinks the now (i.e., time), for that reason space “is” time.
Through this interpretation we suddenly see that Hegel here understands time as now-time. Only on the un-understood basis of this ununderstood presupposition does Hegel’s explanation of time in terms of punctiformity in §256 make any sense. Time qua negation of the negation (the latter qua point) is not just any self-sublation. It is the selfsublation of punctiformity. Time, conceived in terms of space, is selfsublating punctiformity. More exactly, time is what is always necessarily co-posited—as the now—in the sublation of punctiformity. Exactly why the now is co-posited, and why it is co-posited in this way, are questions to which Hegel does not and cannot provide any further information.
Hegel determines the being of space as time. Therefore we might ask, “Doesn’t being get determined here quite unambiguously in terms of time? Isn’t Hegel operating clearly within the problematic of timeas-horizon?” It might seem so, but he is light-years away from those issues. We first have to remember: Hegel determines space not in terms of time but as time. It’s true: he does determine one form of being in relation to time, but only the being of space. And he determines the being of space not in terms of time but as time.
By way of summary we can say:
1. Even with the one and only being that he does determine in relation to time, Hegel does not understand the ur-temporal function of time, but rather [257] misinterprets time (in keeping with his method) by making it into the being of space itself.
2. In principle Hegel does not see the function of time for interpreting being. If he did, he would have had to introduce time already into his discussion of being in general. But we find no trace of that in Hegel—in fact, quite the opposite.
3. Hegel is unable to understand the ur-temporal function of time be- cause he conceives of time in the traditional-dogmatic way as now-time.
4. That he conceives of time in this way is documented by the fact that he puts time together with space. But space is the ordo eorum quae sunt simul (Leibniz),34 “the ordering of things that are there at the same time”—of things that are present at the same time (i.e., in each
34. [Cf. “I have demonstrated, that space is nothing else but an order of the existence of things, observed as existing together; and therefore the fiction of a material universe, moving forward in an empty space cannot be admitted.” The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, ed. H. G. Alexander (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956), Leibniz’s fifth letter, par. 29.]