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
If we wish to make motion clear to ourselves, we say that the body is
in one place and then it goes to another; because it moves, it is no
longer in the first, but yet not in the second; were it in either it
would be at rest. Where then is it? If we say that it is between both,
this is to convey nothing at all, for were it between both, it would
be in a place, and this presents the same difficulty. But movement
means to be in this place and not to be in it, and thus to be in both
alike; this is the continuity of space and time which first makes
motion possible. Zeno, in the deduction made by him, brought both these
points into forcible opposition. The discretion of space and time we
also uphold, but there must also be granted to them the overstepping of
limits, i.e. the exhibition of limits as not being, or as being divided
periods of time, which are also not divided. In our ordinary ideas we
find the same determinations as those on which the dialectic of Zeno
rests; we arrive at saying, though unwillingly, that in one period two
distances of space are traversed, but we do not say that the quicker
comprehends two moments of time in one; for that we fix a definite
space. But in order that the slower may lose its precedence, it must be
said that it loses its advantage of a moment of time, and indirectly
the moment of space.
Zeno makes limit, division, the moment of discretion in space and time,
the only element which is enforced in the whole of his conclusions, and
hence results the contradiction. The difficulty is to overcome thought,
for what makes the difficulty is always thought alone, since it keeps
apart the moments of an object which in their separation are really
united. It brought about the Fall, for man ate of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil; but it also remedies these evils.
(c) The third form, according to Aristotle, is as follows:—Zeno
says: “The flying arrow rests, and for the reason that what is in
motion is always in the self-same Now and the self-same Here, in the
indistinguishable;” it is here and here and here. It can be said of the
arrow that it is always the same, for it is always in the same space
and the same time; it does not get beyond its space, does not take in
another, that is, a greater or smaller space. That, however, is what
we call rest and not motion. In the Here and Now, the becoming “other”
is abrogated, limitation indeed being established, but only as moment;
since in the Here and Now as such, there is no difference, continuity
is here made to prevail against the mere belief in diversity. Each
place is a different place, and thus the same; true, objective
difference does not come forth in these sensuous relations, but in the
spiritual.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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