The Future of Time:

Reflections on the Concept of Time

in Hegel and Heidegger
PETER TRAWNY
Bergische Universtt Wuppertal

1. Our Time?
In Heideggers re ections on The Overcoming of Metaphysics one encounters the thought that Hegels philosophy would be the beginning of the completion of metaphysics while Nietzsches thinking would be its end; the
complete completion, as it were, is thus brought to expression.1
Approximately a decade previously in the penultimate paragraphs of Being
and Time, Heidegger had endeavored to show just how far Hegels conception
of time corresponded to a vulgar understanding of time.2 The vulgar understanding of time would take time as a sequence of nows that are constantly
present-at-hand, simultaneously passing away and coming along, even as
mere now-time.3 Accordingly, Heidegger notes, Hegel would have missed the
authentic signi cance of primoridial time, i.e., temporality, which temporalizes itself primarily in terms of the future.4 Decisive here is Heideggers emphasis that Hegel has left the question unexamined as to whether the way in
which Spirit is essentially constituted as the negating of a negation is possible
in any other manner than on the basis of primordial temporality.5
According to Heidegger, there is a necessary presupposition for this
doubtlessly rhetorical question. Heidegger writes: Time must be able, as it
were, to take in Spirit. And Spirit in turn must be akin to time and its essence. 6
On the basis of this kinship between Spirit and time Heidegger discusses
12

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to just what extent Hegel thinks time from the Now. The passages that
Heidegger refers to in his discussion all stem from the philosophy of nature, the
philosophy of history, or the Phenomenology of Spirit. The philosophy of religion
is left out. With this, Hegels oft emphasized identity of Spirit and God is
left out as well. Of course, this identity holds for the entirety of Hegels system.
It is of great importance that Hegel sees this identity as coming to itself in
completed [vollendeten] religion,7 that is, in Christianity.
On the whole Heidegger appears to have devoted little attention in Being and
Time to the relationship between God and time. A statement of Heideggers
found in a footnote remains puzzling; it runs: If Gods eternity can be construed philosophically, then it may be understood only as a more primordial
temporality which is in nite.8 The derogatory tone against a philosophy that
claims credit for construing Gods eternity is unmistakable. Heidegger
excludes from the outset that such a philosophy could think this in a sensible
manner. Nonetheless, Heidegger points out that Gods eternity must be understood from primordial time, if at all, and thus from out of the future. The
future is the in nite temporality because it refuses every end and self-closure.
Heideggers bluntly polemical aversion to Christianity is a late phenomenon.
To take this aversion as the nal word would most probably be a super cial
interpretation (I will come back to this). In the Winter semester of 192021
Heidegger gave a lecture in which he remarked the following: The Christian
experience lives time itself (to live understood as verbum transitivum).9 If we may
be allowed to bring in the puzzling statement from Being and Time above, then
one could suppose that the Christian experience of time itself is determined
by primordial time and thus by the future. Beyond this, in regard to the
rhetorical question put to Hegel, the temporality of Spirit as a negating of
negation could be grounded from out of the future as well.
As the beginning of the completion of metaphysics, Hegels thinking understands the relationship between Spirit and time from out of the now or the
present. This means that the temporality of God is likewise understood from
the now. Hegels philosophy of religion begins with the fact that for us,
insofar as we10 are Christians, God is completely present. Opposed to this,
Heidegger evidently holds it as Christian to think the temporality of God from
out of the future.
It would be boring even when necessary to ask which conception of
Christianity is veri ed in the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament. The
question poses itself to us otherwise. If we are Christians, if we have not
left the historical age (Zeitraum) of metaphysics behind, then is our relation to
time determined by the present or by the future? Or is it indeed the case that
we are Christians and hence live time from out of the future? And so would
it not then be the case that we as Christians experience time unmetaphysically, namely, not from out of the present? Would an unmetaphysical

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Christianity then be possible?11 And what would this mean for Heideggers
thinking of the overcoming of metaphysics? The present essay situates itself
somewhere in the midst of these questions. Doubtless, they are all not entirely
answerable.

2. Time and History in Hegels Thinking

Just how much of a problem the question concerning time presents for Hegel
a problem that goes far beyond the limits of the philosophy of nature is indicated by a remark from the introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy.
It tries to bring to the clarity of a simple phenomenon the fact that philosophy
has a history at all. Hegel sees this as grounded in the appearance of the Idea
itself. Indeed, Hegel recognizes that for the question concerning a possible
beginning or end of history or that of a necessary development of the Idea in
history, such a detail remains barren. For this reason he says: The most immediate question that can be asked about it [about the application of universal concepts to history] concerns this diVerence in the appearance of the Idea itself . . .
the question as to how it comes to be that philosophy appears as a development in time and has a history. The answer to this question enters into the metaphysics of time, and it would be a digression from the purpose at hand were
anything more than the mere moments pointed out which concern the answer
to the question here raised.12 Hegels reference to a metaphysics of time is
obscure. Whatever the case, he never treated any such thing. Thus it is not so
certain that his discussions of time in the context of the philosophy of nature
should be taken up as metaphysics, for the concept metaphysics nonetheless
already says that the former cannot be so simply separated from the latter. A
metaphysics of time is peculiarly inappropriate for those parts of the system
having to do with the philosophy of history and religion. It is also hard to place
in the Logic, without being able to entirely deny its importance there as well.
On the whole it appears to proclaim an implicit presence. Given this, the
metaphysics of time could simply appear as the place in which the temporally determined relationship between Spirit and God could correspondingly be
observed. Metaphysics of time would then be the title for the factual, indeed
extant (Vorhandene) unity of the philosophy of history, the philosophy of religion,
and the logic.
Surely the gure of speech most frequently used by Hegel for the relationship between Spirit and time runs: the whole of the development of Spirit
falls . . . into time.13 It is diYcult to ascertain just what this metaphorical way
of speaking means. That which falls moves according to its weight, according to gravity. It comes from above. Since Spirit indeed falls into time, this
place above must be timeless, which here means eternal. This gure of speech
consequently appears to model itself on Plato.

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But Spirit does not entirely fall into time. Spirit does not entirely bring
itself to time. It brings its development to time [verzeitlicht seine Entwicklung ].
That it falls into time means by and large that it develops itself. With this,
one might think that the development of Spirit is merely its temporalization
[Verzeitlichung]. As necessary as development is to Spirit if Spirit is to entirely
come to itself, and only by so doing is to actualize itself there corresponds to
this development of Spirit the eternity of Spirit that holds itself back from all
such temporalization.
In a history that is still thought of and experienced as open, which is therefore at the same time still past and futural, there can indeed be knowledge concerning the eternity of Spirit, but not of its development in addition to this.
The possibility that there could be knowledge of Spirit, which is simultaneously both eternal and develops itself, is founded in that perspective which is
able to look down on history as something settled. The knowledge of the eternity and development of Spirit is necessarily a knowledge of the whole. For one
can only speak of development where there is a goal. While this is nally
reached only at the very end, with respect to cognition of the whole it is rst.
To be sure, the result is not the actual whole, but rather the result together
with the process through which it came about [mit seinem Werden];14 but only
beginning from a result can one speak sensibly of a becoming (Werden). The
knowledge of a result therefore is presupposed in thinking Spirit as simultaneously both eternal and self developing. Nevertheless, the knowing of a
result is itself something temporal in an exceptional way. Hegel remarks:
Whatever is true exists eternally in and for itself not yesterday or tomorrow,
but entirely in the present, now [itzt] in the sense of an absolute present.15 A
knowing (Wissen) that cognizes (kennt) the origin, development, and result of
history, i.e., the temporalized side of Spirit, is an absolute knowing. This says:
any such knowledge concerning Spirit is the knowing of Spirit itself. We, the
members of the community,16 nd ourselves in a temporality that is
in a position to make totally and completely present the whole of the past,
a temporality for which nothing any longer remains outstanding. And this
precisely because everything in and likewise arising out of this past has ful lled itself in the possibility of a future no longer to be taken as uncertain, since
nothing diVerent or new is any longer to be expected. Insofar as our Dasein
is indeed below, that is, insofar as we exist in a worldly manner, we are
temporally constituted. The temporality properly ours, however, is an
absolute present.
In order to explain what it means for something to be absolutely present
it is necessary to speak more precisely about Hegels theory of time. What
Hegel noted concerning the natural philosophy of his day in one of the socalled Jena system-projects from 1805 he more or less maintained until the
last edition of the Encyclopedia.17 But this holds, as it were, solely for the results

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PETER TRAWNY

of this line of thought. The project displays a certain coarseness in the stepwise
progression of its thinking, which in this respect is hardly to be compared with
the relatively clear implementations of the later writings. An interpretation that
devotes itself to the former sequence of steps therefore is at each and every
moment in danger of losing its way.
The mechanics section of the Jena system project concerning natural
philosophy from 1805 begins with the presentation of the Idea, as it appears
in nature. Its natural manner of appearance is as absolute matter or aether. The
aether is being, which has annulled [getilgt] diVerence as diVerence in itself and
left it behind. It is consequently that self-equivalency [Sichselbstgleichheit ] in
which all further moments of nature are contained. It is the pregnant matter, which, as absolute movement in itself, is gestation. The aether is thereby
this absolute instant to which the collected moments of nature are accorded,
giving unity to these. It is the Concept [BegriV ] as pure Concept in itself.18
Hegels analysis of time is only understable when it is seen that time is already
conceptualized. Hegel thinks from the perspective of the paralyzed unrest
[ paralysierten Unruhe] of the absolute Concept.19 It is the absolute present in
which we already know ourselves.
Space and time in this order are the rst moments of the aether. It
would not be Hegel if in what follows the immediate unity of time and space
were not grasped as movement.20 Here, solely Hegels discussion of time
will be considered.
Time is, as Hegel says, pure quantity as diVerence existing purely for
itself.21 With time there appears diVerence, which still plays no role in the
indiVerence of space. That time is on the whole quantity is reminiscent of
the Aristotelian determination of time as riymw kinsevw. It is the possibility
of distinguishing before and after. Time is numeric because it everywhere
opens up the succession of countables. For Aristotle, that through which and
with which time is diVerentiated and, so to speak, counted, is the nn, for Hegel
it is the one or the Now (Itzt ).
This one or Now, as this relation to itself, [this] equivalency [Gleichsein]
to itself, is negating of others.22 Because the one constitutes the series of individual occurrences i.e., separates the individuals from one another, diVerentiates them, or is diVerence itself (berhaupt) time is of a negative character.23
The process of the one following upon the other, the one thereby supplanting
the other, is to be understood as the negativity of time. To state it more rigorously: time is negativity.
The consideration of the essence of time begins with the one or Now,
and this is of great consequence. Hegel notes: This one is, it is immediate; for
its self-equivalency is precisely immediacy; it is the present. This Now expels all
others out of itself, it is absolutely simple.24 What now is, is present and as
such allows nothing other to come forth. It is pure immediate presence. As

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being is the undetermined immediate or the abstract relation to self,25 so is

the individual, simple Now of time nothing other than immediacy itself.
Both of the other dimensions of time, future and past, unfold for Hegel
from out of the Now, the rst dimension 26 of time. The Now is negated
by a coming Now; a coming Now destroys the presencing one; thus
there emerges the second dimension, the future. This step is signi cant
insofar as Hegels analysis of time understands the present initially from out
of the future. That it is the future and not the past that rst comes into view
for Hegel is not without importance. The future is the coming (das Kommende)
that negates the present, and thus is present. However, this cannot mean that
the future simply destroys the present. Consequently, the future does not
merely pass into the present negatively. It is as this negative, to immediately
negate and be its non-being, it is itself Now.27 It appears that the present is the
doubled, or absolute, negation of the future.
It would be one-sided to say that the future (die Zukunft) is the coming (das
Kommende), which doubly negates itself in bringing forth the present. The coming is itself not outside of the Now. Hegel writes: Consequently, the future is
immediately in the present, since it is the moment of the negative in same.28
Hegel can point out that the limit29 (Aristotle: praw, row) of the present is
itself from the present. The crossing over of that which is coming into the
Now is consequently Now. The negativity that on the whole is appropriate to time is thus not the negation of the future, but rather the negation of
the Now.
Consequently, the thought that the future would have its own being, one
delimited against the present, is disallowed, for such is not the case. The future
itself has no being, this is merely ascribed to it. So says Hegel: The future will
be; we re-present [stellen . . . vor] it as something; we ourselves transpose the being
of the present upon it. Its true being is to be Now.30 If the future is something that will occur then it is something represented (Vorgestelltes). It exists
now not as itself. Or it only exists now.
Announced here is a thought against a possible being of the future that Hegel
will also assert in the context of the philosophy of religion. The future becomes
on the whole merely something represented. Thinking may be inattentive to
such a representation, insisting that the future as the moment of the negative is immediately in the present. Representing for this reason misses this
negativity, because, in the truest sense of the word, it puts something forth (vorstellt). It is unable from the outset to meet with the future, which Hegel rst
understands simply as a coming. And while it is surely impossible to show a
failing in the Hegelian analysis of time, it may still be possible at this point to
contest the argument for an absolute priority of the present. Certainly representing is not able to make anything out of the future. But is the future, in
being thought as a coming and likewise eventually experienced as such, at all

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representable? Can representing represent sheer coming? Is the future at

all something? Is the suggestion that the future would indeed be thought now,
in the same way that everything is thought now, not itself an argument? An
argument that the mobility of the transition from future into present that the
coming to the limit of the Now would perhaps too quickly be brought to
a standstill? Might this be a starting point from which to begin to doubt Hegels analysis of time? Even before this, in the manuscript entitled Logic,
Metaphysics, Natural Philosophy, Hegel had thought of the present as a
diVerent relation in order to sublate this thought into the self-equivalency
of conceptualized time.31
The present now emerges immediately from the future as absolute negativity.
The future itself consequently is. To be sure, there is yet a further moment of
the Now. The Now is also that which the immediate negating Now has
sublated. In this sentence the word sublated must be stressed. It stands in
relation to Hegels previous statement: its concept is an other than that of the
authentic immediate Now. Here one cannot help but think that with this supposed third way of the Now, the rst way, too, comes back into play. The
twofold negation that falls from the future into the Now and is this, becomes
something past through its conceptualization. The conceived present is the past.
But once again, not as having gone away, but rather as present. Since the past
is evidently a conceptualized present, it is completed time.32 It is completed
because it is held fast and as such can no longer alter itself; it is the pure result,
or the truth of time.33 What we are is the result of a development. Who
we consequently prove to be, that is the truth of what has gone before.
Indeed just for this reason, the past that raises itself out of the negation of the
present now is a totality. It is also, like the future, not in itself; like the
future, the past as such is now.
The Now as the rst dimension is evidently the unity34 in general of
three-dimensional time. What is past, is now past, has arrived in the now and
has enriched this through negation, that is, through sublation. As a result, the
Now is the stilled place (beruhigte Ort) or the unmoved.35 Hegels thought
that the past [is] the goal says as much as that time has grasped itself, conceived itself, and thus has paralyzed its own movement. Time as something
gone by is not beyond the Now. That which will be futural, is ascribed to
the future from out of the now. We represent how something will be.
There is therefore no future as such if there is, it is now.
Such a Now, construable, on the one hand, as a simple dimension of time,
on the other hand can be elevated in an absolute perspective (absolute
Betrachtungsart ). In accordance with this point of view, the present holds an
absolute signi cance. As the unity of the present, future, and past, the present itself is absolutely present and eternal. This means, the absolute present is time itself.36

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Time is conceptualized time. Otherwise stated: the mobility (Bewegtheit) of

time appears to be tied to the process of conceptualization, indeed, ultimately
time is the Concept [BegriV ] itself. This thought, which already provides
the basis for the Jena projects, is more precisely unfolded by Hegel in the
Phenomenology of Spirit. One must keep in mind that the transition out of the
Philosophy of Nature into the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit requires, as
it were, another perspective. And yet it would be completely mistaken to fundamentally separate the systems two parts, Nature and Spirit.37 Hegel writes in
the Phenomenology: Time is the Concept itself that is there and which presents itself
to consciousness as empty intuition; for this reason, Spirit necessarily appears
in Time, and it appears in Time just so long as it has not grasped its pure
Notion, i.e. has not annulled [tilgt] Time.38 That the Concept is there or
that time is the existing Concept (daseyende BegriV ) means that the Concept
has brought to concretion the indeterminate immediate of Being. Existence
is a determinate Being, something concrete.39 What is conceived is actual
(wirklich). Beyond this, however, the Concept sets in motion the coming to self
of Spirit. The Concept is the element of the dialectical movement of Spirit;
that is, it conducts the ordered movement of negation.40
As time, the Concept presents itself to consciousness in the manner of an
empty intuition. With this term an allusion is made to Kants determination of time in the Critique of Pure Reason as a pure form of sensible intuition
(B 47). Nevertheless, Hegel cannot simply mean the same thing. He speaks of
this at the beginning of the Logic, stating there that Being is only this pure
empty intuiting itself.41 To be able to even speak this way presupposes something, namely, that there would be an intuiting and thinking. Starting from
the Concept, Being is thought as that absolute unity of being and reection.42
But at the same time objective logic is the genetic exposition of the Concept.43
Clearly, in the above mentioned thought of the Phenomenology, the Concept is
more precisely to be related to the determinate Being of existence (Daseyns).
This is a concrete Being, i.e. one that indeed permits of a number of determinations, distinct relations.44 As long as the Concept is justi ably temporal, simply is there, then it has something to do with distinctions and
determinations. What is intuited, however, remains unconceived, as does the
intuition itself. The emptiness of the intuition is its complete immediacy, which
comes to it through the mere existence of time. Spirit depends on developing and actualizing itself, and insofar as it does so, the abstract essence of the
Concept i.e., that it merely is there as an empty intuition achieves a
fullness. In order to become richer, more concrete, it must necessarily appear
in time. If however Spirit begins to know the Concept of Spirit, if the former comprehends the latter, if the Concept of the Concept 45 brings itself to language, then Spirit has annulled time. Consequently Hegel can write: Time,
therefore, appears as the destiny and necessity of Spirit that is not yet complete

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within itself.46 But it is complete, and thus has it endured its destiny history. To the fall into time there follows its overcoming.
Spirit or the true, as Hegel explains in regard to Spinoza in the Preface to
the Phenomenology of Spirit, is not only the substance but also the subject of
Being.47 Spirit thinks itself as self-consciousness, and knows that it is that which
puts history to work (ins Werk setzt). That it can know this, however, indicates
above all else this overcoming of time. As necessarily as the Concept places
itself into time, and there, so to speak, exhausts itself, just so necessarily does it
return to itself. Hegel writes in the Encyclopedia: The Concept, however, in its
freely self-existent identity as I = I, is in and for-itself absolute negativity and
freedom. Time, therefore, has no power over the Concept, nor is the Concept
in time or temporal; on the contrary, it is the power over time, which is this
negativity only qua externality. Only the natural, therefore, is subject to time in
so far as it is nite; the True, on the other hand, the Idea, Spirit, is eternal.48
The Concept is absolute negativity. Its temporalization is at rst only a
simple negation. The fall of Spirit into time is the simple negation of its
authentic (eigentlichen) eternality, i.e., timelessness. This fall is thus to be understood as a proof of freedom. It is, economically-trinitarianly thought, THE
GRACE (DIE GTE ) of Gods becoming human as institution of the world.
Negativity rst becomes absolute in once again negating this rst, necessary
negation. The sublation of temporality is, so to speak, the greatest triumph of
freedom, of the battle against the power of time. The subject of Spirit
self-consciousness is not like natural things subject to time; the Concept
or self-consciousness 49 is beyond time. Insofar as we are rational, and know
that we are so, do we know that there is the past and future only as present.
We, as thinking, are in the absolute present. The presence (Anwesenheit) of
God, the being-full (Erflltsein) of time, is the self-knowing knowledge of the present. Knowing, as carried out in philosophy, is the constant presenti cation
(Vergegenwrtigung) of this presence. If we think, we think sub specie aeternitatis.
In the Jena system fragment from 18051806, Hegel had already brie y
called attention to the role and error of representation, which represents what
will be and thereby misses the negative character of time. Previously Spinoza
had declared that there is not only one but rather diVerent ways to consider things
in relation to time. He distinguishes in the Ethics between an undetermined kind
of knowledge arising from the senses or experience and a knowledge of a reason (ratio) not yet related to God itself. This reason, however, is diVerentiated
yet again from the intuitive knowledge of God (scientia intuitiva) (Part II,
Proposition 40, Scholium 2). Only the rst kind of knowledge can be deceptive,
the other two cannot. The actuality (actualitas) of things can now be conceived,
once again, in two ways. We either consider the things in regard to their temporal and spatial determinations that is, represent them (cf. also Part V,

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Proposition 34, Proof ) or we consider them as they are in God and follow
from the necessity of divine Nature (ex necessitate naturae divinae) (Part V,
Proposition 29, Scholium). The rst point of view corresponds to the rst two
kinds of knowledge, sensible and rational knowledge. Only the second point of
view corresponds to the third kind of knowledge, hence to that scientia intuitiva
which is philosophy itself for Spinoza.
Now for Hegel, too, there is the possibility of understanding things from outside of the philosophical self-knowing of Spirit. He remarks: Furthermore, in
Nature where time is a Now, being does not reach the existence of the diVerence
of these dimensions; they are, of necessity, only in subjective imagination
(Vorstellung), in recollection (Erinnerung) and fear or hope.50 Insofar as that which is
past is recollected, the present feared, and the future hoped for, distinctions will
be made that do not exist in Nature. And insofar as Spirit knows sublated
Nature, it likewise will not cognize these distinctions. When something is
remembered, in order to preserve it against forgetfulness, or when something
is feared that one could surprisingly encounter, or in the case that something
is hoped for that possibly could be better than that which is already familiar,
then these are subjective representations (Vorstellungen). It is impossible to
carry such distinctions into philosophy, but it is to be borne in mind that Hegel
does not proclaim these distinctions to be false. They are in currency there
where we represent in religion among other places. Thinking, however, has
recognized them as irrelevant. Remembering, fearing, and hoping do not correspond to the character of reason. Spirit, too, re-collects (er-innert). To be
sure, in recollection 51 Spirit goes into itself, it experiences and knows the present of its absoluteness, that is, its eternality.
Appropriate to this going-into-itself of Spirit is a certain mobility. Hegel had
very often explained that the movement of Spirit is equal to a circle.52 With
this he takes up in a modi ed way a thought that is to be found in all of the
important Greek philosophers: the circle describes the most perfect geometrical
gure, the ball the best and most beautiful body, and circularity the consummate movement.53 Without doubt, Aristotles thought here assumes the utmost
importance. In his lectures on nature Aristotle discusses the appearance that
time would be somehow a circle (ka gr xrnow atow enai doke kklow tiw.
233b28f.). In the lectures that we commonly gather under the title
Metaphysics, he explains just how far God to whom now is appropriate
(1074b15V.), who is thought as zon dion riston (1072b28), as the eternal,
best living being performs the most complete motion, namely that of the circle
(1072a21). These thoughts nd their way almost unaltered into Hegels
philosophy.
Further Hegel proclaims that every part in the encyclopedic outline of
the system would be a circle that closes upon itself. Since any such part

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however is likewise the totality in itself, it breaks through the respective restriction of its element and goes over into the adjoining part. Thus the whole
forms a circle of circles. 54
The movement of the circle is closed. Spirit has stepped through all the necessary steps of its development and has returned to its origin at a higher level.
It will repeat none of the steps. There is no reason, even in the Phenomenology of
Spirit, to suppose that Spirit could repeat its path. Perhaps Spirit enjoys watching the manifested steps repeated; to realize itself, however, it needs nothing
further. In the community, the last supper symbolizes the repetition of the
nal assembly of Jesus with his disciples.55 The presence (Gegenwrtigkeit ) of God
is repeatedly acknowledged, though not originally realized. Spirit comes to rest.
Complete rest (Vollendruhe)56 reigns in history, as Hlderlin wrote. The Spirit
that moves history, necessarily moves itself in time. It produces (zeitigt )57 history. However, insofar as it concludes history, time and motion end. Complete
motionlessness, though, cannot come to Spirit. The type of motion that comes
closest to standing still, however, is a self-circling [ein Kreisen in sich ].58

3. Hegels Understanding of Time in Regard to the Philosophy of Religion

The temporal constitution of Spirit is the absolute present. In the absolute
present historically realizing itself, temporality becomes a subjective representation as lived in the everyday manner of rememberance, fear, and hope.
But the relationship between eternity and time does not yet seem to be entirely cleared up. It is problematic to think that time would eternalize itself in the
self-temporalization of eternity. Just as unlikely is it that the eternity of Spirit
would simply annihilate time. The reconciliation of Spirit with itself that
Hegel sees occurring at the end of history must also include Spirits temporality. It is the thesis of this essay that this reconciliation is expressed in the philosophy of religion.
An eminently important point of departure for the Hegelian philosophy of
religion may stem from the gospel of Mark. Handed down there is Jesus statement: ka lgvn ti peplrvtai kairw ka ggiken basilea to yeo.59 And
he [ Jesus] spoke: the time is ful lled and the reign of God is at hand
(Mk 1:15). God, i.e., Jesus Christ, has come into the world. Salvation [Das Heil ]
is there, time (kairw) is ful lled. The becoming human of God is that holy
occurrence from which we experience time as ful lled. The plrvma is the
key to understanding Hegels concept of time.
The word plrvma has both an active and a passive sense. It indicates that
which lls, which brings forth fullness, and that which is lled up, the ful lled
itself. Plrvma means, furthermore, the full number, the completeness of a
thing.60 As such as lling and fullness, ful lling and thing ful lled, and also as
bringing to completion it appears, for example, in the Epistles to the Romans,

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Galatians, and Ephesians as well. The plrvma tn kairn is the fullness of the
time, which has arrived with Christ and the Spirit (pnema) (Eph 5:18). Christ
indeed, in bodily form (Col 2:9) and the Spirit are consequently themselves
also plrvma . But not only these. The Epistle to the Ephesians grasps the
church itself (kklhsa) as the body (sma) that ful lls everything in everything
(t plrvma to pnta n psi plhroumnou) (Eph. 1:23). So understood, the
plrvma yeo (Eph. 3:19) becomes central for Hegel.
Indeed, as fundamental as the writings of the New Testament may be for
Hegel, a student of the Tbingen Stift, it is equally probable that his understanding of plrvma is not based, or at least not solely, in an exacting study
(of the Epistle to the Ephesians, for example). It is more likely Hegels confrontation with Neo-Platonic philosophers, and among these, above all, with
Philo of Alexandria,61 which passed onto him the full meaning of plrvma .
Thus one nds the following passage concerning Philo in Hegels Lectures on the
History of Philosophy: The First is therefore the primordial light [Urlicht], the
essence, the substance, which lls and encompasses everything. He is full of
Himself, atow auto plrhw (plrvma ). Everything else is needy and empty.
This empty negative he lls and encompasses. He is Himself One and All.
[The] One is the abstract, [the] All is absolute fullness. This fullness, however,
is itself still abstract, not yet concrete. The concrete is the lgow. God lives only
in the Ain, in the model [Urbild ], in the pure Concept of time.62 It is the
trinitarian movement from the departure or becoming human of God and the
developed return into the pouring forth of the Holy Spirit, the movement from
abstract to concrete, from empty to whole, from unconceived to conceptualized,
which Hegel sees conceived as plrvma in Philo.
Hegels full understanding of plrvma rests nally upon the following consideration. On the one hand, Hegel thinks that Spirit must necessarily enter
into and complete its course through time, but on the other hand, Hegel shows
that the Concept eradicates (vertilgt) time. Spirit eradicates time in that it
successively in ltrates time with eternity. Finally, this is ful lled. The ful lled
time, however, is neither eternity nor time, but rather something else. Could
it be possible that Hegel thinks plrvma as the reconciliation of eternity and
time? The plrvma is not eternity in the medium of representation (Vorstellung).
The plrvma, the ful lled time, is a time concentrated and intensi ed, from
eternity, which results in the completion of the whole.
It is now necessary to further clarify the problem of the Hegelian theory of
time in regard to the experience of time characterized as Christian. It is immediately obvious that Hegel contradicts an essential character of the Christian
understanding of time. The (three in one) God of Hegel knows no last revelation, no last judgement. Thus history itself is the court of judgment (Gericht)63 the Christian religion is certainly quite a decisive gure within
this court though it is never the indication of something pending, a last

24

PETER TRAWNY

judgment, for example. Hegels philosophy of religion gives up the an

mllvn (Mt 12:32) (the hesitant-futural an), it renounces eschatology.
According to Hegel, the Spirit of the community is itself present as such
and requires a ful lled present. The belief in a paradise, past and again to be
attained, or in a future and expected kingdom of God is for Hegel a confused
image essentially characteristic of the subject, to be sure, though cognized by
philosophical thought as untrue.64 The self-knowing Spirit, insofar as it is
absolute, is necessarily completely present, time has streamed into it. The future
in which, unlike the past, nothing has yet occurred is absolutely nebulous.65
The eschaton of revealed religion in the Phenomenology of Spirit is thus a direct
objection against this religion. An understanding of the present is appropriate
to religion, an understanding that is founded upon a world that has still to
await its trans guration.66 But the world of absolute knowing, the world
into which the Holy Ghost has poured, is transgured. Hegel dares to make a consequence of the present that which in Christianity remains reserved for the future.
This imposition is expressed in what Hegel translates from the New
Testament. For the further course of the upcoming discussions, the following
claim by Jesus is of the utmost importance: metanoe te: ggiken gr basilea
tn orann (Mt 4:17). This perfect form of the verb ggzein Hegel translated
in the present: the kingdom of Heaven is here.67 However it is simply to be
translated: For the kingdom of God has nearly come forth. Hegel interprets
nearness (Nhe) (ggthw) into the present. The diVerence between nearness and
the present, as slight as it may appear, is nonetheless decisive. For it is to be
shown just how far the Christian experience of time is determined by the nearness of the kingdom, by the nearness of the time of its arrival, and thus by the
nearness of God.
To be sure, one could immediately object here that it need not be entirely
wrong to think plrvma as the essence of the Christian understanding of time.
Christ is in the world, time is ful lled. Was Hegel not perfectly right to put
aside the eschatological dimension of Christianity? Further still: has Hegel not
in all correctness pointed out a contradiction in Christianity? How do plrvma
tn kairn and ggthw yeo t together?
We have already indicated that Hegel himself formulates a contradiction by
taking for granted the ful llment of time, on the one hand, and the annullment
of time, on the other. A possible solution to this contradiction is found in
Hegels identi cation of the ful llment of time with the coming of the reign of
God. Without a doubt Hegel had this in mind.
The trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit rounds itself
out in the owing forth of the Spirit, in the formation of the community that
we are. The unity of the three elements forms a closed-oV whole for Hegel.
It ultimately lacks nothing. Salvation (Das Heil ) is here. Such an entirely and
completely closed unity is only then thinkable when the eschatological dimen-

THE FUTURE OF TIME

25

sion of Christian belief is thought of as a mere imagining (Vorstellen). For

thought itself, the central event is the resurrection of Christ, the DEATH OF
DEATH,68 and its con rmation in the pouring forth of the Holy Spirit. Time
is ful lled, the world is reconciled, God makes Himself present: the
trans gured divine World is this appearing.69

4. A Thesis on the Historicality of Time

Time is, according to Hegel, the destiny of Spirit. It must take on time in
order to bring itself to itself, in order to make itself absolute. This movement
of coming to oneself (Zusichselbstkommen ) however is a movement of the
Concept. In that the Concept clari es more and more the systematic outline of the whole, it annuls time, i.e., it reaches a place at which negativity
completes itself: the Concept conceives itself. Now the past and the future
can only be spoken of as sublated; they are still there, in that they are now.
Spirit knows itself in its absolute present.
According to Hegel, this absolute present points to no timeless place.
Thought in regard to the philosophy of religion, time is ful lled. God is Spirit
that is present to itself, that is, is wholly [berhaupt] present. We are in the
fullness of God, in a trans gured divine world.
Hegel is also capable of expressing this historical condition in a much simpler fashion. This condition is manifest in that it is possible to claim that the
actual is rational, the rational actual.70 This much contested formula of Hegels
says nothing more than that Spirit has made itself present (vergegenwrtigt) and
that the present has consequently spiritualized (vergeistigt) itself. Actually this is
only what we understand and know. The irrational is there wherever possible; but never in the order of the actual. There is madness, but actuality itself
will never be mad.
Phenomenology is able to lend support to such a thought. Namely, Husserls meditation upon the life world touches upon the phenomenon of normality, itself constitutive for the existence of the life world. Normality is
a purpose structure71 that makes possible a normal ful llment of our
practical interests.72 It is by no means limited to the practical, however.
Normality is a fundamental concept drawn from essential sources [Wesensquellen]. Its signi cance is one founded according to Being (seinsmig), from
essential grounds [Wesensgrnden], which have their own absolute signi cance.73
These converge with science. According to Husserl, the life world reposes
along with science upon one single ground. The permit for such a founding is the inviolable unity of the complex of meaning and validity of a universal accomplishment, presupposed by all human praxis and all prescienti c
and scienti c life. Husserl sees the ground of such a unity in an anonymous subjectivity.74

26

PETER TRAWNY

Thus in relation to the life world Husserl thinks from an identity of practical and theoretical consciousness. In no way did Husserl ever reject science
as the wholly appropriate method for the self-presenti cation (Selbstvergegenwrtigung) of reason as such. What he objects to is the postivistic reduction of
the idea of science to a mere science of facts [Tatsachenwissenschaft ].
This identity between (transcendental) theory and practice, necessary for the
normality of the life world, corresponds to Husserls assumption and interpretation of an inner time consciousness. It can surely be said that with this
Husserl had steadfastly adhered75 to a priority of the continual present
(bestndigen Gegenwart).76 Over and against this, it rst appears inconsequential
when Husserl seems to accept that the completion of the course of history in a
rational endposition (Endstand ) is still pending, and that teleological reason77
therefore still has to wait upon its nal institution (Endstiftung).
Normality converges with the continual present because the factual selfconsciousness living in the life world is, in fact, at rst interested in its existence (Bestand). By itself it has to care for the security of normality. Any falling
out of this normality would be equivalent to a deactualization (Entwirklichung),
even an annihilation. The rationality of practical self-preservation78 wants or
needs normality because in this normality the living being that pursues
such self-preservation is able to rst know itself as completely at home.
This description of modern consciousness, at bottom already expressed by
Hegel, again renders recognizable the extent to which the future and past disappear behind the supremacy of an absolute present. Now too little is said if
this is merely pointed out as a metaphysical theorem in order to thereby show
that through such a signi er we would already have nothing more to do with
the signi ed. Without a doubt, Hegel and Husserl are located in a philosophical tradition that fundamentally privileges eternity above the transiency of
time, which, roughly put, proclaims eternity to be the place of truth. What
is supposed to be said by this? And if something is said, are certain philosophers then to have been obsessively xed on some sort of metaphysics?
The author of this essay has reached the conclusion beginning from Hegels
conception of timethat in respect to the life world, the incessantly proclaimed primacy of the continual present is wholly and entirely legitimate, is
even good. We live in the continual present.
The natural phenomena that count for an experience of time, such as the
diVerence between night and day, sleeping and being awake, season and phase
of life, and between birth and death as well, are here in no way suppressed.
They are normalized as nature and never achieve the status of determining the course of the life world. They come forth without determining the
completely rational actuality.
We have disposed of the future and the past in so far as these appear to
accommodate that which either withdraws from us or ful lls us, disappoints or

27

THE FUTURE OF TIME

surprises us, gives or steals from us. The normality of the life world has liberated itself from this. Time is powerless. It no longer comes forth in decisive,
hurtful, painful ways. This means we have, as it were, forgotten time as we have forgotten a long past pain.
If history is temporal, then time is historical.

5. The Time of the Future

The understanding of time in Hegelian thought is grounded in the now-time,
grasped as plrvma. Heidegger frankly might have regarded this as an extreme
of the vulgar conception of time, of the understanding of time in metaphysics.
It contradicts without a doubt that thought of Heideggers, according to which
the Christian experience lives time itself. In thinking this as an experience of primordial time, understood from the futureas a time experience,
not theory Heidegger has in mind precisely that which is commonly termed
eschatology.
As a matter of fact, Jesus sermons speak uniquely of the future. It is as if the
coming of the future was, so to speak, their heart.
That the future is a coming of events, people, things, a coming of the end,
cannot be regarded as a common thought. On the contrary: the common way
in which goals are present, for example they do not of themselves come to
humans, but rather are to be reached by humans appears much more to
speak against a coming of the future, as does the view that the human has plans
or projects; this sounds more like a going forward into the future than a coming on the futures part. It is the will that gives rise to the appearance that
the future would be a space into which one steps. Nevertheless, it remains
reserved for the future to abrogate goals, plans, and projects. Insurances and
guarantees by means of which the common eventualities are prepared for in
advance are a sign of this nal authority of the future. For the most part they
attempt to intercept, so to speak, that which comes. They are unable to prevent that which no one can prevent. The future is consequently, as the theologian Karl Rahner writes, that which comes to us from out of itself when it
will. This when it will is a thoroughly threatening, but also fortunate, countermove to the human will. It corresponds to Rahners so-called inaccesability
(Unverfgbaren) of the coming or, as the theologian writes, of the arriving future
(anknftigen Zukunft ).79 With this term, it is at once said that the future arrives
as precisely such an adventual moment (adventliches Moment). That there is the
future this alone is the eaggllion.
Thus, at bottom, not only Hegels philosophy has dispensed with the future,
it may simply be an essential character of metaphysics to regard the future tense
with mistrust. Even the transcendental phenomenology of Husserl devotes itself
much more pressingly to retention and protention, where it remains to be

28

PETER TRAWNY

thought whether and just how far the rst can be identi ed with the past and
the second with the future.
This adventual and essential characteristic of the future as such indicates
where this thought nds its legitimation. If, as Schelling once wrote, Christianity is the religion of the future,80 or as Rahner notes, even the religion of
the absolute future,81 it is such because God himself is the future. And in fact,
so is it named in the Revelation of John, God is the coming one ( rxmenow)
(Rv 1:4).
Before we apply ourselves more closely to the words of Jesus, the question must be repeated: Was Hegel not entirely right in pointing out the contradiction in speaking at the same time of a plrvma tn kairn and a ggthw
yeo ? Was it not right to bring this contradiction up for decision? How can it
be shown that here it concerns an apparent contradiction? In truth, the relationship between plrvma tn kairn and ggthw yeo can be sensibly interpreted.
Precisely that which will be is near; in the Christian horizon this is the rule
of God. Future in its New Testament sense means the nearness (ggthw) of the
kingdom of God. The eschaton of the rule of God however does not refer to
a completely delivered world. With the arrival of Christ in the world, salvation
(Heil ) has occurred. In the passage from cruci xion and resurrection as well as
in the pouring forth of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit, i.e. God, is presently present
(anwesend gegenwrtig). Nevertheless the rule of God remains outstanding. Time is
already ful lled, though the promise has not yet wholly occurred.82 This relationship between already and not yet consequently characterizes the conception of the
future in the New Testament. The plrvma of time is there, but this is not yet
everything. The phenomenon of nearness appears to best be t such a condition.
Something still remains outstanding, is still denied to us and indeed we
are able to wait for it, because it brings itself near. The reign of God is, as it is
termed by Matthew, nearly arrived (ggiken gr basilea tn ourann). This
sentence is one among many announcements that all refer constantly to the
nearness (ggthw) of the rule of God,83 though never to its completed presence. Michael Theunissen, in reference to the theologian Eberhard Jngel,84 has
thought this nearness as prolepsis: The present, conceived with Jesus as the
nearness of the nearing kingdom, posesses a proleptic structure, insofar as what
happens in the present, is determined by the incidence [Vorfall] of the future in
it.85 By reason of a salvation (Heil ) already occurred, we are allowed to anticipate such a ful lled time that is on the way to us, has already announced
itself, and indeed has not yet wholly exhausted itself. Located between an already
and a not-yet-whole, such a between provides a place from which the Christian
experience lives time itself. Indeed, such a proclamation would more than
likely remain empty if it were not supported by something justifying Heideggers
pronouncement that Christians live time as such.
In order to clarify this pronouncement, the following will refer to one of

THE FUTURE OF TIME

29

Jesus many parables, as witnessed in the Gospel of Luke among others, parables, incidentally, which also and above all, according to Jngel, must be
understood as eschatological speech.86 Luke 21:2931 reads: And he told to
them a parable: look at the g tree and all trees. If it has already (dh) come
into leaf, so do you all see it and note that already (dh) the summer (or fall,
yrow) is near (ggw). Therefore if you see all this, also recognize that the kingdom of God is near (ggw).87 What this parable stands for, what the g tree
could possibly represent, is not essential.88 In any event, the more important
thing is the structure of Jesus analogy itself. The activity of the trees, which
occurs here and now, announces the nearness of summer, of fruition. But that
which announces itself there the summer that brings fruition is coming. Thus
it must be borne in mind that the nearness and coming of summer and the
nearness and coming of the reign of God are one and the same. The coming
God brings himself near in his rule. The rule of God lies in its approach.89
Further, the Revelation of John contains hints that deepen the eschatological relation between nearness and coming. These conclude with the statement
(Rv 22:20): lgei marturn tata. na, rxomai tax. The adjective taxw means
fast, but also soon. What comes soon is not yet, but indeed nearly there.
To nearness and coming there corresponds the Soon (die Blde), which names
that which only barely holds itself back, but nevertheless still holds itself back.
Decisive for understanding this simultaneously transitory and nevertheless
abiding structural relation is the place (der Ort) it occupies, the place toward
which the Coming is headed, the place of exposure. An expectant person is
dependent upon a coming and possible arrival. He or she welcomes the coming of the future, the coming of God as gift (Gabe).90
One can foresee just how far astray the concept of a proleptic structure
can lead. The nearness of the reign of God, precisely thought, may not, indeed
cannot, be anticipated. This is seen in that starting from the ful llment of
time, which now already is, the anticipation of the coming leads to the
thought developed by Hegel, that of the absolute present. In so far as that
which is outstanding is anticipated, that which is ful lled is able to receive its
con rmation and be brought to a conclusion, thereby obstructing the nearness and the soon coming of the future. Consequently, to speak of a prlhciw
harbors a certain danger. If there were such a word, one would sooner be
permitted to speak of a prdosiw meant here as a gift in advance (Vorgabe)
if that which is expressed in the eschatological communications of the New
Testament is more decisively to come into view.
Living time means therefore, to experience this relation of nearness, coming, and the Soon. But what is there experienced is not only a moment of time,
it is, Heidegger suggests, time itself. Otherwise stated: the nearness to the soon
coming reign of God that still holds itself in reserve is time itself. It thus belongs to the
present to be determined by a futural possibility, which essentially towers above

30

PETER TRAWNY

all that is present. The nearness to the coming reign of God that holds itself
back is no in-between state that is to be overcome. We experience time itself
in so far as we take up residence in this between, in so far as in this between
we welcome that which is given to us.
In this way, what Heidegger stresses in Being and Time also gains a certain
clarity: Hegel had neglected to ask whether the way in which Spirit is essentially constituted as the negating of a negation, is possible in any other manner
than on the basis of primordial temporality. From the future, there is the present. The coming lets the present be.

6. The Opening of the Future in Heideggers Thinking

Hegels theory of time can not be con rmed by the writings of the New
Testament. This should not come as a surprise, since this probably shows just
how far Christianity has distanced itself from the word of the New Testament
by loading itself up with Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic philosophy. It could
most likely even be made clear that the metaphysical concept of eternity from
Plato, Augustine, and Boethius91 (to name only the most in uential spokespeople in this connection) is foreign to primordial Christianity. But whether
in turning back to the Gospels and Epistles themselves an authentic Christianity is to be found remains to be seen.
Nonetheless, it could be said in regard to Heideggers supposed polemic
against Christianity that this objects most strongly to the latters metaphysical
transformation. Against the doctrine of the eschaton, Heidegger once noted:
All eschatology lives on a belief in the security of a new state of aVairs. In
the thinking preparatory to Beyng-historical thinking [Im Vordenken des seynsgeschichtlichen Denkens], however, the grounding ground of Da-sein is this Da-sein
itself.92 It is obvious from the outset that belief is not preparatory thinking. In the Beitrge zur Philosophie, in the context of an essential knowing,
Heidegger thinks it possible that this knowing appear as belief 93 within the
perspective of representing and having representations (des Vorstellens und
Vorstellungsbesitzes). If this is taken into consideration it becomes obvious that
the previous thought amounts to something else entirely. The essential objection strikes at the object of eschatology: Beyng-historical thinking (seynsgeschichtliche Denken) does not have as its goal the security of a new condition.
Da-sein as the grounding ground is in itself at the same time the abyss
(Ab-grund ).94
In fact it is not to be forgotten that the last book of the New Testament, the
Revelation of John, speaks of a new heaven and a new earth (Ka edon
orann kainn ka gn kainn [Rev. 21:1]). This announcement was and is to
be understood as the self-realizing promise of the rule of God in the future. To
this extent the rule of God would be an object that somehow becomes ever

THE FUTURE OF TIME

31

more actual. This appears to contradict the interpretation of the sermons of

Jesus according to which time is simply the nearness of the rule of God, though
not the overcoming of this nearness. Everything comes down to an eschatological founding of the state. The future bears a technical character. The rule of
God would become a representation of something already accomplished.
Thus prevails the need for security mentioned by Heidegger. The talk would
then no longer be of a future in the sense of an inaccessible (unverfgbaren) coming.
Consequently we may proclaim that Heidegger does not at all speak out
against the Christian experience of the nearness to a coming, but rather
against a de nite objecti cation of this experience. Heideggers supposed war
against Christianity could probably be understood simply as a resistance against
such common objecti cations in Christianity.
It can be shown that Heidegger himself expresses the experience of the
nearness to something coming in Beyng-historical thinking [seynsgeschichtlichen
Denken]. At one point in Die Geschichte des Seyns he asks how it could be possible
for modern thought to know Beyng, and knowing it as a coming, to experience it?95 This coming is further spoken of as the most coming of the coming from out of the distance of the most near.96
There is obviously a question as to what then this most coming would be.
The uncommon superlative is explained to the eVect that here a coming is
thought whose coming is of a unique necessity and signi cance. For this reason, speaking about the coming itself appears unavoidable. Heidegger, too,
was more than aware of this diYculty. In the course of the Evening
Conversation in a Prisoner of War Camp, one of the two speakers asks who is
awaited in this waiting which the other speaker has previously indicated as a
letting come. The answer runs: What do we let come in pure waiting other
than the coming?97 With this, though, the last word is not yet spoken. This
pure waiting upon the coming is further clari ed: that our essence rst
becomes free in such a waiting, since in the simple experience of all this, the
salvatory [das Heilsame] that has been given us is at once imminent.98 If waiting is a liberation of our essence, then it holds that the impossibility of being
able to wait signi es unfreedom. If in the future of the coming (Zukunft des
Kommens), the salvatory is imminent, then there lies in the absence of the
future the foundation of the unwholesome (Unheiles). This absence, and along
with this a growing impossibility to wait, points to the temporal condition of
metaphysics. When Heidegger considers the dimension of the coming, it is a
matter of abandoning this metaphysical condition along a path that opens from
out of the future. In so far as we wait, the salvatory is imminent to us,
the breaking through of metaphysics has already occurred. We have consequently already welcomed that which is not yet there. The most coming of the
coming is from the outset the salvatory (das Heilsame) that is experienced
in the coming itself.

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PETER TRAWNY

But Heidegger does not leave it at that. He has elsewhere spoken otherwise
of the most coming of the coming. It is named in a long passage from the
end of the thirties: The Gods in coming ground the ground of the deepest history and are the heralds of the last God [des letzten Gottes], whose nality [Letztes]
[is] his coming. He brings nothing, and if he were to then it would only be
himself; but also only as the most coming of the coming. Ahead of himself, he
bears the future, his time-play-space in Beyng, which itself awaits that the God,
coming, ful ll it and in the coming come.99 The most coming of the coming
is the last God. His coming, that is, the openness of the future, is his
nality (Letztes). Does anything remain left for us other than to hold this
thought to be an objecti cation of the rst, by which the coming itself
promises the nearness of something salvatory (eines Heilsamen)? Above all, is
not the thought that would attribute a nality (Letztes) to this God a repetition of Christian eschatology? 100
Ultimately these questions should be turned back to precisely those who pose
them. For Hegel, and in another way also for Schelling, it was undeniable that
we are Christians. Heidegger and this is the case takes this in earnest, precisely in that we forget Christianity in the long history of metaphysics. 101 The
question remains whether God thereby escapes us, and who then we
really are.
Translated by Andrew Mitchell
State University of New York at Stony Brook

NOTES
1. Martin Heidegger, berwindung der Metaphysik in Vortrge und Aufstze (Pfullingen: Gnther
Neske Verlag, 1954), 76V. Translated under the title Overcoming Metaphyiscs in The End of
Philosophy, ed. and trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973), 84V.
Also, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel Vollendung der abendlndischen Metaphysik? in Hegel
Hlderlin Heidegger ed. Helmut Gehrig (Karlsruhe: Katholische Akademie der Erzdizese
Freiburg, 1971), 11: It is truly not rst a formulation of Martin Heideggers that Hegel presents the completion of Western metaphysics. All too clearly does the language of historical
facts establish that with Hegels system and its swift collapse in the middle of the nineteenth
century, a two thousand year tradition that had lent the stamp of metaphysics to Western
philosophy has come to an end.
2. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit. Erste Hlfte. 3rd ed. (Halle an der Saale: Max Niemeyer
Verlag, 1931), 422. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson under the title Being
and Time (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1972), 474; translation modi ed. Hereafter SZ with
German/English pagination.
3. SZ, 422/474.
4. SZ, 427/479.

THE FUTURE OF TIME

33

5. SZ, 435/48586.
6. SZ, 428/480.
7. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen ber die Philosophie der Religion. Teil 3: Die vollendete
Religion, ed. Walter Jaeschke, new ed. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1995). Translated by R.
F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart with H. S. Harris, under the title Lectures on the
Philosophy of Religion. Vol. 3: The Consummate Religion, ed. Peter C. Hodgson (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1985). Hereafter VPhR with German/English pagination.
8. SZ 427/BT 499 n. xiii.
9. Martin Heidegger, Phnomenologie des religisen Lebens. 1. Einleitung in die Phnomenologie der Religion.
2. Augustinus und der Neuplatonismus. 3. Die Philosophischen Grundlagen der mittelalterlichen Mystik, eds.
Matthias Jung, Thomas Regehly, and Claudius Strube, vol. 60 of Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt
am Main: Vittorio Klosterman, 1995), 82. Gesamtausgabe hereafter cited GA followed by vol.
number.
10. The question concerning the we, surrounding the subject and necessarily determining it, had
occupied Hegel as well as Heidegger: Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen ber die Geschichte der
Philosophie. Teil 1. Einleitung in die Geschichte der Philosophie. Orientalische Philosophie, ed. Walter
Jaeschke new ed. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1993), 6; (hereafter VGPh): But in fact,
what we are we are at the same time historically, or more precisely, just as the past is only one
aspect in this region of the history of thinking, so is communal immortality inseparably bound
up with that which we historically are. Cf. also Martin Heidegger, Die Geschichte des Seyns. 1.
Die Geschichte des Seyns. 2. Koinn. Aus der Geschichte des Seyns, ed. Peter Trawny, GA 69 (Frankfurt
am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1998), 8: What is called being? Are we because we, and
insofar as we, so encounter ourselves, like we encounter a tree or a house. And do we encounter
ourselves so? And supposing this as well, do we thereby hit upon the manner of how we are?
11. Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Marburg Theology in Heideggers Ways, trans. John
W. Stanley (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 2943. Heidegger had spoken
with Bultmann on this question. A yet-to-be-published correspondence between the two will
provide information on this.
12. VGPh, 29.
13. VGPh, 221: If Spirit makes advances, the whole must advance as well; the external side falls
into time and thus the whole of the development of Spirit falls into time; the thought, the principle of a time is the one Spirit that pervades all. This has to advance into consciousness of
itself and this is the development of the whole mass, the concrete totality, which falls into exteriority and hence into time. The thought is essentially a result, it must be produced [hervorgebracht], and the production falls toward the side of the appearance in time, according to
the given reasons.
14. G. W. F. Hegel, Phnomenologie des Geistes. Vol. 9 of Gesammelte Werke, ed. Wolfgang Bonsiepen
and Reinhard Heede (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1980), 10. Translated by A. V. Miller
under the title Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 2, 3,
translation modi ed. Hereafter PdG with German/English pagination and section number.
15. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen ber die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte. Bd. 1: Die Vernunft in der Geschichte,
ed. Johannes HoVmeister. 6th ed. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1994), 182. Translated by
H. B. Nisbet under the title Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction: Reason in History,
Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics (London: Cambridge University Press,
1975), 150.
16. Cf. Hegel, VPhR, 69V./133V.
17. Hegel had earlier already thought about space and time in a system-project from 18041805,
the manuscripts of which are collected under the title Logic, Metaphysics, Natural philosophy. The diVerences which exist between this earlier Jena project and the later one are worth
considering. Nevertheless, they will not be taken into account here.

34

PETER TRAWNY

18. G. W. F. Hegel, Jenaer Systementwrfe III: Naturphilosophie und Philosophie des Geistes, ed. Rolf-Peter
Horstmann new ed. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1987), 3; hereafter JS III.
19. G. W. F. Hegel, Jenaer Systementwrfe II: Logik, Metaphysik, Naturphilosophie, ed. Rolf-Peter
Horstmann new ed. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1982), 210; hereafter JS II.
20. JS III, 16.
21. JS III, 10.
22. JS III, 10.
23. JS III, 12.
24. JS III, 10.
25. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen ber die Philosophie der Religion. Teil 1: Einleitung. Der BegriV der Religion.
New ed. Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1993), 304V. Translated by R. F.
Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart with J. P. Fitzer and H. S. Harris under the title
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Vol. 1: Introduction and The Concept of Religion, ed. Peter
C. Hodgson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 409V.
26. JS III, 11.
27. JS III, 11.
28. JS III, 11.
29. JS III, 11.
30. JS III, 11.
31. JS II, 208.
32. JS III, 11.
33. JS III, 12.
34. JS III, 12.
35. JS III, 19.
36. JS III, 12.
37. Cf. this misunderstanding of Jacques Derridas Ousia and Gramm: Note on a Note from Being
and Time, in: Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1982), 29f.
38. PdG, 429/487, 801, (translation modi ed).
39. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik. Erster Teil: Die objektive Logik. Erster Band: Die Lehre vom
Sein. vol. 21 of Gesammeltewerke, ed. Fridrich Hogemann and Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix
Meiner Verlag, 1985), 98. Translated by A. V. Miller under the title Hegels Science of Logic, ed.
H. D. Lewis (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1969), 110, 2.A.a.
Hereafter WL I with German/English pagination and section number.
40. PdG, 4546/40, 66, (translation modi ed).
41. Cf. WL, I 69/82, 1.A: There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting;
or, it is only this pure empty intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or it
is equally only this empty thinking. (translation modi ed)
42. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik. Zweiter Band: Die subjective Logik (1816), vol. 12 of
Gesammelte Werke, ed. Friedrich Hogemann and Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner
Verlag, 1981), 12. Hegels Science of Logic (op. cit.), 578, The Notion in General (translation
modi ed). Hereafter WL II with German/English pagination and section number.
43. WL II, 11/577, The Notion in General, (translation modi ed).
44. WL I, 98/110, 2.A.a.
45. WL II, 16/582, The Notion in General, (translation modi ed).
46. PdG, 429/487, 801.
47. PdG, 22/14, 25.
48. G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopdie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1830), vol. 20 of
Gesammelte Werke, ed. Wolfgang Bonsiepen and Hans-Christian Lucas (Hamburg: Felix Meiner
Verlag, 1992), 248. Translated by T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris, under the

THE FUTURE OF TIME

49.

50.
51.
52.

53.

54.

55.
56.

57.

58.

35

title The Encyclopaedia Logic (with the Zustze). Part I of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences
with the Zustze (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1991) and Hegels Philosophy of
Nature. Being Part Two of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), trans. A. V. Miller
(Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1970), 35, 258 Remark, (translation modi ed). Hereafter EpW
with German and English pagination (English by Encyclopaedia part I or II) and section number.
WL II, 1718/584, The Notion in General: It is one of the profoundest and truest insights
to be found in the Critique of Pure Reason that the unity that constitutes the nature of the Concept
is recognized as the original synthetic unity of apperception, as unity of the I think, or of selfconsciousness. (translation modi ed)
EpW, 249/II: 37, 259, Remark (translation modi ed).
PdG, 433/492, 808. [ Translators Note: Paraphrasis in English translation, recollection, the
inwardizing. ]
VGPh, 217: The absolute development, the life of God, of Spirit, is only a process, a universal movement, and, as something concrete, a series of developments. This series is not to be represented as
a straight line, but rather as a circle, as a return into itself. This circle has at its periphery a great
number of circles; a development is always a movement through many developments.
Parmenides, Fragment 1: Alhyehw ekuklow tremw tor. Fragment 5: junn d mo stin,
ppyen rjvmai: tyi gr plin jomai ayiw. Fragment 7 (8): the n ekklou sfarhw
nalgkion gkvi. Heraclitus, Fragment 103: junn gr rx ka praw t kklon perifereaw.
(To this, the clarifying Fragment 113: junn sti psi t fronein.) Then Fragment 100: raw
a pnta frousi. Cited according to Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. Walther
Kranz, vol. 1, 18th ed. (Zrich and Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1992.).
EpW, 56/I: 39, 15: Each of the parts of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle that
closes upon itself; but in each of them the philosophical Idea is in a particular determinacy or
element. Every single circle also breaks through the restriction of its element as well, precisely
because it is inwardly [the] totality, and it grounds a further sphere. The whole presents itself
therefore as a circle of circles, each of which is a necessary moment, so that the system of its
peculiar elements constitutes the whole Idea which equally appears in each single one of them.
VPhR, 88V./152V.
Friedrich Hlderlin, . . . Der Vatikan . . . in Smtliche Werke (Groe Stuttgarter Ausgabe), ed.
Friedrich Beiner, vol. 2: Gedichte nach 1800 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1951), 253,
line 45. [Translators Note: Two popular English translations: Michael Hamburger, Rest of
perfection, in Poems & Fragments (London: Anvil Press Poetry Ltd, 1994), 613; and Richard
Sieburth, Consummate peace, in Hymns and Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1984), 205].
Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann GA 12 (Frankfurt am
Main, Vittorio Klostermann, 1985), 201: Die Zeit zeitigt. [Translators Note: The English
translation, time times in On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (San Francisco: Harper
& Row, Publishers, 1971), 106, while more literal, misses the sense in discussion here.
Another essay would throw a bridge from the beginning of the completion of metaphysics
to the completed completion, to the Nietzschean thought of an eternal recurrence of the
same. As diYcult as it may be to construct this bridge on stable pillars, so inevitably does the
thought arise that here there would be a necessary connection. Consequently, a boredom
must come to expression that would have to be considered as mood of the world (Weltstimmung).
Cf. Martin Heidegger, Die GrundbegriVe der Metaphysik: Welt Endlichkeit Einsamkeit, ed.
Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, GA 29/30. (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann,
1983), 217f. Translated by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker under the title The
Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
1995), 144f. For commentary on this, see Peter Trawny, Martin Heideggers Phnomenologie der
Welt (Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 1997), 259V.

36

PETER TRAWNY

59. All Bible citations according to the Novum Testamentum Graece. Post Eberhard et Erwin Nestle.
Apparatum criticum novis curis elaboraverunt Barbara et Kurt Aland. 27th ed. (Stuttgart:
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993).
60. Cf. on the meaning of the word Josef Ernst, Pleroma und Pleroma Christi. Geschichte und Deutung
eines BegriVs der paulinischen Antilegomena (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1970), 2V.
61. Cf. Ernst, 39V.
62. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen ber die Geschichte der Philosophie. Teil 3: Griechische Philosophie. II: Plato
bis Proklos, ed. Pierre Garniron and Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1996),
171 (translation modi ed).
63. G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im
Grundrisse, ed. Eduard Gans, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Verlag von Duncker und Humblot, 1854), 423.
Translated by H. B. Nisbet, under the title Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood,
Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1991), 372, 341; hereafter GPR with German/English pagination and section number.
64. VPhR, 167/237.
65. VGPh, 324: One can truly claim to worry himself about the future; one can claim to prophesize this or that from the future the future is a yearning [Sehnsucht] , this indeed happens;
[but] the future is nebulous.
66. PdG, 421/478, 787.
67. G. W. F. Hegel, Hegels theologische Jugendschriften, ed. Herman Nohl, unaltered reprint of 1907
Tbingen edition (Frankfurt am Main: Minerva GmbH, 1966), 395. [Translators Note: This
interpretation is not only Hegels among English translations, the King James Version, the
Ampli ed Bible, the Rheims New Testament, the New American Standard Bible, the New
International Version, and the New American Bible all repeat it. Only the New Revised
Standard Version uses the perfect, has come near. The Entwrfe zur Geist des Christentums und
sein Schicksal from which the above citation is taken is omitted from the English translation
of the book.]
68. VPhR, 67/131 (translation modi ed).
69. VPhR, 4/64 (translation modi ed).
70. GPR, 17/20, Preface.
71. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phnomenologie.
Ergnzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachla 19341937, vol. 29 of Husserliana, ed. Reinhold N.
Smid (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), 302 V. Hereafter Hua 29.
72. Hua 29:8.
73. Hua 29:157.
74. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phnomenologie.
Eine Einleitung in die phnomenologische Philosophie, vol. 6 of Husserliana, ed. Walter Biemel, 2nd
ed. (The Hague: Martinus NijhoV, 1962), 115. Translated by David Carr, under the title The
Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological
Philosophy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 113.
75. Cf. Rudolf Bernet, Die ungegenwrtige Gegenwart. Anwesenheit und Abwesenheit in Husserls Analyse des
Zeitbewutseins, in Zeit und Zeitlichkeit bei Husserl und Heidegger, ed. Ernst Wolfgang Orth (Freiburg:
Verlag Karl Alber, 1983), 30f.: The epistemologically oriented analysis of time further extends
the naturally presupposed priority of the currently present [ jetzigen Gegenwart]. This, however,
serves for an unnatural reduction of the past present to a present memory (Vergegenwrtigung )
of the past, as well as of the future present to a present expectation (Entgegenwrtigung ) of the
future. It thus renounces the past as forgotten and the future as unexpected and surprising.
This also shows itself in that the absence mediated through signs, images, phantasy, etc., is
understood starting from representational, immediately intuitive presence and in that the constantly self-changing diVerence from self is sublated into the re ection and scienti c statement
identically mirroring this diVerence according to its constant structure. Husserls concept of

THE FUTURE OF TIME

76.

77.
78.
79.
80.

81.
82.

83.
84.

85.

86.
87.

88.
89.

37

the reduction of all being to a possible givenness for a present transcendental consciousness,
which is absolutely present to itself, appears to be inseparably bound up with this metaphysical understanding of time. Indeed this appearance can be cleared up to a certain extent,
insofar as it can be shown that retention, in not being intended as such, belongs necessarily
to time consciousness. Then it would have to be stressed that a nonintentional moment necessarily belongs to intentional consciousness. In this case, it would be unavoidable that one
make a decisive modi cation to the time-form of consciousness as continual present and thus
to the entire Husserlian conception of consciousness itself. Such a revolution of transcendental phenomenology, however, Husserl would not allow. Cf. also Bernet, 56.
Cf. Edmund Husserl, Zur Phnomenologie der Intersubjektivitt. Zweiter Teil: 19211928, vol. 14 of
Husserliana, ed. Iso Kern (The Hague: Martinus NijhoV, 1973), 221: I am in the continual
present. I can not actually say I was, in the sense that, I am past [bin vergangen].
Cf. Hua 29:326V.
All-Einheit. Wege eines Gedankens in Ost und West, edited and Foreward by Dieter Henrich
(Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag, 1985), 8.
Karl Rahner, Fragmente aus einer theologischen Besinnung auf den BegriV der Zukunft, in Rahner,
Schriften zur Theologie, vol. 8 (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1967), 558.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Philosophie der OVenbarung, vol. 2. Unvernderter reprogra scher Nachdruck aus dem handschriftlichen Nachla herausgegebnen Ausgabe von 1858
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990), 129.
Karl Rahner, Marxistische Utopie und christliche Zukunft des Menschen, in: Rahner, Schriften zur
Theologie, vol. 6 (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1965), 79.
Cf. the theological explanations of Oscar Cullmann, Christus und die Zeit. Die urchristliche Zeitund GeschichtsauVassung (Zollikon: Evangelischer Verlag A. G., 1946), 74. Cullmann speaks there
of an adjacency between the already ful lled and not yet ful lled.
On ggw cf. Oscar Cullmann, Heil als Geschichte. Heilsgeschichtliche Existenz im Neuen Testament
(Tbingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck] Verlag, 1965), 178f.
Cf. Eberhard Jngel, Paulus und Jesus. Eine Untersuchungen zur Przisierung der Frage nach dem
Ursprung der Christologie, 3rd ed. (Tbingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck] Verlag, 1967), 175:
When Jesus speaks of the rule of God, then he speaks without exception of the nearing of
the rule of God, so that the nearness of the rule of God appears as an expression of its essence.
Cf. Michael Theunissen, Negative Theologie der Zeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag,
1991), 327. Cf. also Cullmann, Heil als Geschichte, 187: Therefore we hold it to be the case
that the coexistence of a kingdom already anticipated in Jesus and a kingdom still of the future,
corresponds to a holy-historical [heilsgeschichtliche] conception of time: God is the Lord of time;
on the one hand he already anticipates the kingdom in the present, in Jesus, and reveals to
the disciples in this manner the nearness of the coming kingdom; on the other hand, he withholds the xing of the point of time for the completion.
Cf. Jngel, Paulus und Jesus, 102.
Cf. also Luke 12: 5456: But he spoke to the people: When you see a cloud rise up in the
west, then you immediately say: it will rain, and so it happens. And when you see the south
wind blow, then you say: it will be hot, and so it is. Hypocrite, you can examine the face of
the earth and of heaven, how can you then not examine this time [kairw]? On this, see
Cullmann, Heil als Geschichte, 186V.
Cf. Das Evangelium nach Lukas, bersetzt und erklrt von Eduard Schweizer (Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlag, 1982), 214V.
Cf. Jngel, Paulus und Jesus, 181: Over and against this, we are satis ed with the simple nearness
of the rule of God, in that we attempt to understand its simple nearness as its essence (to be
thought verbally!). The near to the present future of the reign of God is so announced by
Jesus that the people thereby come into the nearness of God, because God comes into their
nearness.

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PETER TRAWNY

90. Cf. Jngel, Paulus und Jesus, 184: The reign of God comes wonderfully from itself, as the
parable of the self-germinating seed explains to us. This means, however: the human can only
welcome the rule of God as the new beginning.
91. Here the obligatory loci classici: Plato, Timaeus, 375d: ek d penei kinhtn tina anow
poisai, ka diakosmn ma orann poe mnontow anow n n kat riymn osan anion
e kna, toton n d xrnon nomkamen.; Augustine, Confessions, XI, 14: Praesens autem si

92.
93.

94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.

101.

semper esset praesens nec in praeteritum transiret, non iam esset tempus, sed aeternitas.;
Boethius, Philosophiae consolationis V.vi: 2531: Quod igitur interminabilis uitae plenitudinem
totam pariter comprehendit ac possidet, cui neque futuri quicquam absit nec praeteriti
uxerit, id aeternum esse iure perhibetur idque necesse est et sui compos praesens sibi semper assistere et in nitatem mobilis temporis habere praesentem. The determination of eternity by Boethius, since it shows a astonishing nearness to that of Hegel, may be translated
here: Whatever therefore comprehends and possesses at once the whole fullness of boundless life, and is such that neither is anything future lacking from it, nor has anything past
owed away, that is rightly held to be eternal, and that must necessarily both always be present to itself, possessing itself in the present, and hold as present the in nity of moving time.
(Boethius, The Theological Tractates. The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. H. F. Stewart, E. K.
Rand, and S. J. Tester, The Consolation of Philosophy trans. S. J. Tester, The Loeb Classical
Library [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973]). To be sure, for Hegel, the whole fullness cannot be conceived of as highest quantity.
Martin Heidegger, Besinnung, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann GA 66, (Frankfurt am
Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1997), 245.
Martin Heidegger, Die Beitrge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von
Herrmann, GA 65 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), 369: Therefore if one
takes knowing in its sense up until now of representation [Vorstellens] and the having of representations [Vorstellungsbesitzes], then essential knowing is surely no knowing, but rather a
believing. However, this word then has an entirely diVerent meaning.
Heidegger, GA 65:380f.
Heidegger, GA 69:31.
Heidegger, GA 69:208.
Martin Heidegger, Feldweg-Gesprche (1944/45 ), ed. Ingrid Schler, GA 77 (Frankfurt am
Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995), 217.
Heidegger, GA 77:219.
Heidegger, GA 69:211.
Heidegger was able to cognize the possibility of distinguishing between a last God and the
Gods in Hlderlin. In the poem Vershnender, der du nimmergeglaubt, which
Heidegger already cites in his rst lecture course on Hlderlin (cf. Martin Heidegger, Hlderlins
Hymnen Germanien und Der Rhein, ed. Susanne Ziegler GA 39 [Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann, 1980], 110f.), the God of the Gods is here poetized (Smtliche Werke, vol. 4:
Gedichte 18001806, ed. Norbert von Hellingrath 3rd ed. [Berlin: Propylen Verlag, 1943],
165). Incidentally, it was rst publicized at the beginning of the fties that this poem was
to be considered as a draft for the great hymn Friedensfeier (cf. Friedrich Hlderlin,
Friedensfeier, ed. Friedrich Beiner [Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1954.]). Accordingly,
the God of Gods would be identi ed with the prince of the fest.
A statement of Heideggers is to be noted in which he remarks at the end of the thirties in a
text with the title Mein bisheriger Weg: And who would not recognize that along the
entirety of this path up to here, the confrontation with Christianity silently came along a
confrontation that was, and is, no conceptualized problem, but rather the preservation of
the ownmost origin [Wahrung der eigensten Herkunft] of the parents house, of the homeland,
and of youth and the painful detachment from this in one, (Heidegger, GA 66:415). The

THE FUTURE OF TIME

39

much cited sentence from the so-called Spiegel Conversation of 1966: Only a God can
still save us, then, is not Christian, insofar as we are already saved in the Christian sense.
Cf. Antwort. Martin Heidegger im Gesprch, ed. Gnther Neske and Emil Kettering (Pfullingen:
Verlag Gnther Neske, 1988), 99100. Translated by Lisa Harries and Joachim Neugroschel
under the title Martin Heidegger and National Socialism: Questions and Answers (New York: Paragon
House, 1990), 5657.