2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

P HILOSOPHY’ S ENDS
Western tradition, this has never been the case. That is, it is precisely the point of our tra-
dition to base the former on the latter, whether implicitly or explicitly. “What I ought to do”
depends on “what I can know” to use the Kantian terminology, with very few, unorthodox
exception, in the period preceding Hegel. Sophists come to mind as one example, and the
debate between Gorgias and Plato as the relevant evidence. Notice, for example, that Pla-
to’s Socrates is fully within this model. Post-Hegelian philosophy’s privilege of “ethics,”
see Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, disputes precisely this point, the dependence of ethics on
metaphysics, and that’s why we are reluctant to position these latter philosophers within the
orbit of Western Metaphysics. When dealing with these alternative readings of Sophia in
philosophy, however, the real issue at stake is to understand how to reject the classical goal
of philosophy as science. By and large, the only way out is by arguing against the Hegelian
“solution” to the problem of the end of philosophy in favor of a different “end” and a dif-
ferent (non)-philosophy. Once again, a discussion of Hegel represents a crucial carrefour
that cannot be avoided even, and especially, by a non-metaphysical reading of philosophy.
Alternatively, one may accept the hierarchical relationship between metaphysics and
ethics or, more precisely, between theoretical knowledge and practical wisdom and dispute
whether (a) philosophy as metaphysics can supply the necessary theoretical knowledge re-
quired to ground a wisdom and (b) whether this metaphysics can have a “scientific”, e.g.
“discursive, objective” form. Hegel wants to argue for a positive answer to both (a) and (b).
Other options would prescribe, respectively, that the goal (telos) of philosophy may be pre-
served but put outside of philosophy’s scope (and then assigned to another discipline, usu-
ally religion or empirical science) or that only a non-discursive form of knowledge can be
up to the task. 18 I will discuss both options at length in the following section.
In short, it may seem that this Hegelian argument is of little relevance given its reliance
upon such a strong notion of philosophy as science. But, once the terminological issue is
settled, we can see that the alternative options are either to argue against the predominance
18. The former option is discussed at length by Alexandre Kojève in his well-known interpretation of the
chapter VII of the Phenomenology of Spirit as a the alternative between Plato and Hegel, while the latter
is represented, in the context of German Idealism, by the positions defended by both Hölderlin and
Schelling. I will come back to Kojève’s interpretation of Absolute knowing below.
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