Redeeming Modernity: The Ascent of Eros and Wisdom in Hegel's Phenomenology

In: Interpretation: a journal of political philosophy, Band 37, Heft 1, S. 3-28

Abstract

The author characterizes philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's phenomenology as consisting of two epistemologies corresponding to the pre-modern and modern ages. Pre-modern epistemology focused on the unknowable divine, whereas the modern age privileges an empiricism which enshrines a division between the perceiving subject and the object perceived. Modernity's analytical powers break down and cast aside all previous traditions and customs. Hegel's 'Phenomenology' is largely an attempt to reconcile Romanticism's privileging of feeling and the empirical claims of rational science. The work attempts to prove that the unified knowledge of the world sought by science is intimately connected with the scope of faith, and the intelligibility of religion within science. Romanticism contains a revival of a classical perspective, in fact, in its erotic yearning for completion through union with the good and beautiful, which is also found in Plato as the motive for both wisdom and aesthetic and emotional fulfillment. The author explains that Hegel's teleology of historical progress reflects Plato's doctrine of 'recollection.' The 'Phenomenology' is an attempt to regain the naive enchantment of classical philosophy that has been lost to modern rationalism. Adapted from the source document.