| What is philosophy? This study defends three claims: (1) Hegel's answer to this question represents an unprecedented radicalization of ancient thought and an unprecedented solution to the problems posed by the subsequent philosophical Enlightenment; (2) Hegel's answer has been decisive yet detrimental, wholly politicizing into incoherence the prevailing modes of contemporary philosophical practice; (3) a more classical, broadly Platonic and Aristotelian, treatment of the question provides a tenable alternative to Hegel, a treatment entirely consistent with both the original ambitions of the Enlightenment project and the consequent lessons of its aftermath.;The first chapter argues that contemporary philosophy is essentially post-Hegelian: embodying in its collective practice, beyond exoteric differences of rhetoric or politics therein, not simply the conviction that Absolute Knowing in the Hegelian sense is impossible, but the further belief that the very hope for Absolute Knowing so specified--which on Hegel's view would underwrite any genuinely lucid accomplishment of synopsis in the domain of all self-conscious activity--is ultimately--and on philosophical grounds--misplaced.;The second chapter argues that it is Hegel himself, in his unprecedented attempt to reconcile philosophical theory and practice into a seamless, single whole, that is primarily responsible for the disaffection towards such Hegelian ambition that haunts his aftermath. Hegel's aim to give philosophical discourse some final systematic shape ultimately issues, and necessarily so, in an achievement that is polyvalent, inherently ambiguous in turn, and self-negating thereby.;The third chapter argues that this post-Hegelian state of affairs is finally post-philosophical as well, making contemporary philosophy's every distinguishing theoretical gesture essentially self-annihilating. The chapter then concludes, in an explicitly classical vein, that the necessary reconciliation of theory and practice demanded by philosophy's genuine realization need not be seamless to be total or whole. To live the highest life, so Plato might say, wisdom is altogether necessary but nowise sufficient. Philosophy and immortality are both entirely possible for man, but neither is ever enough. |
