The Cartesian-Husserlian and the Hegelian Approach
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
The relation of philosophy to its history is ambivalent. On the one hand,
there is hardly any other academic discipline which attaches greater importance
to the study of its history than philosophy, but on the other, philosophy does
not seem to be able to rely on what past thinkers have achieved. Philosophers
often struggle between a radical new beginning and a never-ending return
to the past, a conflict which is rooted in two apparently incompatible
demands of philosophy: the notion of philosophy as a rigorous science and
the historical character of philosophy. This paper begins with a sketch of the
Cartesian-Husserlian approach, discussing the possibility of establishing a
ˇ§first philosophyˇ¨ without any presuppositions. It then proceeds to explain
Hegelˇ¦s criticisms of this approach. The last part of the paper attempts to show
how the scientific and the historical character of philosophy are unified in
Hegelˇ¦s system.