ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 has to do with the sense in which perfect truth-as-openness also demands a catholic theodicy. That is to say, ‘catholic’ with a small ‘c’: ‘catholic’ in the sense that ‘catholicism’ is essentially a mode of intellectual ambition decisively transcending any exclusive solidarity among an educational elite, precisely, indeed, opened up to the requirements of a solidarity-building project designed to embrace people of every different social class. Again, Hegel is the philosopher who perhaps most interestingly represents the ideal opening up of pure (non-apologetic) philosophy to ‘catholicism’ so defined and, hence, in the Christian context, to theology. On the other hand, the prime representative of philosophic anti-catholicism, at its most radical, is surely Nietzsche. And so Hegel here is counter-posed to Nietzsche at the level of theodicy.
