ABSTRACT
William Maker’s defense of philosophy without foundations involves a radical reassessment of Hegel’s system insofar as Maker shows how the deficiencies of both sides of the contemporary foundationalism/anti-foundationalism debate are exposed and remedied by the defining projects of the Phenomenology of Spirit, and Realphilosophie. To concretize the abiding alternative, Maker turns to the Phenomenology of Spirit as the great pioneering undertaking of the systematic, immanent deconstruction of foundationalism from which philosophy without foundations becomes possible. Consequently, systematic philosophy can be mediated, yet make an absolute, unconditioned beginning because what introduces it is the self-elimination of the structure of presupposing the self-annulling mediation consisting in foundational cognition undermining its own hegemonic claim that reason must always be conditioned. The frugal scope of Maker’s positive treatment of philosophy without foundations is determined in the first instance by his strict adherence to considering solely what emerges as the determinate negation of the systematic deconstruction of the foundationalism.
