La Filosofia

The history of philosophy is made to contain philosophically interesting material and nothing much else,
especially not the teaching system or the disciplinary structure that demands such a restriction in the first place. So the legend works. But how does it work exactly? This is the second question mentioned before: Is ‘doing the history of philosophy’ a task of the philosopher, and in whatway?” (10).

Hegel es el caso paradigmático de una lectura filosófica de la historia de la filosofía:

“There is probably no better example than Hegel if one wants to check what Harold Bloom would call “a strong reading”—in this case, of the history of philosophy. Heidegger was certainly right and expressed the opinion of many when he wrote that no one since Hegel had been able to muster thewhole of the history of philosophy
in a similarly convincing way. Moreover, Hegel actually believed in the idea that the history of philosophy can be read philosophically. Kant had asked himself whether an a priori history of philosophy was at all possible. Hegel plainly wrote it down in his introduction to his lecture courses on the history of philosophy. He turned the reading of the history ofphilosophy into a legend in the proper sense of the word—a legenda historiae philosophiae” (10).

Hegel fue uno de los primeros profesores de filosofía que empezó a dar clases sobre la historia de la filosofía. Su manera de entender este devenir histórico es el del progresivo desarrollo del sistema de la ciencia. Schneider sostiene que sus clases eran algo diferentes al enfoque mismo que tenía ensus introducciones. Resalta, asímismo, el que haya un duro crítico de los historiadores de la filosofía de su época, como Tennemann. Sus lecciones no tenían excesiva erudición. Al abordar a un filósofo hacía breves menciones y detalles biográficos, a menos que sean esenciales. Sobre las obras mismas, se basaba en lo que pensaba que era lo esencial, lo que podríamos llamar “lo propiamentefilosófico”:

“He was always looking for the main principle, which he also called “the philosophical” (das Philosophische), “standpoint” (Standpunkt), “the general” (das Allgemeine), “the main question” (die Hauptfrage), “the main point of view” (der Hauptgesichtspunkt), “the main interest” (das Hauptinteresse), “fundamental interest” (Grundinteresse), “main determination” (Hauptbestimmung), and “main maxim”(Hauptgrundsatz)” (11).

Es importante, para Schneider, diferenciar entre lo que Hegel prometía hacer y lo que efectivamente hacía en sus clases, además de, resaltar el papel eminentemente crítico que tenía de la historia de la filosofía, en lugar del carácter apologético que se le suele atribuir:

“Hegel was less a prophet than a critic. Faithful to his criteria of the philosophicalessential, he dismissed as “philosophically not interesting” the mythical form of truth in Plato, the Roman Stoics, Epicur’s metaphysics, the whole of Arab and Jewish philosophy in the Middle Ages, scholasticism, the religious and political writings of
Hobbes and Locke, and the popular writings of Fichte, to give a few examples. It is not at all astonishing to hear these verdicts: it is just another markof the typical, and not extraordinary, character of Hegel’s lecture course that those verdicts were spoken. In front of his Berlin audience, Hegel was fighting the philosophical past; he wanted to revive and bring to life what he thought was actual thinking. He did a great job, considering the extent to which he was willing to go: he almost never finished his course properly, even when lecturingmore than four times a week. He also spent more than half of his time on Greek philosophy and later jumped whole centuries and many systems, because they would not bring new principles. Whatever Hegel was doing while lecturing, he was not putting forward any convincing philosophy that would absorb, so to speak, the history of philosophy and make it part of the system. This is just what he...