2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

H EGEL’ S PARADOX
Let us go back to our previous reformulation of the telos of philosophy: ‘its task (as
telos) is to come to an end (as completion) by implicitly bringing all other philosophies to
an end (as terminus).’ Notice that the grandiosity of the effort lying ahead of the philoso-
pher begins to cast doubts on the feasibility of an enterprise that strives to bring philosophy
to an end. As soon as the philosopher starts to consider that in order to reach science he has
to succeed where great minds have failed, his resoluteness may begin to waver and, with it,
his belief in truth. If philosophy cannot achieve such lofty goals, perhaps it can offer a col-
lection of Weltanschauungen, among which the learned man can pick the most suitable to
his taste. Hegel is fully aware of this possibility, when he writes:
We see that in the great matters to which we [e.g. the philosophers] are
attracted […] the greatest minds have erred because they have been refuted
by others. Since this has happened to great minds, how am I, ego homuncio,
to attempt a decision? […] If it be granted that philosophy is to be a real science
and that one philosophy is a true one, the question is ‘Which one?’
‘How on earth is it to be recognized? Every philosophy asserts that it is the
true one; everyone cites different signs and criteria whereby the truth is to
be recognized. Therefore a prudent and circumspect way of thinking (Denken)
must hesitate to decide among them.’ (16/13, last italics are mine. Tr.
modified)
Hegel not only stresses, once again, that philosophy has decayed from the search for truth
to a stock of world-views, he also points out how and why such a shift occurs: it is precisely
because past philosophies have been reduced to a series of errors that the philosopher’s re-
solve begins to waver. The shift happens when a certain a-historical view of philosophy’s
end is pushed to the limit and—after having reduced past doctrines to mistakes—the phi-
losopher thinks of his own experience (and silently utters: memento mori). Yet another
meaning of “end” comes into play: end as limitation and, more specifically, as a limitation
of possibilities. End as the root of endlich, “limited,” more specifically in the Kantian sense
of being limited to (by) some external contingency. A human being, in this sense, is a finite
thinker since its knowledge is limited by sensible intuition and it is thereby restricted to the
objects presented to such an intuition. A “circumspect thinker,” a thinker who takes circum-
stances into account, and is therefore limited by them, cannot but hesitate among the dif-
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