2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

H EGEL’ S PARADOX
a series of events (what the Latin calls exitus and Hegel preferably expresses with the word
Vollendung). The true philosophy, having finally reached Truth, constitutes an end of this
sort, since it brings a long series of failed attempts to its logical conclusion. By accomplish-
ing such a feat it would have also fulfilled philosophy’s task, since it would have finally
reached the goal it had always aspired to, its telos. Hegel says that philosophy’s life-long
goal is to bring itself to completion by carrying all the other philosophies to their end. Or,
shortly, although more cryptically: philosophy’s end (as telos) is to come to an end (as com-
pletion) by implicitly bringing all other philosophies to an end (as terminus).
It might be worth stressing that this definition does not apply to Hegel's characteriza-
tion of his own philosophy. Or rather, it would apply only if we read the last ‘end,’ in the
previous definition, in the sense of completion, of Vollendung: Hegel's philosophy brings
all other philosophies to their end only insofar as it accomplishes them by bringing out their
inner truth. In short, Hegel's philosophy “sublates” them, as we say, in a higher unity, in the
unity of the system encompassing the whole history of philosophy. Instead, Kant’s concep-
tion of philosophy mentioned above satisfies quite well the definition. Its stated goal, as
Kant says, is to reach the result that has always eluded past philosophers and, by doing so,
to complete philosophy itself. Hegel wants to show that this view (which, let me remark in
passing, is already more sophisticated than most of what we encounter today, since it asks
explicitly about philosophy’s role, failures, and future) leads into a contradiction whose
only solution is represented by his dialectical view. The path toward Aufhebung takes off,
in the Lectures, from the ‘common view’ about philosophy and its history (15/15) and
brings forth what Hegel calls its inner contradiction. This contradiction is actually even
stronger than the Hegelian text might suggest and it affects deeply both Hegel’s conception
of philosophy and, indirectly, our own. To be more precise, the clash between truth and his-
tory that comes together around the notion of ‘end’ is more than a contradiction: it is actu-
ally a paradox, in the technical, logical sense of the word. This paradox is thoroughly
‘Hegelian’ in the sense that Hegel sees it as the basic problem (or ‘intrinsic contradiction’,
in Hegel’s words) pervading philosophy and threatening its survival. It is the paradox that,
according to Hegel, remains hidden and unsolved in previous philosophies, and especially
41