Pourquoi sommes-nous si inintelligibles? Hegel et la question du langage philosophique

Abstract

The aim is to examine the question raised by the exceptional and remarkable difficulty of Hegel's philosophy, what Hegel himself characterises as the «unintelligibility (Unverstandlichkeit) of philosophy». The article seeks in the first place to establish that this unintelligibility is related essentially to the very nature of philosophy as conceived by Hegel, namely as the exercise of the concept or of pure thought as essentially distinct from the regime of representation proper to common consciousness. It then shows how such a distinction gives rise to two kinds of language and, more profoundly, to two different kinds of logic: a logic of understanding and a logic of reason, the latter showing itself radically destabilising for the former. Finally, it emphasizes the problem raised by a divorce of this kind, not just from the point of view of common consciousness, but also and especially for philosophy that finds itself destabilised in regard to its own requirements (transl. J. Dudley).