McTaggart, Hegel and time An approach to an old and present challenging problem Víctor Duplancic December 8, 2004 Abstract Since the time of his Dissertation (1891) McTaggart takes the problem of time in Hegel’s philosophy to the centre of his philosophical interest. My intention here is not to describe his argumentation in detail. My in- terest is rather to compare a general aspect from McTaggart’s conception of time to another interpretation and to refer it to the central problem in Hegel’s idea of time. This paper is divided into three sections: 1) Mc- Taggart’s argumentation about dialectic and time in Hegel’s philosophy, 2) A summary of another interpretation about time and Hegel, 3) The time and the Logical in Hegel’s philosophy: an approach to the central problems. 1 McTaggart’s reflexions about logic and time 1.1 Logic, time and dialectic Underlying McTaggart’s reflexions about the relationship between dialectic and time in Hegel’s Logic, I see a thoroughgoing philosophical problem: the rela- tionship between ideas and reality. In “hegelian” categories: the relationship between Logic and History. He takes 1 two assertions from Hegel as central for his argumentation: 1) “All that is real is rational”, and 2) the perfection of the Idea in the future (Enc. § 212). This produces an inconsistency in Hegel’s system and that means, it produces a conflict between the irrational reality of the present and the rational reality of the future. The structure of McTaggart’s argumentation is as follows: 1. “In the first place, the theory that time is an ultimate reality would lead to insoluble difficulties as to the commencement” 2. “Secondly, the Absolute Idea must be held to be the presupposition and the logical prius of the lower categories. It follows that a theory which 1 [McTaggart(1922)] 1