Nella postdisciplinarità attraverso Hegel: per una filosofia critico-trasformativa

This contribution draws from paragraphs 572-577 of Hegel’s Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences in Compendium (1830) devoted to the thematic treatment of philosophy. In particular, two aspects are emphasised. The first is a relational one. In reading the section of the Encyclopedia dedicated to the “Absolute Spirit,” the question as to philosophy’s relationality to other thought production fields (which in Hegel’s text is particularized as the relationship between art, religion, and philosophy) can indeed be raised in a powerful and layered way.

This question gets even more complicated in a context, such as the contemporary one, in which philosophy is also markedly a discipline, as well as an academic discipline, and where not only interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are discussed, but also postdisciplinarity. In this scenario, what about philosophy and its relations with other fields of knowledge? How does this relationality define and transform philosophy?

The second aspect to be stressed – a ‘classical’ Hegelian trait – is the presentation of philosophy as the concept’s self-knowledge. This knowledge is likewise retrospective, retroactive and transformative, it re-signifies (especially on a logical level) its own development process, as well as the ‘stages’ of such development. The two aspects mentioned converge in the final few paragraphs of the Encyclopaedia, expressly dedicated to philosophy.

The elements identified are of interest here for their ability to raise questions, produce critique, and provide conceptual tools useful to the issues discussed in today’s debates. The main aim of the text is therefore not to examine these aspects within a Hegelian perimeter alone, but to generate spaces of interaction between Hegel’s thought and contemporary metaphilosophical debates, which question what philosophy is, how and why it should be conducted, what its objects, methods and aims are, and what relations it entertains with other disciplines. Included in the analysis will be proposals from the recent debate on post-disciplinarity and perspectives that have emerged in the field of feminist theories. The path envisages a re-signification of the thesis of the non-exceptionality of philosophy, through the aperture to a horizontal relationship between disciplines and the generation of epistemic spaces that re-discuss disciplinary boundaries, shaping research on the complexity, critique and creativity of thought. The Hegelian aspects indicated above will be developed and used to investigate the possible role (also self-critical) of philosophy in these transformative horizons of disciplines.