REASENTAMIENTO EN SITIO

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Vittorio Hösle

Hegel’s philosophy of the history of philosophy probably can be regarded as the part of his system most neglected today in the Anglo-Saxon world. To give only three examples: in the four volume G. W. F. Hegel: Critical Assess-

ments, edited by R. Stern,1 _{in the two-volume Hegel, edited by D. Lamb,}2 _as well as in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, edited by F. C. Beiser3_{one does} not find even one article dedicated specifically to Hegel’s philosophy of the history of philosophy. One important exception to this neglect is the volume with the proceedings of the second biennial conference of the Hegel Society of America of 1972 at the University of Notre Dame,4 _{and so I am particu-} larly glad that after twenty-eight years the Hegel Society of America has returned to this topic. I am grateful for the publication of the present volume for two reasons, a subjective and an objective one. First, in my own country, the study of Hegel’s lectures on the history of philosophy has always played an important role, from their publication in 1833–1836 up to today. One needs only to read the first subchapter in K. Düsing’s book Hegel und die

Geschichte der Philosophie5 _{in order to see how much has been written about} them, particularly in German-speaking countries, both in the nineteenth and in the twentieth centuries. But of course what determines the value of a work is not so much the amount of its reception, but its intrinsic merits. Now there are indeed good arguments for the position that, first, Hegel’s philosophy of the history of philosophy is an integral, perhaps even the culminating part of his system and that, second, the discipline of the philoso- phy of the history of philosophy is a very important discipline of philosophy, even if it is almost nonexistent in the analytical tradition (a fate it shares with hermeneutics and philosophical anthropology). This is even more de-

plorable, since even the most excellent work on some author in the history of philosophy lacks a broader perspective when it is not linked to the larger historical context to which the argument or the thinker relates. With regard to the first claim, on which I cannot focus here, I want only to state that Hegel’s philosophy is built around different forms of reflexivity, and so it must be that philosophy itself forms the last category of the system. Since a further fundamental idea of Hegel’s is that final truth must be encompassing, i.e., must contain alternative theories as moments of itself, Hegel cannot simply ignore the history of philosophy antecedent to him; he must try to show that it is somehow present in his own philosophy. The desire of finding rationality in reality must apply in a particular degree to that entity that looks for rationality in reality, namely, philosophy itself; and its history must be shown not to be an argument against, but one for, the truth of one’s own philosophy. This must be the case if earlier positions are not simply errors— for this would inevitably raise the question of whether one’s own theory is not an error as well—but partial truths and necessary steps on the way to one’s own philosophy. In a certain sense, one may say that Hegel’s system, the Encyclopedia and the elaboration of some of its parts in the Science of

Logic, the Philosophy of Right, and in the lectures, has to be read twice—once

as a general theory of reality, and a second time as the final part of reality dealt with in the discipline of the philosophy of the history of philosophy. However, as already indicated above, this essay will not aim at an exege- sis of Hegel’s system.6 _{Rather, the focus here lies in discussing the systematic} question, central to all philosophy of the history of philosophy, whether there is a progress in the history of philosophy. To do this in a responsible way, one has to consider the earlier history of the discipline, and there is little doubt that Hegel figures prominently in it. He is not the first to have worked in the field—reflections belonging to the philosophy of the history of philosophy go back at least to Plato—but he is the first philosopher who can claim to have offered a philosophical theory corroborated by a remarkably knowledgeable overview of the whole history of philosophy. Hegel was, indeed, even the first great philosopher who was also an original historian of philosophy. In what follows, I will first discuss the main approaches in the philosophy of the history of philosophy, with particular attention to the problem of how they relate to the question of progress in the history of philosophy; and second, I will propose some of my own reflections on the matter.7

The Different Positions in the Philosophy of the History of Philosophy

If we try to subdivide, in a Hegelian manner, the different positions that may be taken with regard to the relation of philosophy to its history, a natural

subdivision would be, first, a philosophy that ignores its history; second, an obsession with the history of philosophy that paralyzes systematic philoso- phy; and, third, an interest in the history of philosophy based on a philo- sophical concern. The first approach is particularly tempting at times in which a philosopher claims to have made a methodological revolution that transforms all anterior philosophy into mere prehistory: Descartes and Wittgenstein are good examples. Just as a chemist aiming at new discoveries should not waste his time with the study of the history of alchemy, so—these philosophers think—a systematic philosopher ought to ignore the pre-scientific stages of his own discipline. Of course, the plausibility of this stance depends, first, on the quality of the new discovery and, second, on the degree to which fundamental parts of philosophy are linked to this discovery. With regard to the first point, the main objection is quite obvious. Since the irreducible plurality of different philosophical positions is a fact hard to deny, and there have been many claims to having finally found the decisive starting point that later nonetheless proved as unable to stop philosophical dissension as earlier and more primitive stages of philosophy have, the skeptical question follows: why should anyone think that their own philosophical proposal would have a fate different from those other proposals that have been even- tually surpassed? The suspicion that the feet of those who will carry us out are already at the door will befall all persons who are able to observe them- selves from a certain distance.8 _{Even if we concede that certain new discover-} ies are definitive, as may be the case with some parts of logic, we can easily counter that only when the discovery is still fresh does the author succumb to overrating its importance; after some length of time, one usually recognizes that, even if it is true that the older positions may, or even must, be formulated with more precision, it is not the case that the new logical tools as such are able to prove or even to confute some of the basic “isms” earlier developed. These reflections suggest the second position, which deduces the im- possibility of timeless insights by systematic philosophy from the way the history of philosophy has worked until now. In continental philosophy, par- ticularly in its German and Italian versions, a skepticism motivated by a profound knowledge of the history of philosophy has been widespread during the whole twentieth century. However, long ago, Hellenistic skepticism used the plurality of philosophical opinions as a strategy to justify its doubts, and the same argument can even be found in such an early text as Gorgias’s philosophical treatise.9 _{With the emergence of modern historicism and the} development of a sophisticated discipline dedicated exclusively to the study of the history of philosophy, the attractiveness of this position has increased; and, in fact, it exercises a strong fascination for all persons who have dedi- cated much of their time to the study of the history of philosophy. Certainly one of the major representatives of this historically motivated skepticism is

Wilhelm Dilthey. The central idea behind his essays (collected in vol. VIII of the critical edition with the title Weltanschauungslehre, Abhandlungen zur

Philosophie der Philosophie)10 _{is that there is an incurable contradiction be-} tween the universal claim of every philosophical system and the historicist view. Each system makes arbitrary presuppositions and what we can and should do is look for the causes that determine the choice of a particular presupposition by an individual thinker. The search for causes instead of reasons characterizes all reductionistic approaches, be they interested, as in Marxism, in economic or, as in existentialism, in individual, psychic causes. One of the subtlest forms of history of philosophy based on the belief that the category of truth is of no use in the discipline is defended by Martial Guéroult, who thinks that the criteria for evaluating philosophical systems are of an aesthetic nature. Philosophies are artworks, attractive through the beauty of their architecture, but not convincing through their truth.11

The problems of this position are not less serious than those of the first, and there are at least three. First, in order to criticize another position, it is of obvious importance to reconstruct its presuppositions. One of these pre- suppositions, in the case of the historically motivated skepticism, is certainly the following belief: if a position has been substituted in history by another, then it cannot be true. For otherwise, the fact that a position has been given up would not be sufficient to reject it. Now, a connection between being substituted and being false can be assumed only if there is a progress in history; otherwise, a valid position may have been given up again and again on no good grounds. It is probably surprising to see that radical historicism, which usually rejects the idea of progress in the history of philosophy, in fact presupposes it, if it wants us to take it seriously—which it has to do also for the second, very simple reason that it must regard itself as the telos of the history of philosophy. At least it must pride itself on the overcoming of earlier errors. Third, historically motivated skepticism makes one presuppo- sition that can be turned against itself. For if a position has to be regarded as confuted because it has been substituted by another in the course of philosophy, then also skepticism itself has to be regarded as confuted; for the most manifold forms of skepticism (and, as we have seen, also of historically motivated skepticism) have already occurred in the history of philosophy. In short, if one regards the great “isms” as failed, because they have been re- placed again and again in the history of philosophy, then the same verdict applies to skepticism; it simply cannot claim to hold a position above the other “isms,” because it is itself one of them. Nor can a skeptically motivated history of philosophy even claim to grasp the subjective intentions of the philosophers of the past, for the basic feature of those intentions was the orientation towards truth, and one misses even the subjective quality of such intention if one renounces the commitment to truth.

If skepticism cannot be justified, at least not by reflections on the history of philosophy, then another solution to the problem of the relation between philosophy and its history has to be sought. Again, there are a variety of positions that take the history of philosophy seriously as a philo- sophical problem, without embracing skepticism; but perhaps not all of them are equally well grounded. The first and easiest way to find order and struc- ture in the history of philosophy is to assume that it is determined by progress; the second is the typological approach; the third recognizes cyclical struc- tures in the history of philosophy. One is well advised to distinguish within the first approach between linear and dialectic progress. According to the first form, progress consists in the accumulation of single insights, while according to the second, the final position is a “synthesis,” an attempt at mediation between two opposite stances. In between these two positions, one may locate the theory that the history of philosophy consists of a con- tinuous process of increasing alienation from truth.

The theory according to which the history of philosophy is determined by linear progress can be traced back to Aristotle and can be found in many of the famous philosophers before the twentieth century, while in our cen- tury it is Nicolai Hartmann who has defended it most vigorously.12 _The model for this interpretation of the history of philosophy is the history of science. As, in general, a later physical theory is assumed to be closer to truth than an earlier one, so also a later philosophical position is regarded as better than an earlier one. The main objection against this model is, however, that it simply does not render justice to the facts. It is quite obvious that the history of philosophy cannot be written in the same way as the history of science, since it is closer to the history of art, even if this does not entail that the central category in its evaluation is beauty instead of truth. Indeed, there is an important argument from the nature of philosophy itself that explains why the history of philosophy cannot be similar to the history of science. In fact, even the history of science is less linear than one likes to think. Recall Thomas S. Kuhn’s argument that the transition from an old paradigm to a new one can be measured only with difficulty against a common standard that, in the case of normal science, is the paradigm itself. Still paradigm changes in science are quite rare. Philosophy, however, is in a permanent process of paradigm change, for it cannot presuppose concepts and rules to the same degree as science does because it simply belongs to its essence to question them. For philosophy does not have its own realm of being to study; rather, it is the systematic investigation of the principles of all realms of being and, therefore, constitutionally unable to function like normal science. To go back to the model of linear progress, of course, one may pick out opinions from the tradition that one then may regard as predecessors of one’s own and thus see a progress in the history of philosophy towards oneself; and

one is facilitated in doing so, if one distinguishes, as Hartmann does, be- tween thinking in problems and thinking in systems. But the problem with this approach is that an opposite position may do the same and find as many predecessors—both the realist and the idealist, both the theist and the athe- ist have a lot of predecessors. Furthermore, Hartmann’s distinction neglects the fact that the peculiar nature of a problem is sufficiently intelligible only in the respective system. It is true that the search for systematicity may do violence to the analysis of a single problem, but it is no less true that phi- losophy cannot help aiming at a system, as difficult as that may be, if it does not want to give itself up.

However, still worse than the model of continuous progress is that of continuous regress, which seems to be somehow implied by Martin Heidegger’s reflections on the whole of Western philosophy. For not only is it as eclectic as that based on linear progress—Heidegger chastises the heralds of modern subjectivity and ignores the critics of it among modern philosophers—but it cannot explain at all why its own position could emerge after millennia of decadence. The teleologization towards one’s own position may often be naïve, but it is still better than that antiteleology which, by devaluating one’s predecessors, necessarily endangers one’s own position.

Far more satisfying is the position that defends the idea of progress but simultaneously recognizes the existence of a variety of different, even oppo- site, philosophical systems that somehow have to be mediated. In modernity, it is Kant who can claim to have sketched such a conception.13 _{For Kant,} criticism is a synthesis of dogmatism and skepticism (an idea one also still finds in Husserl),14 _{which means that skepticism is not at all the final stance,} but only a position one has to cross to overcome it. But of course it is Hegel who succeeded in elaborating these ideas into a complex theory. What are the essential features of the theory of the mature Hegel? (The young Hegel’s remarks on the history of philosophy have to be ignored here, as they are quite different from the later position. In his early essay on the difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s philosophies, Hegel rejects the idea of progress and compares great philosophies with artworks).15 _{First, Hegel believes that} the history of philosophy can be dealt with appropriately only by systematic philosophy, since the selection of the material presupposes one’s own judg- ment about its relevance, and such a judgment cannot be done by a historian proper who is not familiar with the specific philosophic merits of the objects of the history of philosophy. Second, Hegel insists on a necessity within the history of philosophy, that at least in its main structures it could not have developed otherwise. This claim is certainly difficult to defend in a time that disposes of modal concepts quite different from those used by Hegel. This is not the occasion to try to reconstruct Hegel’s theory of modalities; suffice it to say, first, that of course Hegel does not mean that every theory about an

alternative world with a different course in the history of philosophy is contradictory and, second, that his concept of necessity can be paralleled with success to Leibniz’s concept of moral necessity. Both thinkers believe that the actual world is as it is because it represents more value (Leibniz) or more dialectic rationality (Hegel) than all possible alternatives and is in this sense necessary. Hegel seems to think, on the one hand, that, in a history of philosophy that can claim to manifest rationality, as many thought systems as possible have to be played through, and, on the other hand, that there must be an argumentative nexus between the different positions. A later philosophy renders hidden presuppositions of an earlier one explicit,