The central thesis of this chapter, as the title suggests, is that, for Hegel, philosophy can and must, in his time, achieve self-fulfilment, and such fulfilment is the opening of human history. The chapter will unpack this claim in three parts. In the background of this claim are two famous sentences, dealt with closely in part 1 of this chapter. The sentences are found in the first pages of the preface to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: “To help bring philosophy closer to the form of Science, to the goal where it can lay aside the title ‘love of knowing’ and be actual knowing – that is what I have set myself to do [vorgesetzt].”2 “Besides, it is not difficult to see that ours is a birth-time and a period of transition to a new era.”3 These two sentences contain two very general statements. First, Hegel states his planned contribution to the self-fulfilment of philosophy – that is, to philosophy’s becoming, in its scientific form, actual knowledge. Second, he identifies a transition to a new historical phase. As a first step, I give an interpretation of the former sentence that clarifies the sense of the latter (1.1). I then make explicit the link between them (1.2). In the two final sections of part 1, I critically address a widely accepted interpretation of the thesis of “the end of history”4 and attempt to recover a viable version of it by investigating the task of scientific-actual, philosophical knowledge (1.3) and its impact on the conception of history (1.4). After dealing with Hegel’s programmatic formulation of the problem in the preface to the Phenomenology in part 1, I will, in part 2, summarize and systematize the results and raise some questions on the main conditions that a philosophy of history based on that program has to satisfy. In particular, I will maintain that such a philosophy of history has to leave substantial room for contingency and particularity, and at the same time has to enable the conceptual recognition of necessity (2). Based on this requirement, in the conclusive third part I will first comment on the transition from substance to subject in the Science of Logic, thereby outlining the space of contingency (3.1). Finally, I will substantiate the idea of this space by discussing a specific, yet emblematic case of how, in Hegel’s philosophy of history, contingency is integrated into the knowledge of the actual (3.2).
Hegel on the Self-Fulfilment of Philosophy as the Opening of Human History
Alberto L. Siani
Primo
2025-01-01
Abstract
The central thesis of this chapter, as the title suggests, is that, for Hegel, philosophy can and must, in his time, achieve self-fulfilment, and such fulfilment is the opening of human history. The chapter will unpack this claim in three parts. In the background of this claim are two famous sentences, dealt with closely in part 1 of this chapter. The sentences are found in the first pages of the preface to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: “To help bring philosophy closer to the form of Science, to the goal where it can lay aside the title ‘love of knowing’ and be actual knowing – that is what I have set myself to do [vorgesetzt].”2 “Besides, it is not difficult to see that ours is a birth-time and a period of transition to a new era.”3 These two sentences contain two very general statements. First, Hegel states his planned contribution to the self-fulfilment of philosophy – that is, to philosophy’s becoming, in its scientific form, actual knowledge. Second, he identifies a transition to a new historical phase. As a first step, I give an interpretation of the former sentence that clarifies the sense of the latter (1.1). I then make explicit the link between them (1.2). In the two final sections of part 1, I critically address a widely accepted interpretation of the thesis of “the end of history”4 and attempt to recover a viable version of it by investigating the task of scientific-actual, philosophical knowledge (1.3) and its impact on the conception of history (1.4). After dealing with Hegel’s programmatic formulation of the problem in the preface to the Phenomenology in part 1, I will, in part 2, summarize and systematize the results and raise some questions on the main conditions that a philosophy of history based on that program has to satisfy. In particular, I will maintain that such a philosophy of history has to leave substantial room for contingency and particularity, and at the same time has to enable the conceptual recognition of necessity (2). Based on this requirement, in the conclusive third part I will first comment on the transition from substance to subject in the Science of Logic, thereby outlining the space of contingency (3.1). Finally, I will substantiate the idea of this space by discussing a specific, yet emblematic case of how, in Hegel’s philosophy of history, contingency is integrated into the knowledge of the actual (3.2).I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
