2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

N ON-PHILOSOPHY
does not build the figures, but retrieve those that exist already) all these do not know how
to use their own crafts, but only know how to hunt and deliver their discoveries to the dia-
lecticians so that the latter can use them...” 1 One of the most important consequences of
such an interpretation concerns the scope of philosophical inquiry. Once it has been decided
that philosophy aims at the truth of the world as such, it follows that it is almost impossible
to delimit a clearly defined domain bounding the scope of the research. Hegel stresses, as
we have seen, that both empirical and formal sciences, on the contrary, have defined do-
mains within which they pursue their research. This is not meant to suggest that the char-
acterization is originally Hegelian. Just the opposite: its spirit (and most of its letter) is
clearly Aristotelian. Let us remember the opening sentences of Metaphysics, Γ: “There is a
science that investigates being as being and the attributes which belong to it in virtue of its
own nature. [...] None of the other sciences considers being as being in general but, after
having delimited a portion of it, investigates the attributes of this part.” 2 Not only such a
distinction goes back to the beginnings of philosophy, but it has also become entrenched in
everyday language. The common use of the word “philosophy” (like in “Apple’s philoso-
phy about the personal computer”) denotes precisely a very general view, an abstract view
that guides practices. However, although the general conception is widely shared across the
history of philosophy, it remains that the particular formulations can be significantly differ-
ent and I prefer to refer my discussion, for the sake of concreteness and precision, to the
specific formulation that it receives in the Hegelian text. Of course, the boundaries of the
domains in questions may be more or less clearly defined—often, it is only when a science
has reached a certain theoretical maturity that its object can be fully specified, since the def-
inition of the domain itself is a relevant part of the scientific effort.
In the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel exploits this distinction between
“empirical sciences” and philosophy to point out that the former can afford (which doesn’t
mean that they always do, nor that they have to) the luxury to proceed by a progressive ac-
1. See Plato, Euthydemos (282d,290c-d) in Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds., The collected
dialogues of Plato (New York: Pantheon Books, 1961), 396, 404. At this level of generality, philosophy
has not changed much from Plato to Hegel.
2. Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Γ 1003, 21-25
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