Hegel’s Logic and Narration of Contingency [A Lógica e a Narração da Contingência em Hegel ]

The paper’s main aims can be formulated as follows: a) Hegel has a strong notion of contingency. Contingency is for him not simple absence of necessity, and not simple under-determinedness either. Contingency is an original notion, having the same logical and metaphysical weight and dignity as the notion of necessity; b) this “strong” notion of contingency is decisive for Hegel’s conception of subjectivity. Insofar it can be tracked up to his real philosophy. Other than assumed in many commonplace interpretations of Hegel, I will suggest that the power to go from necessity to contingency makes up an essential part of subjective freedom as much as the power to go from contingency to necessity. This has important consequences especially in the philosophy of history, which is shown to be not aprioristic and dogmatic, but open to contingency (though not to sceptical conclusions); and c) consistently with the recognition of the irreducibility of contingency to a priori concepts, Hegel also recognizes the need for a non-philosophical narration of contingency and gives us some interesting clues about it and its relationship to philosophy. Throughout my argumentation of these three theses, I hope to provide evidence for the thesis that dogmatic constructions on Hegel’s philosophy of history (including, but not limited to the so-called thesis of the “end of history”) can be undermined by referring to Hegel’s understanding of contingency. On a more general scale, this also shows that the logical groundwork of Hegel’s real philosophy cannot be abandoned without jeopardizing the potential of Hegel’s thought to contribute to current philosophical debates. My argument is structured as follows. I will, first of all, comment on some passages of Hegel’s Science of Logic from the beginning of the “Subjective logic” regarding the logic of contingency (I) and the presence of contingency in the logical structure of subjectivity (II). I will then proceed to illustrate, with reference to a specific case, the role played by contingency in Hegel’s philosophy of history (III). In the last section (IV), I will discuss the relationship between truth and contingency on the one side, and philosophy and narrativity on the other side, attempting to sketch the main lines of a “narration of contingency” on Hegelian basis.