Change Without Time

Hegel’s account of something and other develops a minimal idea of change through becoming-other, which differs from sheer becoming. This conception of change is provocative since it is an idea of change that does not presuppose time.

During the development of something and other, Stephen Houlgate notes that the other must also be negatively related to itself. “Its self-relation must,” Houlgate writes, “consist in self-negation, or in being other than itself” (Houlgate 2022, 181). This process of “becoming other” is called “change” or “alteration”: “The nature of the other”, Houlgate continues, “is not only to stand apart from another thing, but also, in so doing, to change” (Houlgate 2022, 181). In this respect, the logical development once more proves to be more dynamic rather than settled and stable. A new form of “becoming” has been re-introduced by the other; a “becoming” of becoming-other or of “othering” oneself.

This process is inherent in the very nature of the other and, since every something is also an other, inherent in the nature of something, too. According to Hegel’s logic, therefore, there must be determinate being in the form of something, but every something is necessarily engaged in a process of change (Houlgate 2022, 181-2).

This in stark contrast to Kant, who maintains in the Critique of Pure Reason that all change in the sphere of appearances presupposes time (i.e. something that lasts).

Alteration can therefore be perceived only in substances, and arising or perishing per se cannot be a possible perception unless it concerns merely a determination of that which persists, for it is this very thing that persists that makes possible the representation of the transition from one state into another, and from non-being into being, which can therefore be empirically cognized only as changing determinations of that which lasts. If you assume that something simply began to be, then you would have to have a point of time in which it did not exist. But what would you attach this to, if not to that which already exists? (Kant 1998, 303/A188).

As Houlgate points out, Hegel’s conception of change here does not presuppose time or an alteration in time. Change can be conceptualized as a process of becoming-other that does require time. This is not to say that change in more concrete things in experience do require change, but the Logic here does not endeavor to provide an account of temporal, worldly change, but conceptualizing change as such. Hegel’s aim, as Houlgate writes, “is rather to show that, even in the absence of time, every something must change, purely by virtue of being other. Time is thus not the ultimate source of change; the latter is made necessary by the simple fact that there is something and something else at all” (Houlgate 2022, 182).

This connection between “other” and “change” is normally obscured in English, but the Latin-based word “alteration”, which contains the Latin “alter” (“other”), makes it more evident. A similar case obtains for speakers of German: Veränderung, which itself containers the word “other”—Anderes—and literally means “to-other-ize”. Yet another similar case also obtains for Norwegian speakers with the word forandre, even more than the German since “other” here is more obvious and recognizable. While these connections in language are helpful, Hegel does not derive the connection of “other” and “change” from words; the connection is a logical one, Houlgate emphasizes, in the fact that the other, when considered by itself and made explicit, “must be and constantly become the other of itself” (Houlgate 2022, 182).

The idea of change is not complete, however, without the element of identity in the process of becoming-other. Becoming-other signals that an other is not primarily “other” vis-à-vis a something, but it is equally other with regards to itself, such that is continuously different from itself. This emphasizes the element of difference, but there is also that of identity. Precisely as the other becomes other to itself, it is no less, once again, other. Change does occur, indeed, the more it occurs the more the other remains true to itself. “In the process of change the other thus remains the other that it is; and the more it changes and becomes other than itself, the more it remains the other and so remains itself” (Houlgate 2022, 182). Paradoxically, the more the other becomes what it is not, the more it remains what it is. In terms of the process of change, then, the more alterations, the more constancy is established.

As Houlgate points out, Hegel shows here that self-identity and change are not in principle at odds with one another, as might be assumed. In fact, self-identity is not only preserved by the process of change, but arises through it: “that in becoming other than itself, the other does not become something radically new, but becomes another instance of what it already is, what it is before the change – another instance of being other” (Houlgate 2022, 183). That it arises becomes evident in the moment of identity in the process of becoming-other.

Importantly, this moment of identity is not repeating what was already there but establishes the other to be what it is.

…in going over to this other, it only unites with itself (Hegel 2010, 92/21.108).

Houlgate carefully re-renders this passage from the German as:

goes [...] together only with itself
 
geht [...] nur mit sich zusammen

While this may seem to repeat what is already known at this point, Houlgate claims that it carries the argument forward. “The point to note is that the other does not, and cannot, ‘go together with itself’ before it changes; it does so only through changing into that which is still (in one respect) itself” (Houlgate 2022, 183). Exactly this “going together with itself” effectively designates a self-relating being or something, leading the logical development back to something from other. Finally, movement implies that becoming-other into merely other is not the complete process of change, for there is also becoming-other into a new something.

change does not just leave us with the same old other: it does not just produce another instance of what is there already. Change also gives rise to a new something that does not, and cannot, precede the change but that arises through it (Houlgate 2022, 183).

It may appear as if the logical development hits a deadlock of ambiguity here. When is something distinctly something versus when is it an other? How is other, in othering, both the same old other and something new? Something and other, through change, develop into more granular determinations of being-in-itself and being-for-other that aim to dispel exactly these ambiguities.

If Hegel is right, then change can be adequately conceptualized without presupposing time. All that is required is the ideas of something and other, and looking carefully at the logical implications that their relationship forms.

Bibliography

Authors
Filip Niklas (2025)