ABSTRACT

It is reasonable, in attempting to understand a philosopher, to ask what for him is the point of doing philosophy or, more specifically, what problems he is trying to solve. There are, however, difficulties in the way of this approach to Hegel. Philosophy, for example, is not always distinguished clearly from other types of thinking or indeed from other human activities in general, so that when a problem is located, it is often unclear whether it is to be solved by philosophical thinking or by some other means. Hegel has philosophical objections to drawing sharp distinctions between things,1 but his blurring of boundaries is not always to be attributed to this source. Again, his belief that one should, ideally, not make any assumptions when one is philosophizing makes it difficult for him to state in advance the problems to which he is responding. For any problem or question involves assumptions. We have seen, for example, that one of the flaws which he found in the empirical sciences was their failure to give an account of, or even a place to, God, and this is one of the problems which his system is intended to solve, to establish the existence and nature of God. But to see this as a problem involves making certain assumptions, not necessarily that God exists, but that it is likely or possible that he does, that it matters whether he does or not, that the term ‘God’ has a certain meaning (Enz. I. 1), and so on.2 If one does not make some such assumptions as these, then the problem will not seem a compelling or even an intelligible one. Paradoxically, even the problem of how to justify one’s beliefs without making any assumptions involves making assumptions, for it is only if one takes a certain view of what is required if one’s beliefs are to be creditable that it will be seen as a problem at all.3 In practice, Hegel’s problems are inherited from other philosophers and from the cultural and social life of his

times. But his view of philosophy forbids him to regard them as coherently, or at least appropriately, stateable independently of his own system. Philosophy is not a ‘finite’ discipline which can take its problems ready made. They, together with the assumptions which they involve, are to emerge within his philosophy and are not questions posed at the outset to which his system provides the answers. To the extent that Hegel’s problems are a legacy, this means that his system must, as it were, embrace the philosophies of the past and his social and cultural environment.4