ABSTRACT
While Fichte thinks that the truth of the Wissenschaftslehre is something certain individuals are simply “incapable” of grasping, Hegel views rational accessibility as a touchstone of philosophical science. Philosophy can be genuinely scientific only if it can be shown to constitute the rational fulfillment of all unphilosophical alternatives. To suggest that there are some normative outlooks (e.g., dogmatism) that have no place in one’s “system” is thus to admit that one has failed to construct a genuine system. The primary goal of Chapter 4 is to explore Hegel’s efforts to go beyond Schelling and Fichte on this point in his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). There Hegel attempts to show how philosophical conversion can be motivated by already present features of a person’s position, and thus to provide his readers with a reason-governed path to conversion. While this basic account of Hegel’s method will be familiar to most readers, we argue that previous interpreters have overlooked an apparent divergence between how Hegel conceives of philosophical conversion, on the one hand, and how he conceives of cultural conversion, on the other. While Hegel clearly understands the latter in terms of Rational Affirmation (and so believes that cultural transformation can be rationally motivated), his understanding of the former is considerably harder to pin down. This point of unclarity raises important questions not only about the relation between culture and philosophy in Hegel’s thought, but also about Hegel’s place in the Rational Affirmation tradition with which he is typically associated.
