2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

P HILOSOPHY’ S ENDS
The first option can be seen as a surrender of philosophy to either science or religion;
or, to put it differently, as a transfiguration of philosophy into either epistemology or theol-
ogy. Alexandre Kojève illustrates the latter possibility in his analysis of the final chapter of
Hegel's Phenomenology (i.e. the chapter on “Absolute Knowledge” which he renders as
wisdom, sagesse, as opposed to philosophy, philosophie). Kojève draws a comparison be-
tween Plato and Hegel and sees both as setting the same project for philosophy: the defini-
tion of the Wise man, that is, the man who is no longer a philos-of-sophia, a lover of
knowledge who asks questions, but rather the man who has reached knowledge and pos-
sesses all the answers: “a perfectly self-conscious man, fully satisfied by this coming to
consciousness, and thus serving as a model for all his ‘colleagues’.” 22 The fundamental dif-
ference between the two thinkers lies in the fact that Plato “denies [and Hegel affirms] that
this ideal can be realized by man. (that is, by real man, living in a real World, during the
length of time delimited by his birth and his death)”(83/278). The consequence is that for
Plato, according to Kojève, the ideal of philosophy, Wisdom, lies outside philosophy’s
scope since it can only by realized “by a being other than man, outside of time. We all know
that such a being is called God” (89/283). Philosophy, then, sets the goal that only theology
can realize. For Hegel, on the other hand, the ideal is realizable in time and by man.
In Hegel’s times the confrontation between philosophy and religion was particularly
pressing and especially so in Berlin during the years in which he was giving the lectures on
the history of philosophy. In our day and age—and especially in the countries where the
empiricist and positivist traditions are stronger—we are perhaps more familiar with the
similar confrontation that philosophy has to sustain, at the intellectual and institutional lev-
22. Alexandre Kojève, Introduction à la lecture de Hegel…, 88; Engl. tr. 282. Kojève is referring to (and
partially retranslating into his own language) the celebrated passage in the Preface to the Phenomenology
of Spirit: “Die wahre Gestalt, in welcher die Warheit existiert, kann die allein die wissenschaftlichene
System derselben sein. Daran mitzuarbeiten, daß die Philosophie der Form der Wissenschaft
näherkomme,—dem Ziele, ihren Namen der Liebe zum Wissen ablegen zu kommen und wirkliches
Wissen zu sein,—ist es, was ich mir vorgesetzt.” (Engl. Tr. 3). The first formulation of this opposition
(e.g. science vs. love of Knowledge) is perhaps to be found in Fichte’s Letter to Böttinger, March 1,
1794.The very title of Fichte’s system, Wissenschaftslehre, is motivated by this opposition between
knowledge and love of knowledge. See also Fichte’s “On the concept of the Wissenschaftslehre,” and
the “Comparison between Prof. Schmid’s System and the Wissenschaftslehre” in Early Philosophical
Writings, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).
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