2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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A BSOLUTE( S ) SPIELEN
Nonetheless, the sequence of confrontations, e.g. the antagonistic, game-like Spiel
cannot go on forever without coming to a close, otherwise there would be no rationale and
its meaning would have to be found outside of it (which means: outside of human history,
outside of this world and this thought, in an otherworldly universe inaccessible to us). This
may well be the case, but philosophy cannot accept an answer that would doom it to the
irrelevance of a consolatory discipline (in the literal sense, also, of being forced to take up
a disciplinary role: how, otherwise, could we control the madness springing forth from an
incomprehensible, non-human world?) Philosophy’s raison d’être is that there must be a
way to make sense—and express in concepts— the true way things are. This translates into
the necessity of a closed system. The concept of Spiel used by Hegel captures the property
of closure in its play-like side. Play is the paradigmatic self-enclosed activity that is totally
bent upon itself and does not need to refer to its outside to be both valuable, meaningful,
and rewarding.
However, if closure is no doubt necessary, it is far from clear what this closure is about,
or, more precisely, what it closes. It is necessary, for example, to transform work, the real
work of the negative in effective history, into a game being played. It is only because the
work, once performed, is recognized as the necessary part of a concluded and self-enclosed
process that the process itself can be understood as a game. The necessity of closure dis-
qualifies any “open,” pantragic solution to the problem of the absolute. Still, it does not
necessarily follow that a closed system has to reduce Reason to Fate, as Habermas con-
tends. To put it differently: closure, the circle of circles, etc., are just the names, the signa-
tures, so to speak, of the Hegelian concept that unites, in my terms, the playful and the
serious, the negative and the affirmative. The necessity that the system be closed reinforces
and repeats the demand—a demand perhaps impossible to satisfy—that Hegel imposes on
the concept. In itself, however, closure does not provide an answer. To uphold the necessi-
ty—totally internal to Hegel’s thought— of a closure as the visible mark of his inevitable
defeat and ultimate surrender to a pantheistic fatalism just misses the point. The issue is to
understand what closure means, what it closes and what comes together in that closure. The
issue is whether that closure is indeed possible, which means: whether Absolute Knowing