2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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T HE END OF PHILOSOPHY
Hegel, in the text I will be dealing with shortly, begins his reflection on philosophy pre-
cisely from this point of tension: he faces the fact that philosophy happens in time and
draws the consequences by bringing philosophy face to face with its history. The most well-
known text in which Hegel presents his view on philosophy and its end is the dense final
chapter of the Phenomenology on Absolute Knowing. However, I believe that the different
path taken up in the Introduction(s) to the Lectures on History of Philosophy can perhaps
be considered more illuminating for a discourse on philosophy and its end. In the Lectures,
in fact, Hegel develops an argument that takes the reader from an analysis of the paradox-
ical relationship between philosophy, history, and end, and shows the way that leads—nec-
essarily, according to him—to the interpretation of philosophy as Absolute Wissen. The
next few sections are devoted to an analysis of that text, i.e. to an analysis of the preliminary
work Hegel performs in order to introduce his view of philosophy as an all-encompassing,
necessarily completed theoretical effort. I will try to show how that conclusion is forced
upon us by a much simpler argument than what constitutes chapters I-VII of the Phenom-
enology. The conclusion to draw from Hegel’s text are refreshing, or perhaps disparaging,
for any discourse on the end of philosophy. According to Hegel, in fact, a strong relation-
ship with its end has always been a constitutive part of philosophy ‘s nature.
Does that mean that we cannot help being Hegelians and have to merrily embrace the
supreme wisdom that was born under the cannons of Jena, as Kojève once suggested? Yes,
would go the answer, but only if the concept of Absolute Knowing itself would be proved
to live up to the demands imposed by the Hegelian argument. Consequently, I will proceed
to an analysis of the result of Hegel’s argument—namely the concept of Absolute Know-
ing—and try to uncover the main features of the form of knowing that can (or must, accord-
ing to Hegel) take place at the end of philosophy.
3. Hegel’s paradox
Hegel lectured on the history of philosophy several times in his academic career, first
at Heidelberg and then in Berlin. Every time he began his course from what he called “the