course understands such self-differentiating as subject and subjectivity. That is, he introduces into the difference of one thing from another an idea that can’t be found there. Then, on the basis of this sleight of hand, he can say: As a point that posits itself for itself, time is also abstract [260] subjectivity. So, time is the things themselves, time is pure self-consciousness, and time is neither of the two. Therefore, here too, in this concrete example of his explanation of time, we once again have the same surprising fact: Hegel can say everything about every single thing. And there are people who discover profound meaning in such confusion.36
* * *
What characterizes the ordinary understanding of time is its conception of time as now-time. In the last lecture, our interpretation made that clear as regards Hegel. In the course of that lecture we brought out a variety of different characterizations of time which Hegel, for his part, would not consider to be different. Instead, he would simply trot them out for us as “dialectically” one and the same—with the possible exception of the one he admittedly mentions only en passant, namely, that time is a passing-away. We don’t need Hegel’s dialectic to show that time is properly only passing-away. That is bound up with a topic we shall investigate later.
Let us now recall and characterize the remaining determinations:
1. Time is the negativity of punctiformity, the self-negation of the now-point, or equally the now’s being-for-itself in the self-externality of succession.
2. Time is intuited becoming, i.e., it is becoming that is always understood in its individuality. “Understood in its individuality” means the same as the now that is immediately seen as present-there. The now is the being of the not-yet, and as such, at the same time it is likewise the no-longer of its being—it is the transition from nothing to being, and from being to nothing, which is exactly what Hegel means by “becoming.” Insofar as this becoming is always concen-trated in the now, it is intuited becoming.
3. The now is the negation of the negation-qua-punctiformity, and as this negation of the negation, it is a self-exclusion that at the same time is for itself [für sich seiendes]. Hegel now understands the for-mal structure of a thing’s self-differentiation as a reflexive relation to itself, a self-differentiation that can be said of anything at all, regardless of what kind. Hegel understands this self-differentiating
36. [Here (Moser, p. 546) Heidegger ends his lecture of Tuesday, 26 January 1926, to be followed by that of Thursday, 28 January.]