Feng Jiahui: The Historical Presence of Philosophy
The modern conception that "philosophy is the history of philosophy" is largely due to Hegel’s systematic elucidation. His Lectures on the History of Philosophy inaugurated a tradition of grasping philosophy through its history: he both constructed the history of Western philosophy within the framework of speculative philosophy and anchored the question of truth in philosophical research within the temporal flux of the historical process. Under the principle of the "identity of history and logic," Hegel’s doctrine of the history of philosophy combined the systematic nature of knowledge with its empirical dimension, thereby unifying the singularity and multiplicity of thought, and the eternity and historicity of truth. Heidegger called it "the first philosophical history of philosophy, the first adequate historical inquiry, but at the same time the last and last possible form of such inquiry."
However, for Hegel, the position that "philosophy is the history of philosophy" was not a self-evident axiom, but rather a theoretical resolution to the core problems he faced in the development of his thought. In fact, the fact that "philosophy has a history" posed a massive intellectual challenge for post-Kantian philosophers pursuing philosophy as a science and a system. Looking at the development of Hegel’s thought, he initially denied the historicity of philosophy during his early years in Jena; subsequently, through the conception of the dialectic, he developed a doctrine concerning the historical process of Spirit [1], and finally established the connection between philosophy and its history holistically within his doctrine of the history of philosophy. This article will trace Hegel’s various intellectual schemes regarding the connection between philosophy and its history from the Jena period to his mature stage, in order to clarify the conceptual background and core insights of Hegel’s architecture of the history of philosophy, and further analyze the intellectual positioning of this doctrine.
I. The Ahistoricity of Philosophy
In the development of Hegel’s philosophy, the philosopher’s first thematic examination of the problem of the history of philosophy appears in 1801 in The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy. During this period, Hegel’s problem-consciousness radiated from the background of post-Kantian philosophy, focusing on how to make philosophy a science. This theoretical goal originated from the systematic conception prepared in Kant’s critical philosophy, was developed through Reinhold’s [2] philosophy of representation, and found explicit expression in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre [3] and Schelling’s philosophy. The core objective of this theoretical direction was to establish a unique system of universal necessity.
In this context, Hegel emphasized: "The entire work of reason and its activity is also within philosophy itself. And as far as the inner essence of philosophy is concerned, there are neither predecessors nor successors"; "Speculation is the activity of single and universal reason itself; therefore, it must not see merely different modes and purely idiosyncratic viewpoints within the philosophical systems of different eras and figures." According to Hegel’s claim, reason is one, and thus the scientific system established by reason can only be one; meanwhile, the diverse array of cognitions, because they inevitably involve mutual friction and conflict, represent opinion (Meinung) rather than truth: "The variety of concepts of the understanding and opinions—such variety is not philosophy." Since reason is universal and beyond doubt, the knowledge derived from it is necessary and absolute; this unconditional system of knowledge transcends history.
Hegel’s definition of the history of philosophy was consistent with the mainstream view of the time: the history of philosophy as a presentation of different philosophical thoughts in history does not belong to philosophy itself. By contrast, Hegel’s contemporary Reinhold believed that the history of philosophy could still be taught as an introduction to philosophy, because philosophy is a universally valid skill [4] that needs to be perfected through historical polishing; thus, the history of philosophy constitutes the "forecourt" of philosophical training, providing the knowledge base upon which philosophical analysis depends. Hegel’s position was more resolute; he emphasized that the work of reason does not lie in the skill of analysis and demonstration, but in the intuition and presentation of the Absolute. To enter into true thought, one must undergo a rational adventure, "plunging in with self-oblivion" where there is no foundation to "establish the Absolute in consciousness." The thoughts appearing within the history of philosophy are invalid for the presentation of the Absolute in consciousness. Hegel emphasized: "Any reason that gazes upon and recognizes itself produces a true philosophy to solve the task, and this task, like its solution, is the same in all times."
In his 1801/02 lectures on "Logic and Metaphysics," Hegel similarly argued for the singularity and ahistoricity of philosophy in the sense of philosophy as a science. Hegel noted, "We must first completely construct the principles of all philosophy... from a true recognition of it will arise the conviction that at all times, there is only one philosophy." What Hegel taught was not a history of metaphysics, but what was considered truth within this intellectual enterprise. Even when Hegel discussed the different theoretical schemes of Schelling, Fichte, and Kant, the purpose was not to present the philosophical history they constructed, but to point out that different philosophical systems arise from the same highest principle, except that "one system merely makes one factor of the totality more prominent, while another system makes another factor more prominent." Hegel focused on the totality of reason, and this totality, as the manifestation of absolute truth, transcends time. Because the early Hegel in Jena advocated the ahistoricity of philosophy, he did not propose a theory of the history of philosophy in a philosophical sense.
Furthermore, one detail is worth noting. While emphasizing the scientific dimension of philosophy, the Hegel of this period also understood philosophy in the sense of art—which is distinct from science. In the Difference essay, Hegel stated, "The truly unique element of philosophy is the interested individuality, in which reason constitutes a form from the building materials of a particular era... like a true work of art." Some interpreters have thus described this model of the history of philosophy as "aesthetic," because Hegel emphasized the self-contained and unconditional nature of philosophy. This interpretation reveals Hegel’s affinity with the Romantics during his early years in Jena. The relationship between science (as a product of universal reason) and works of art (as the crystallization of unique individuality) and their respective histories is different. In the case of science, the doctrines of scientists across generations belong to the same pursuit of truth; once a new doctrine better solves previous problems, the old theory loses its efficacy as science and is preserved merely as history. In the field of art, however, the individual genius of the creator is unique and expands the boundaries of meaning in a specific way; this means new progress does not cause classic works in history to lose their significance. Hegel’s understanding of philosophical work in an aesthetic manner suggests that during this period, he intuited that every philosopher contributes to the revelation of truth in a unique way. If true philosophy is unique and self-contained, and there is more than one true philosophy, then the history of philosophy is not a philosophically insignificant subject. It was simply that the early Hegel in Jena had not yet explored a conceptual discourse capable of adequately expressing the historicity of philosophy.
II. The Historicity of Spirit
According to the accounts of Karl Rosenkranz [5], Hegel reconsidered the philosophical significance of the history of philosophy during his middle Jena period (around 1805–1806): "He now realized that the unity of all philosophy exists in the most definite way in the continuum of a great whole. For the first time, he expounded universal history from the perspective of absolute knowledge; for the first time, he saw himself in his historical relationship to his predecessors." The lecture notes from this period are lost, but according to materials unearthed by the contemporary scholar Heinz Kimmerle, Hegel was particularly concerned with the "progress from one system to another" during this time. His audience was especially inspired by Hegel's "unheard-of dialectic," as it differed from Schelling’s static system. Through the conception of the dialectical movement of Spirit, Hegel re-incorporated history into the horizon of philosophy: the differences in thought existing in philosophical history were not elements for philosophy itself to transcend and overcome, but were themselves themes of philosophical significance; the historicity of philosophy itself belonged to truth, not to opinion.
From the claim of philosophy’s ahistoricity to the discovery of the philosophical significance of the history of philosophy, Hegel gradually transitioned from his youth to his mature stage. This intellectual development was accompanied by three core insights. The first involves the constitutive significance of the history of knowledge for knowledge itself. Hegel had already seen in his early Jena period that "any philosophy is completed in itself... possessing totality within itself"; this meant that every piece of knowledge within history possessed a certain rationality within the totality of knowledge. The various philosophies in history did not merely signify a heap of accidental opinions; rather, they constituted manifestations of different levels of truth. This insight of Hegel’s benefited greatly from Herder [6]—namely, that the historicity of thought is not negative; rather, it highlights the uniqueness of the realm of the human spirit. The second point lies in Hegel’s conception of dialectical movement. Conflicts do indeed exist between various philosophies, but contradiction is not a mere negation; rather, it is the driving force of thought's progress. Hegel called this process—the negation of the negation, which relates to the other and returns to itself—the "dialectic," using it to explain how the differences of various knowledges in history are integrated into the system of knowledge. The third point is Hegel’s discovery of the concept of "Spirit" (Geist). This concept expresses both individual knowledge and the totality of thought. Through this vocabulary, Hegel was able to speak of the multiplicity and difference of knowledge (as Spirit as "moment") while also expressing the totality of meaning that accommodates different knowledges (as Spirit as "totality"). The concept of Spirit outlines the historical process of knowledge: every piece of knowledge constitutes a moment of the systematic totality; they belong to the space of totalizing truth as the movement and externalization of Spirit. Through the historicity of knowledge, the dialectic, and the concept of Spirit, Hegel re-linked the philosophy and history he had separated in his early years: History is "Spirit externalized into time" (der an die Zeit entäußerte Geist); and the true object of philosophy lies in the movement unfolded by Spirit in a dialectical manner.
Hegel’s first positive and systematic expression of the philosophical significance of philosophical history is found in his Phenomenology of Spirit. Based on the idea of the dialectical movement of Spirit and its externalization, Hegel concretely presented the diverse shapes of consciousness—that is, the process of starting from natural consciousness, passing through its path of doubt, despair, and Bildung [7], and ascending to absolute knowledge. Hegel abandoned the ahistorical view of philosophy from his early Jena period and turned instead to study the modes of Spirit presented in history. Hegel’s view here points directly to a core insight of his philosophy: Spirit signifies a historical process moving toward self-knowledge, and this process as a whole constitutes truth. Thereby, Hegel systematically expressed the intellectual exploration of the "history of self-consciousness" found in post-Kantian philosophy.
Can it then be said that Hegel’s "Phenomenology of Spirit" is the first expression of his doctrine of the history of philosophy? Although the different shapes of consciousness presented by Hegel can be more or less associated with specific doctrines in the history of philosophy, what Hegel called the "experience of consciousness" does not directly correspond to the "history of philosophy." The historicity of the former signifies the dynamics of Spirit itself, while the latter lies in specific doctrines within an empirical-spatiotemporal context. More importantly, looking at the overall plan of Hegel’s philosophical system, the positioning of the Phenomenology of Spirit is as the "Introduction" to the system of science; its core lies in revealing the process of the Bildung of consciousness to arrive at the standpoint of absolute knowledge. Only at the end of the Phenomenology does consciousness transcend certainty and its split from the object, pointing toward the logical starting point of the system of science—the identity of thought and being. From this, it is evident that Hegel’s discussion of the relationship between philosophy and its history during this period was particularly complex: on the one hand, by developing the doctrine of the dialectical movement of Spirit, Hegel philosophically presented the continuity of different modes of Spirit appearing in history. In this sense, different ideologies were not a series of accidental events, but belonged to the necessary process of Spirit moving toward self-knowledge. Hegel thus provided the theoretical preparation for thinking about the history of philosophy in a philosophical sense. But on the other hand, the domain of the Phenomenology lies in "appearing knowledge," "a path of natural consciousness toward true knowledge"; the historicity of Spirit as phenomenon does not overlap with the historicity of truth unfolding as a scientific system.
Regarding the intrinsic connection between the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit and Hegel's philosophical system, it has long been a focal point of scholarly debate; due to space constraints, this article will not delve deeply into it for the time being. At the very least, it is clear that because Hegel subordinated the phenomenology of spirit to the introduction of the system, he weakened the philosophical significance of the various configurations [8] manifested by the externalization of Spirit within history. The movement of Spirit toward self-knowledge displayed in the book is less the final answer of Hegel’s theory of the history of philosophy than a provisional scheme in his intellectual evolution.
III. The Consistency of History and Logic
Based on the movement of Spirit’s self-knowledge, Hegel developed his insights into the historicity of Spirit on different levels: first, the phenomenology of spirit unfolding as the experience of consciousness; second, the logic based on the self-movement of the Concept [9]; and finally, the history of philosophy as the historical manifestation of the development of truth. Phenomenology, logic, and the history of philosophy constitute the three modes Hegel used to display the dialectical progress and historical externalization of Spirit. We cannot discuss them all here, but will focus solely on his doctrine of the history of philosophy.
Starting in 1819, Hegel gave a total of six lecture series on the history of philosophy, covering Oriental philosophy, Ancient Greek philosophy, and Medieval philosophy up through the history of philosophy in his own time. Differing from his early Jena period positioning of philosophy as trans-historical, Hegel pointed out during the period of his mature system that the contradictions between the singularity of truth and the multiplicity of philosophical doctrines, and between the eternity of truth and the historical dimension of philosophy, could be resolved. Hegel asserted: "In the history of philosophy, we are not dealing with the past, nor with other thoughts. We are dealing with the present, the most living presence." The history of philosophy itself constitutes a philosophical system—a "system of the totality [of thought] forms." Hegel both differed from his contemporaries, who viewed the history of philosophy merely as a collection of doctrines appearing in history, and transcended the intellectual efforts since Kant to establish a single system of reason. Hegel demanded not only that philosophy, but that the history of philosophy itself become a science (Wissenschaft).
1. The Consistency of History and Logic: Textual Evidence How, then, could Hegel allow the history of philosophy—as a narrative of plural truths—to also become the manifestation of the sole truth? In his mature-period Science of Logic and Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel proceeded respectively from the thought-categories of the Concept and the thought-configurations of history to attribute the historical diversity of philosophy to the necessary evolution of thought-categories in logic. Let us refer to the conclusion of the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, where Hegel sorts through the different stages of the history of philosophy and the different Ideas [10] they represent:
(1) Proceeding from the objective, from what is given, and transforming the objective into the Idea... the Being of Parmenides. (2) Abstract thought, nous, recognized as universal essence... Plato’s universals. (3) In Aristotle, the Concept appears; free, simple, conceptual thought permeates and spiritualizes all forms within the universe. (4) The Concept is recognized as the subject, emphasizing the subject’s independence, being-in-itself, and abstract separation, represented by the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics... abstract, purely formal universality. (5) Thought as totality, the intelligible world, the world as the world of thought—this is the concrete Idea we see in the Neoplatonists... (6) Advancing from the knowing Idea to the self-knowing Idea... the Idea reaches an absolute disruption of its consciousness of itself... in Descartes, pure thinking once made this disruption or division into two... thinking and being are both opposite and identical in Spinoza... the principle of reconciliation starting from thinking itself, subverting the subjectivity of thinking: this is Leibniz’s monad with its power of representation. (7) Self-consciousness recognizes itself as self-consciousness... subjectivity first as the critique of thinking [in Kant], and secondly as the tendency or impulse to seek the concrete [in Fichte]... (8) Absolute content and absolute form are identical—Substance itself is identical with knowledge.
In the "Addition" (Zusatz) to the Logic, Hegel likewise reveals the mirror relationship between the history of philosophy and logic through the correspondence of established logical categories to intellectual history. For example, the first moment of the Doctrine of Being: Being—Nothing—Becoming, corresponds to Parmenides—Buddhism—Heraclitus:
The Eleatic school—especially Parmenides... already first expressed the simple thought of "pure being": "Only being is, and nothing is not at all." —In various Oriental systems, fundamentally in Buddhism, "nothing" or "emptiness" is the well-known absolute principle. —Against that simple and one-sided abstraction, the profound Heraclitus proposed the higher-level concept of totality, "becoming," declaring that "being and nothing equally are not" or "all things flow"—which is to say, "all things are becoming."
For another example, in the third section of the Doctrine of Essence, "Actuality," the Absolute is associated with Spinoza’s doctrine of substance: "What has appeared here, coinciding with the Absolute and its relationship to reflection and the Absolute, is Spinoza’s concept of 'substance'." The subsequent moment of "Actuality" relates to Leibniz's doctrine of modality, while the "categories of relation" continue the basic framework of the "categories of relation" in Kant’s First Critique. However, Hegel did not develop this systematically.
In contemporary research, Klaus Vieweg’s new book Multiple Beginnings: Another History of Philosophy proposes a framework where "ideal types" (Idealtyp) of the history of philosophy correspond to logical categories, specifically illustrating how the Doctrine of Being–Doctrine of Essence–Doctrine of the Concept structured in Hegel’s logic corresponds to the ontology of the ancient world, the reflective philosophy of the ancient and modern worlds, and the philosophy of the subject in the modern world. Vieweg’s research relatively completely reconstructs the intellectual map of Hegel's history of philosophy–logical categories; it not only restores Hegel’s classic model of Being–Parmenides, Nothing–Buddhism, and Becoming–Heraclitus, but also outlines correspondence frameworks such as Spinoza–Substance, Kant–General Theory of the Concept, and Fichte–Subjectivity. Regarding the most difficult Doctrine of Essence portion, Vieweg’s categorization of Plato into the dialectical model, Aristotle into Actuality, Neoplatonism into the tripartite structure, and Skepticism into absolute negativity is quite creative.
However, Vieweg’s positive attempt also partially exposes the embarrassments therein. For example, the Platonic dialectic described by Vieweg does not correspond to a specific category in the Doctrine of Essence; Descartes’s cogito is characterized as the identity of thought and being, which is closer to the beginning of logic than to a stage of essence; Aristotle and Spinoza are both attributed to the moment of Actuality despite being historically far apart, and so on. The difficulty here stems partly from the characteristics of the book Science of Logic. On the one hand, the core of this text does not lie in presenting a complete conceptual map of logic–history of philosophy. On the other hand, Hegel did not complete the revision of the "Doctrine of Essence" and "Doctrine of the Concept" before his death; compared to a more ideal version, it is difficult to fully glimpse Hegel’s systematic construction of this problem through existing texts.
2. The Consistency of History and Logic: Principles and Clarifications Although at the level of content, Hegel’s theory of the history of philosophy left many themes unresolved, his position on theoretical principles was clear: namely, that "the sequence of philosophical systems in history is consistent with the sequence of logical determinations in the development of thought." Under the principle of the "consistency of history and logic," we can perceive how the progression from the doctrines of Being and Essence to the Concept corresponds to the evolution in Western philosophical history from traditional metaphysics to transcendental philosophy and the philosophy of subjectivity, and finally to absolute idealism.
From the perspective of theoretical intent, this principle aims to solve the thorny problem of "how philosophy can have a history." Hegel stepped out of the thinking mode that opposed philosophy to history, instead grasping the "multiplicity of philosophical doctrines" itself as a philosophical problem. By providing a systematic explanation of the historicity of philosophy itself, Hegel allowed the historical-empirical dimension of thought to be internalized into the systematic-conceptual structure of philosophy. That is to say, plural philosophies are not a challenge to philosophy as a singular entity, but are precisely the most fundamental characteristic of the singular philosophy. Historical flux is fused into the necessary process of logic. The external evolution from system to system is incorporated into the self-development process of a larger system. Hegel’s theory of the history of philosophy constitutes what Kuno Fischer called the "system of systems" (System von Systemen), and this higher-order system takes the "consistency of history and logic" as its basic principle.
From its intellectual foundation, the principle of "consistency of history and logic" is Hegel's advancement of his views on the historicity of Spirit from the Jena period. In his view, behind the diverse philosophical systems in the history of philosophy lies the dialectical movement of Spirit’s self-knowledge. "[The history of philosophy] is not a collection of opinions, not a matter of various contingencies; it is the self-manifestation in the world of thinking Reason (denkende Vernunft), of the thinking Spirit." "There is always only one philosophy, and that is the self-knowledge of Spirit." From its temporal-historical dimension, the historical progress of Spirit is expressed as the evolution of systems in the history of philosophy; as the manifestation of Reason in time, they constitute the moments of truth and belong to the totality of Spirit. From its conceptual elements, the historical structure of Spirit is depicted in logic, because they both correspond to the conceptual process of "thinking Reason."
It should be noted that although people often think Hegel advocates the "unity" (tongyi 统一) of history and logic, based on the text, what he emphasizes is rather the "identity" or "equivalence" (dengtong 等同; dasselbe/dieselbe) of the two. In his writing, Hegel also uses expressions such as "parallel," "correspondence," "conforming," and "consistency," but he never talks about the "unity" (Einheit) of history and logic or of the history of philosophy and philosophy. Even if Hegel mentions "unity" (Einheit) in the introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, he is not talking about the relationship between the historical evolution of philosophy and logical determinations, but rather the dynamic process of the development of the Idea—that is, the movement from undifferentiated immediacy toward a concrete unity that contains differences.
This distinction is particularly important. In Hegel’s terminological system, unity signifies the result of dialectical movement—the return to self-relation at the end of the moments of difference. Unity both contains difference and signifies the overcoming of difference. For example, Hegel states, "In Measure... quantity and quality reach unity"; "the Concept manifests as the unity of Being and Essence." But Hegel does not claim that the history of philosophy achieves a unity of history and logic. For if that were the case, the two sides would have experienced mutual distinction and only finally returned to mutual consistency. Rather, Hegel believes that the historical process of philosophy and the logical process are identical in themselves; they are different expressions of the self-unfolding of one and same Spirit. Hegel asserts, "The history of philosophy and the system of philosophy are one and the same thing... philosophy is the presentation of the development of thought in the form of simple thinking, without any added meaning; the history of philosophy is the temporal process of this development"; "In the history of philosophy, what is presented is the same thing as in philosophy, only with different accompaniments of time, place, nation, etc." Precisely for this reason, scholars usually express Hegel’s theory of the history of philosophy as "consistency theory" or "parallelism."
3. The Consistency of History and Logic: Criticisms and Responses Having explained the basic principles of Hegel’s theory of the history of philosophy, let us discuss relevant criticisms. A common viewpoint argues that Hegel, by using logic to explain the history of philosophy, sacrificed history for the sake of the system—that is, he imposed the violence of philosophy upon empirical matters that do not necessarily obey a rational order. Since the publication of Hegel’s lectures on the history of philosophy, the principle of the consistency of logic and history has attracted enormous controversy. For critics, Hegel's doctrine is untenable from the start: the beginning of Hegel’s logic consists of the three categories of thought—Being, Nothing, and Becoming; but in the history of philosophy, Heraclitus’s doctrine of Becoming preceded Parmenides’s doctrine of Being. The logical order and the order of the history of philosophy are inverted.
Has Hegel here conflated the historical order with the logical one? We must observe that Hegel’s principle of the "coincidence of the historical and the logical" cannot be interpreted as a simple "one-to-one correspondence." Hegel was perfectly clear on this: the progression of the self-movement of the Concept [12] does not radiate seamlessly into the changes of thought appearing in time and space. After all, development arising from historical reasons and evolution stems from the Concept itself represent different orders. Thought-forms existing in time and space bear the stamp of given socio-political environments and are saturated with the personal traits of the philosopher; these elements are irrelevant to the logical determinations of thought. In his Lectures on Logic, he points out that "the unfolding of the content of the history of philosophy in this process... on the one hand coincides with and on the other hand deviates from the dialectical unfolding of the pure logical Idea." The "coincidence" Hegel emphasizes remains open to a certain degree of "discrepancy" between the history of philosophy and logic.
On this point, H. F. Fulda’s analysis is worth referencing. He notes that Hegel's claim of historical-logical coincidence merely poses a relationship of consistency between the development of philosophical systems and the evolution of logical categories, but does not prescribe the specific content of that evolution. This means Hegel did not explicitly state which logical categories correspond to the history of philosophy, nor did he explain whether all logical categories, or only a portion of them, share this correspondence. In Fulda’s view, this ambiguity ensures the openness of Hegel’s theory of the history of philosophy: "The point of this thesis [the coincidence of historical and logical order] seems to lie not in a single, quasi-linear sequence of logical determinations running through the entire history of philosophy, but in the levels and developmental dynamics of the fundamental systematic concepts (as well as the logical determinations of the Idea) at the nodal points of the development of the history of philosophy, which represent the great paradigms of philosophy." The core of Hegel's discourse lies in the characterization of the "principal moments" (Hauptmoment) in the history of philosophy, which paradigmatically condense the thought-determinations of philosophy’s historical developmental process.
In other words, within the scheme of historical-logical coincidence, Hegel does not promise that the thought-determinations of logic can characterize every concrete claim in the history of philosophy, for such an approach would inevitably fall into Krug’s [13] mockery of the idealists: deducing the whole world from a quill pen. Rather, he asserts that "at the principal moments and nodal points, logical development and historical development are one." The logical determinations manifested in the history of philosophy are not like a photographic negative or a theatrical script, as if the historical process were merely a puppet manipulated by Reason. Conversely, the relationship between the two can be compared to that between a fabric and its stitching, or a building and its support structure. These support points link the overall framework of the architecture but do not provide or interfere with the various materials that constitute the building.
The "critical nodes" of philosophical history characterized by Hegel do not extend to the specific positions of different philosophers, nor are they restricted to a linear, unidirectional progression. This is why Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy are, on the one hand, interspersed with a wealth of biographical material on the philosophers themselves, and on the other, highly dependent on the philosophers' own frameworks of thought rather than being based on Hegel’s own logical categories. Hegel’s theory of the history of philosophy carries out his rationalist project: the history of philosophy only acquires meaning when its critical moments are subsumed under philosophy. Simultaneously, the way he implements this task is empiricist; existing positions and doctrines in the history of philosophy are not materials to be shaped and written at will, but are the base points from which he grasps and presents the "becoming-present" [14] of philosophy within history. This is the original meaning of the coincidence of the historical and the logical: it neither constructs the meaning of the history of philosophy from a specific ideological stance, nor is it satisfied with the induction and refinement of existing historical texts. What is essential is the "self-manifestation" (sich manifestieren) of Spirit; it does not permeate every detail of reality, but on a grand scale, its historical process becomes transparent within logical determinations.
IV. Concluding Remarks
Between documentary materials and speculative determinations, concrete diversity and total unity, and the process of historical flux and the eternal order of reason, Hegel structured his doctrine of the history of philosophy as both philosophy and science through the "coincidence of the historical and the logical." Hegel maintained an interest in returning to the past and tracing back to sources, but without allowing it to degenerate into a nostalgic "museum-fixation" [15]. Hegel practiced a philosophical project modeled on science, while ensuring that rationalist principles did not descend into the "solipsistic truth" of arrogance. Hegel is the founder of the history of philosophy as a philosophical discipline. The historian of philosophy L. Braun evaluated his contribution thus: "Hegel’s originality lies in the fact that he does not treat all philosophies as museum pieces, but preserves them within the principles that give them form and reality... henceforth, the historian has placed himself within philosophy itself." Through Hegel’s development, the history of philosophy is not merely one category of the history of ideas alongside the history of political thought, social history, or art history, but constitutes the theoretical project of philosophy itself.
However, the historicity of philosophy unfolded by Hegel, even if it constitutes a living present, remains unrelated to the future of philosophical history. Facing the history of philosophy after Hegel, if we still adhere to the principle of historical-logical coincidence, we will face a conceptual dilemma: Hegel’s Logic is complete, yet the history of philosophy can never end. A further question arises: after Hegel, will the history of philosophy in a philosophical sense continue to extend and develop? If not, is Hegel not then announcing that philosophy itself has exhausted its own conceptual possibilities? If so, does Hegel not imply that his Logic is also merely a product of history, and consequently, any rational effort is inevitably degraded to a particular moment within historical evolution? Between the closure of the system of Logic and the openness of the history of thought itself, since Hegel affirmed both, he had to pay the theoretical price for their fundamental conflict.
(Author’s affiliations: Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Center for Comparative Studies of World Civilizations) Source: Philosophical Research (哲学研究), No. 3, 2025 Web Editor: Paulo