What are you doing at this moment? Well, of course, you’re reading my blog post. But, what were you doing yesterday at this time? Were you watching Netflix, reading a book? What will you be doing tomorrow at this time? Will you be eating some Easy Mac, doing homework? I’ll go out on a whim here and say your answers to each of these questions will be different. And even if I’m wrong, and you’ll be doing the same thing three days in a row, you’d agree that each of the instances of what you’re doing are different, right? Well, Hegel would sure have some things to say to you.
Whether in the past, present, or future, each instance of your being will constitute a moment of now. In the past, at some point, you were experiencing now. In the present, you are currently experiencing now. In the future, you will be experiencing now. While there is truth in each moment, as in, it is valid to say that the circumstances of the now from 1 week ago exists, and the now that will happen in 1 week will exist, but the truth of the now doesn’t stay constant. Once the moment of now changes, Hegel says, “the one truth vanishes in the other.” (Sense-Certainty, para.101)
Though the truth is ever-changing, now is not. Whether or not your experiences are the same for each now, the fact doesn’t change that there was a now, and you experienced it. Hegel uses this logic to say that the term now is a constant and universal term, because of all the now’s that you have ever experienced, are experiencing, and will experienced, they are all experienced by you.
In a philosophical way, Hegel is saying is that you are your own enduring universe. Well, now you know.
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