his entire philosophy of nature is simply a paraphrase of Aristotle in a dialectical mode. During this period Hegel was engaged in a deep study of Aristotle. But we lack a compass [266] for this terrain and have no clues about Hegel’s concrete, historical relation to Aristotle.
[Hegel’s treatment of time] may be a paraphrase of Aristotle, but it is nonetheless one that operates within the self-assuredness of Hegel’s dialectics. It kills off the proper content of the Aristotelian interpretation [of time] and preserves instead certain formal, empty results. The following are some merely extrinsic examples that come to light at a first reading of the text.42
1. Hegel understands the now—Aristotle’s νῦν—in the first instance as a limit; Aristotle says: ὁρίζειν, ὅρος—“to limit, a limit.” Hegel takes the νῦν as a point; Aristotle says στιγμή, point.
2. Hegel determines the now as the absolute “this”; Aristotle says τόδε τι.
3. Hegel understands time as a circular movement; in the last book of the Physics, Aristotle connects time with the σφαῖρα, the circular movement of the heavens.
The only difference is that Hegel simply identifies and mixes up the aforementioned determinations—limit, point, absolute this—whereas Aristotle’s labors properly consist in showing the founding connections between this-here, point, limit, and now. To put it in Aristotle’s terms, he tries to show how these determinations, in themselves and according to their structure, follow (ἀκολουθεῖν) from one another.
Instead of all the mindless drivel that gets written about German Idealism these days, what we really need is for someone to carry though a real investigation of this factual connection of Hegelian and Greek philosophy, along with evidence of where they diverge. That way the history of philosophy might have some relevance. It’s also clear from what we said that Hegel’s thesis—viz., that space is time, or as he puts it in this preliminary analysis, that time is space—as well as Bergson’s thesis (that time is space) both go back directly to Aristotle.
I already emphasized that Bergson carries out his treatise on time in strict connection with his close study of Aristotle. He writes in his Essay,
Le temps, entendu au sens d’un milieu où l’on distingue et où l'on compte, n’est que de l’espace.
Time, understood as a field [267] in which we make distinctions and count, is nothing else but space.43
42. [Regarding the following, cf. GA 2, p. 570 n. 14. / tr. 500 n. xxx.]
43. Henri Bergson, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1889), p. 69. [Heidegger’s manuscript and Moser (p. 556.1) correctly reference page 69, whereas GA 21 (p. 267.3), employing a later edition, cites it as page 68. The passage cited here can also be found in Henri Bergson, Œuvres, Édition du centenaire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France: 1959, 1970), p. 62.1–3. (The marginal pagination of this edition follows the 1939–1941 editions of Bergson’s works, the last to be published before the author’s death on 3 January 1941.) See also Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans. F. L. Pogson (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1910; repr. New York: Humanities, 1950), p. 91: “. . . time, understood in the sense of a medium in which we make distinctions and count, is nothing but space.” Heidegger translates Bergson’s milieu with the German Feld.]