Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 1 (of 3)Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 1 (of 3)
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy -- History
B, for instance, traverses two miles (c d) in an hour, A in the same
time, one mile (d e); if they are two miles (c d) removed from one
another, B has in one hour come to where A was at the beginning of the
hour. While B, in the next half hour, goes over the distance crossed
by A of one mile (d e), A has got half a mile (e f) further, and so
on into infinity. Quicker motion does not help the second body at all
in passing over the interval of space by which he is behind: the time
which he requires, the slower body always has at its avail in order to
accomplish some, although an ever shorter advance; and this, because of
the continual division, never quite disappears.
Aristotle, in speaking of this, puts it shortly thus. “This proof
asserts the same endless divisibility, but it is untrue, for the quick
will overtake the slow body if the limits to be traversed be granted to
it.” This answer is correct and contains all that can be said; that is,
there are in this representation two periods of time and two distances,
which are separated from one another, i.e. they are limited in relation
to one another; when, on the contrary, we admit that time and space
are continuous, so that two periods of time or points of space are
related to one another as continuous, they are, while being two, not
two, but identical. In ordinary language we solve the matter in the
easiest way, for we say: “Because the second is quicker, it covers a
greater distance in the same time as the slow; it can therefore come to
the place from which the first started and get further still.” After
B, at the end of the first hour, arrives at d and A at e, A in one and
the same period, that is, in the second hour, goes over the distance
e g, and B the distance d g. But this period of time which should be
one, is divisible into that in which B accomplishes d e and that in
which B passes through e g. A has a start of the first, by which it
gets over the distance e f, so that A is at f at the same period as
B is at e. The limitation which, according to Aristotle, is to be
overcome, which must be penetrated, is thus that of time; since it is
continuous, it must, for the solution of the difficulty, be said that
what is divisible into two spaces of time is to be conceived of as one,
in which B gets from d to e and from e to g, while A passes over the
distance e g. In motion two periods, as well as two points in space,
are indeed one.
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