Re-Spiriting Hegel and the Passage of Deconstruction: Jean Hyppolite and the General Theory of Epochal Transformation

Abstract

From probably his most sustained philosophical work, which takes the form of a commentary, Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1946), to his exploration of the early G. W. F. Hegel in Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of History (1948), to his philosophically inventive study on the relation between Hegel's Phenomenology and The Science of Logic, namely, Logic and Existence (1953), to his critical comparison of Hegel and Karl Marx on the philosophy of history, Studies in Marx and Hegel (1955), Jean Hyppolite displays remarkable breadth and intelligence. One discovers a program of thought that is at once exegetic, historical, and philosophical. In his analyses of the state, freedom, tragedy, theology, and even a certain materiality central to the Hegelian notion of 'life', Hyppolite reveals a number of secrets buried in speculative idealism. 1 However, given his diverse studies and the myriad dimensions of their themes, one finds an uncanny pattern strung through his entire corpus; a limit, an impasse, an uncrossable boundary reveals itself at various moments. The impasse concerns the problem of an authentically speculative form of historical temporalization. A consideration of this mode of temporalization can help us frame the problem of epochal transformation in Hegel's final overture--the passage to 'absolute knowing', the 'absolute spirit' or the 'absolute idea'. This darkest and deepest enigma in Hegel is a great void. It is a void that determined subsequent limits and barriers in the history of continental philosophy; from Karl Marx to Friedrich Nietzsche to Martin Heidegger to Michel Foucault, the problem of the void of 'absolute knowing' has been filled, avoided, or even voided, as if in an attempt to delete the problem itself. 2 The history of Hegelian scholarship, and those who have studied Hegel, can attest to various reasons why 'absolute knowing' presents itself as an abyss. 3