In this seminar we made an attempt to engage Hegel in conversation. A conversation with a thinker can only deal with the object of thought. By “object” we mean, depending on the given situation, the case in dispute, the thing to be argued about which alone is for thought the case which concerns thought. However, strife over this thing which is in dispute was by no means started by thought without good reason, as it were. Object for thought is that which is the disputable proper in a strife. The word strife³¹ means principally not discord but distress. The object of thought bothers thinking in such a manner as to lead thought first to its object and, thence, to itself.

For Hegel the object of thought is thought as such. In order not to misinterpret circumscribing the object under consideration, that is, thought as such, either psychologically or epistemologically, we are obliged to add by way of explanation: Thought as such, in the developed fullness of the suchness of what is thought. What we mean here by suchness of thought can only be understood through Kant, from the nature of the transcendental which Hegel, however, thinks as absolute, which in turn means speculative to him. This is what Hegel had in mind when he spoke of the thinking of thought as such that it is developed “purely in the element of thought.”³² If we are to interpret this tersely and topically—which scarcely does justice in our thinking to the matter under consideration—we would have to say: The object of thinking for Hegel is “thought.” However, unfolded to the depths of its essential freedom, this is “the absolute Idea.” Hegel says of it toward the end of the Science of Logic³³: “The absolute Idea alone is Being, imperishable Life, Truth knowing itself, and it is Truth complete.” Thus, Hegel himself bestows that name which is written over the whole object of occidental thinking, and he bestows it expressly on the object of his own thinking, the name of Being.

In the seminar³⁴ we discussed the severalfold and yet unified use of the word “Being.” For Hegel, Being means, first of all, but never exclusively, “indefinite immediacy.” Being is looked upon from the point of view of determining mediation, that is, from absolute notion and, hence, in relation to it. “The Truth of Being is Essence,”³⁵ in other words, absolute reflection. The Truth of Essence is Notion in the sense of an in-finite knowing-itself. Being is absolute thought thinking itself. Absolute thought alone is the Truth of Being, it “is” Being. Truth, in Hegel, everywhere is equivalent to self-assured knowledge of what-may-be-known as such.

Hegel, however, thinks the object of his thinking topically at first in a conversation with the history of previous thinking. Hegel is the first one who can and must think in that way. Hegel’s relationship to the history of philosophy is speculative and historic only in so far as it is speculative. The characteristic movement in history is an event in the sense of a dialectical process. Hegel writes:³⁶ “The same development of thought which is treated in the history of philosophy is being portrayed in every philosophy, yet emancipated from that historic externality, purely in the element of thinking.”

At this we are startled and stymied. Philosophy as such and the history of philosophy are, according to Hegel’s own words, supposed to stand in relation of externality to each other. Yet, the externality of which Hegel thinks is by no means external in the sense of mere superficiality and indifference. Externality in this context refers to “outside of.” “Outside” is where all history and every real process has its domicile as contrasted with the movement of the absolute Idea. The externality of history as explained in relation to the Idea is the result of the self-alienation of the Idea. Externality is itself a dialectical determination. We are, therefore, way off in our understanding of the real thought of Hegel’s if we note as a fact that Hegel has welded into a unity historic conceptions and systematic thought in philosophy. For in Hegel’s case it is neither a matter of an academic concept of history nor a system in the sense of a theoretical structure.

What is on our mind as we make these remarks about philosophy and its relation to history? We intend to show that the object of thinking is, for Hegel, historical as such; but historical must be taken in the sense of a happening whose character as process is determined by the dialectic of Being. Object of thinking, for Hegel, is Being as self-thinking thought which ultimately becomes self-conscious in the process of its speculative development. Thus, thought runs through stages of various developments and, hence, must of necessity pass through previously undeveloped phases.

Thus there arises ultimately in Hegel’s experience of the object of thinking a peculiar maxim, the authoritative way and manner in which he speaks to the thinkers preceding him.

Therefore, if we wish to attempt a conversation with Hegel’s thought, we must talk to him not only about the same topic, but about the same topic in the same way. Nevertheless, the Same is not the identical. In identity difference disappears. In the Same difference appears. It appears the more urgently the more determinately we engage in thinking about the same object in the same manner. Hegel thinks of the Being of Existence speculative-historically. Now, in so far as Hegel’s thinking belongs into a period of history (this does not by any stretch of the imagination mean to the past), we shall attempt to think about Hegel’s Being in the same way, that is, historically.

Thinking can stay with a topic only by becoming more pertinent to the matter under consideration in the process of remaining-with-it, by having the same topic become more disputable. This being the case, the topic requires thought to put up with it in its idiosyncrasy, hold its ground by establishing a correspondence, and brings the matter to an issue. Thought, if it sticks to its topic, must, if the topic is Being, consent to an issue with Being. Accordingly, in our conversation with Hegel as well as in the interest of what has just been stated, we are obliged at the outset to clarify the sameness of the identical topic. In agreement with what we said it is incumbent on us to elucidate in our discourse with the history of philosophy the difference in the topic of thinking concomitantly with the difference in historical reality. In this lecture such a clarification has to be necessarily brief and sketchy.

For the purpose of shedding light on the disparity which obtains between Hegel’s thinking and the thinking we shall attempt, let us consider three things.

Our questions are:

For Hegel, the object of thought is Being in view of the suchness of existential thought in and as absolute Thought. For us, the object of thinking is the Same, hence, Being, but Being in view of its difference from Existence. Expressed even more precisely, for Hegel the object of thinking is Thought as absolute Notion. For us, the object of thinking is, by way of a first statement, difference as difference.³⁷

For Hegel, the criterion for the discussion involving the history of philosophy is the degree of penetration into the vigor and milieu of that which was thought by former thinkers. It is not by chance that Hegel establishes his maxim in the course of his conversation with Spinoza and prior to a discussion with Kant.³⁸ In Spinoza Hegel discovers the perfect “point of view of substance,” which, however, cannot be the highest because Being has not been thought of as yet to the degree and absolutely fundamentally as self-thinking Thought. Being, as substance and substantiality, has not yet unfolded itself as subject in its absolute subjectivity. Nevertheless, Spinoza is stimulating the entire thinking of German idealism again and again and immediately generates a contradiction because he has Thought start with the Absolute. The way of Kant, on the contrary, is different and one that is by far more decisive for absolutistic idealistic thought and for philosophy in general than the system of Spinoza. Hegel sees in Kant’s idea of the original synthesis of apperception “one of the profoundest principles for speculative development.”³⁹ The relative influence of thinkers Hegel discovers in what they thought in so far as it may be raised to the appropriate stage of absolute Thought. Thought becomes absolute only by virtue of the fact that it moves in its dialectic-speculative process and requires for it an appropriate graduation.

For us, the criterion in our discussion involving historical tradition is the same in so far as it is a matter of penetrating the vigor of prior thinking. However, we are not looking for vigor in what has already been thought, but in something that has not yet been thought. It is in this something which provides thought with the sphere in which it has its being. Still it is what has been thought that first prepares the way for the not-yet-thought which enters again and again with its overabundance. The standard for that which has not yet been thought does not lead to an incorporation of what has previously been thought into a still higher development and systematization which outdistances it, but demands the release of traditional thinking into the past which is still preserved. Originally, the past controls tradition throughout and constitutes its anterior being without being thought of specially as and in terms of a beginning.

For Hegel, the discussion involving the previous history of philosophy has the character of a cancellation,⁴⁰ that is, of mediating understanding in the sense of finding absolute Reason.

For us, the character of the discussion involving the history of thought no longer signifies ...