1It may strike one as surprising that I am presently setting out to advocate for “speculative” thinking and “speculation” as the most appropriate and engaging ways of approaching, philosophically, the complex and, to be sure, increasingly undecipherable reality of today’s world. In fact, looking back at the entire Western philosophical tradition, these terms have served, by and large, as a characterization of the highest and highly abstract forms of metaphysical thinking – at times hinting even at thinking’s most esoteric endeavors. It is also true, however, that in this same tradition, speculative thinking has been taken to be, again in its most general sense, coextensive with philosophical thinking as such. Philosophy is, genuinely and essentially, speculation. This seems to represent a truth acceptable, with or without further qualifications, both to common sense and to more intellectually informed views. Moreover, speculative metaphysics and speculative cognition have traditionally been considered the pinnacle of the philosophical science when considered in its disciplinary division. In this same division, speculation as a purely theoretical and contemplative activity has also been characterized in its difference from and opposition to all practical action – moral, political, pragmatic, and poietic human action. If an issue has arisen with regard to the placement of the speculative within philosophy, it has hardly been its consideration as the worthiest cognitive endeavor of the human mind but rather the possibility for our finite mind to positively achieve its heights. For those raising doubts in this regard, speculation leads reason to a fruitless flight from the real world and should accordingly be avoided precisely in the name of a more productive and, in fact, practical involvement therein. All this is, to be sure, an overly generalizing and simplified way of laying out the issue. It does suffice, however, to introduce the focus of my present considerations.
2In what follows, I shall neither attempt a historical overview of the notion of speculative thinking in the philosophical tradition nor shall I pursue a defense of speculation as such or of speculation taken in its utmost generality. My perspective is instead narrower and more specific as it arises from an engagement with Hegel’s own view of speculative thinking and his confrontation with and appropriation of the historical tradition on this issue. Crucial in this constellation is obviously Kant’s critique of speculative reason, whereby in one and the same gesture he rejects traditional dogmatic metaphysics but sees the speculative dimension of reason’s metaphysical questioning as a “natural” (although decidedly “peculiar”) disposition and indeed inevitable “fate”1. Speculation is an illusory and deceiving activity in which human reason is naturally and unavoidably involved. Critique corrects the deceit but does not eliminate reason’s speculative endeavor. Now, Kant’s critique is important both because it is, historically, the immediate antecedent of Hegel’s position, and because it so accurately takes on the view of speculation (and speculative metaphysics) dominating the tradition while at the same time hinting at the necessary further step to be undertaken away from and beyond it. This is ultimately the twofold function of Kant’s “critique” of reason.
- 2 This is a position that can be reclaimed by both Hegel’s and Kant’s philosophy – albeit for differe (...)
- 3 As it is, for Kant, traditional metaphysics, which he defines as a “wholly isolated speculative cog (...)
- 4 The constant attempt at severing this connection to the inevitably dialectic affecting all speculat (...)
3In this framework, then, I consider speculative thinking and rationality as crucially modified in the form and in the modality of dialectic-speculative thinking. I take this to mean, on a first approximation, that speculation arises out of reason’s own internal and immanent dialectic2. And it means, second, that whatever it is that speculative thinking achieves in its activity, this is, in its turn, subject to a new dialectical movement of its own. In both respects, then, speculation is never an allegedly “original” or “absolute” position – indeed it is never itself the “Absolute”, or, more precisely, the absolute content of cognition. But it is also never a position closed in and onto itself – an activity ab-soluta, as it were, from the changing, living connections in which it is always already inscribed3. Speculation is never an activity severed from the dialectical process that immanently and constantly subverts its very nature opening it up to ever new determinations and actual figures4.
4I also want to preliminarily underscore that the speculative nature of thinking as I am herein considering it, does not depend on and is not determined by the intentional object or content to which thinking (or cognition) is directed, i.e., thinking is not speculative because it aims at the highest object, namely, the Absolute or God or the Unconditioned. But the speculative character of thinking is also not due to the nature of the subject of that thinking – be it, again, the Absolute, god, an infinite mind (or, alternatively, a fallible finite one), or even an institutional collective mind. What makes thinking speculative – or, properly, dialectic-speculative – is instead its very form, that is, the modality in which thinking is exercised as a pure thinking activity. In other words, what makes thinking speculative is the method that articulates its activity as dialectic-speculative thinking.
- 5 I am tempted to say, to us philosophers. But then I do not think that facing the issue of the intel (...)
5In the present reflections, by drawing this preliminary idea of dialectic-speculative rationality to the center, I shall defend three interconnected theses. In my argument I shall proceed thesenartig, as it were. My overall aim is to provide the outline of a model and a method of philosophical thinking able to tackle the intractable problems – and, first of all, the chief intelligibility problem – that the contemporary world poses to us5. But before getting to my theses, in the first part of the essay I shall lay out some of the crucial Hegelian references that inform the articulation of the dialectical model of speculative thinking I am interested in proposing. These are, to be sure, well-known and amply commented on Hegelian references. They are also very limited references among the many that could be additionally produced. My intention in offering them yet again for discussion is to bring them to bear on the different, post-Hegelian actuality of our contemporary world. This is the context that should be keep in mind while revisiting Hegel’s position on dialectic-speculative rationality in the first part of this essay.
- 6 I take this term in a general sense to indicate Hegel’s “method”. The development of my argument sh (...)
6Displaying the immanent structure of rational cognition, dialectic6 or the logic of contradiction is the answer that Hegel envisions from early on in his philosophical career for the historical problems posed by the political aftermath of the French Revolution. Dialectic is a strategy for understanding the transformations that follow periods of deep historical crisis such as the one that befalls Europe at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. Dialectic is the solution to the epistemological problem that the discontinuous actuality of history poses to the contemporary observer who stands immersed in and is directly affected by the reality she observes. In this function, dialectic is key to Hegel’s idea of rationality – a rationality that is fundamentally historical, internally contradictory, and essentially developmental. Moreover, since dialectic articulates the inner structure of reason, and Vernunft is the framework in which the process of reality in its rationality is inscribed, reason and its development are ultimately one with the objective reality that philosophy takes on as its peculiar object. The actuality of reason is the dynamic field of tensions in which opposite forces are at play; it is the point of convergence of conflicts as well as the space of their necessary resolution. In this perspective, dialectic is key to Hegel’s understanding of history in the modern world.
7Reason, however, is not only dialectical but also fundamentally “speculative”. While already seeing the connection that inextricably bounds the dialectical and the speculative dimensions of reason, Kant has failed to establish the right relation between them. For, on Kant’s view, reason is dialectical (i.e., ultimately and paradigmatically, antinomic or paralyzed by the contradiction in which it gets entangled with itself) because and when it follows its speculative (i.e., transcendent) endeavor aiming at objects placed beyond the realm of our human experience. On Kant’s position, then, reason’s dialectic is truly the revealing mark of its utter failure as speculative reason. On this basis, the only way out of the dialectical impasse of speculative reason is, for Kant, to abandon the purely theoretical stance and turn to the very different perspective of practical reason. Operating on a different conception of the nature of dialectic – first and foremost, of the way in which dialectical contradiction does not result in a blocked antinomy but leads, rather, immanently to the movement of its own resolution – Hegel construes the relationship between the dialectical and the speculative moments of reason’s activity in a radically different way than Kant. In short, overturning the Kantian claim, reason for Hegel is speculative when it lives up to its own immanent dialectic, i.e., when it follows through with the contradiction that itself constitutes the process of its necessary resolution. Thus, for Hegel, the speculative is the revealing mark of the successful dialectic of reason.
- 7 Hegel, 1986, 3: 54.
- 8 Ivi: 39.
8In a programmatic page of the preface to the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit, concentrating the history of what is speculative in cognition and in reality to a few essential steps, Hegel offers a critique that hints, at the same time, at the thought with which he intends to correct the shortcomings of speculative metaphysics. There is certainly truth, he offers, in the claim that the nature of being is captured by the eidos or the idea or the vous. Anaxagoras and Plato along with Aristotle have thereby established the speculative dimension of thinking in its identity with being in one unprecedented, crucial claim. And yet, in this tradition, the nous taken in its simplicity and self-identity as substance is presented as something fundamentally and inexorably “fixed and permanent (als fest und bleibend)”. The nous, substance, the idea do not – cannot – change (and still be the simplicity and self-identity that nous, substance, the idea essentially are). This view, for Hegel, is not truly speculative because it does not recognize the dialectical force that necessarily animates it – but properly subverts it – from within. In fact, he contends, the “self-identity (Sichselbstgleichheit)” that constitutes the nous, substance, the idea, “is likewise negativity, and that fixed existence thereby passes over into its own dissolution (Auflösung)”. In other words, the speculative can be speculative – that is, properly and truly, dialectic-speculative – only by recognizing and embracing the negativity that internally undermines it as it dissolves it in its movement. Herein, the Auflösung of “dissolution” (the dialectical moment) is, at the same time, the true “solution” (Auf-lösung) of the contradiction (the speculative moment). So constituted, however, the speculative dimension of reason (which is inseparably one with the speculative dimension of reality) is no longer simple unmoved substantial self-identity. It is, by contrast, the dynamic “movement (Bewegung)” generated by the self-produced power of negativity and contradiction – not the movement externally imposed “through an alien violence (fremde Gewalt)”, as it were. It is, properly, “Selbstbewegung”. The name that Hegel now gives to the dialectic-speculative dynamic that corrects and replaces the fixity and unmoved substantiality of the speculative nous of the tradition is Begriff – the “pure concept”7. As the science of the concept in the pure form of the concept, the science of logic is now for Hegel “speculative philosophy” in the most authentic and paradigmatic sense8.
- 9 Broadly speaking, this is the division of Kant’s first Critique in a Transcendental Analytic and a (...)
- 10 Hegel, 1986, 3: 54
9Further connecting this position to the modern and, most recently, Kantian tradition, Hegel insists on the transformation that the dialectic-speculative “concept” produces on the view that separating the provinces of the understanding (Verstand) and reason (Vernunft) sees speculation as belonging exclusively to the latter and a logic purged of contradiction only to the former. While disrupting this disciplinary division9, Hegel takes issue with the view of understanding and reason as mental faculties or powers (Vermögen) belonging to a thinking subject and able, on this basis (i.e., given the nature of the subjective mind in which they inhere), to determine the success or, alternatively, the failure of the cognitive act, i.e., the possession of truth. On Hegel’s view, within the dialectic-speculative framework of the “concept”, Verstand and Vernunft are turned into the dynamic movements – that is., into the “becoming (Werden)” – that are, respectively, “Verständigkeit” and “Vernünftigkeit”. Indeed, while we can appeal to a long-standing philosophical tradition to clarify what understanding and reason as mental powers are, Hegel’s cognate terms should take us by surprise. They are not radically different terms – but they are also not the same. We are left unsure as to what they indicate. This destabilization – this initial sense of terminological Entfremdung – is the first sign of dialectic-speculative thinking at work. It is a sign of what speculative thinking is as well as a sign of what speculative thinking properly does. The understanding and reason are replaced by the movement of “becoming” that is, respectively, “Verständigkeit” and “Vernünftigkeit”. More accurately, Hegel suggests that it is (only) insofar as Verständigkeit is the movement of becoming (and not a fixed power determined once and for all in what it is able to achieve) that “as this becoming it is Vernünftigkeit”10. In other words, the speculative or the “pure concept” is movement and process – it is its own becoming. As such becoming though, the speculative is (the result of) its own dialectic.
10“Logical necessity”, Hegel maintains on this basis, is given by the objective nature of the pure Begriff. Logical necessity consists in ‘having’ or rather in ‘being’ the concept in one’s very being or reality (“in seinem Sein sein Begriff zu sein”)11. This is one of the chief meanings of “das Vernünftige”, which is, one can assume at this point, Vernünftigkeit itself rendered objective as its own dialectical movement of becoming fully actual. In this form, the dialectic-speculative is both, subjectively, “Wissen” or conceptual knowing of the content and, objectively, the content itself, namely, “concept and essence”. But it is also the totality in which such movement takes place. It is the totality instituted by such movement. It is, Hegel maintains, the “rhythm of the organic whole” of rationality itself, that is, its dynamic form. Now this – and Hegel underscores, “this only” – is “das Spekulative”12.
- 13 Ivi: 39. Cf. Nuzzo 2003.
- 14 The title of the section is: Näherer Begriff und Einteilung der Logik.
- 15 Hegel, 1985, 8: §79 and Remark.
- 16 Hegel’s objection to Kant’s limitation of dialectical antinomies to the ideas of speculative reason (...)
11In the Phenomenology, Hegel establishes that the Logic as the science of the pure concept is the true “speculative philosophy”13. In the conclusion of the “Vorbegriff” that introduces the 1830 Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel presents three sides of “das Logische”. At stake herein is both a closer determination of the concept of the Logic and its immanent partition.14 The “sides” of “das Logische” (the logical element and the logical dimension of thinking) are “(a) the abstract or intellectual (verständige), (b) the dialectical or negative-rational (negativ-vernünftige), (c) the speculative or positive-rational (positiv-vernünftige)”15. To prevent misinterpretations, Hegel warns us to consider these “sides” as “moments of every logical-real formation (jedes Logisch-Reelle[n]), that is, of every concept and of every truth”, and not as three distinct “parts” of the Logic. In this way, two different points are made. First, these three sides are not confined to the Logic as a discipline or, more broadly, to the logical sphere alone. Their validity is much more extended, since they (each one of them as well as their interaction) are aspects of every reality, every concept, and every truth16. Second, these “sides” are not to be considered in a linear succession as indicating different parts of the logical discipline. Rather, they coexist and are intertwined within all real formations and are distinct only logically. They are coexisting and interconnected “moments” of the dynamic process of rationality, not static and isolated “parts” of a given whole.
- 17 Ivi: §25 Remark.
- 18 Ivi: §81.
12Reduced to “das Verständige”, the understanding is now fully integrated in the method of Hegel’s Logic. It is a function or indeed a “moment” of the broader process of rationality (Vernünftigkeit). Hegel reminds us, retrospectively, that the Phenomenology has provided a concrete “example” of this method by ‘applying’ it to that particular object which is consciousness17. The intellectual moment of the method – or the position of consciousness – holds fast to “fixed determinateness” and to its “distinction” against its other (a). This procedure is now recognized as necessary within the development of “every logical-real form”. This moment is characterized by the abstractness and the fixation in which it takes all the determinations of thinking and being. Hegel’s point, however, is that although the fixation of determination is necessary, this moment, being only a moment, is also necessarily overcome by the specifically dialectical gesture of the “transition into the opposite” that belongs to reason. There is a contradiction in the understanding’s procedure whereby the intellectual abstract moment is lead beyond itself capitulating to its own Aufhebung. As determination is fixed and isolated from the process of reality, it becomes pure indeterminateness (hence the opposite of what the understanding takes it to be) because it loses any real distinction against other. The procedure of fixation is self-defeating as meaning is achieved only by the movement of “transition” to – hence connection with – the opposite18.
13If the problem of dialectic is the problem of grasping conceptually the actuality of change, this is possible only by daring to perform the transition to the opposite, that is, by taking change upon oneself. This, however, is precisely the first, negative moment of rationality (b): understanding yields to the movement of reason or becomes itself reasonable recognizing how untenable its claim is. Understanding consents to transform itself into reason. Thus, dialectic-speculative reason grasps transformation by leading the understanding to perform the transition into the opposite. The understanding, on its part, does not remain to its untenable fixations but consents – nolens volens – to the transition into the opposite. Indeed, the understanding is defeated from the start or, alternatively, is persuaded by reason and reduced to moment of a broader overarching process – das Verständige.
- 19 Cf. ivi: §82; Hegel 1986, 3: 54; also Hegel 1986, 8: §48.
14Finally (c), “the speculative (das Spekulative)” or “the positive rational (Positiv-Vernünftige)” side of the logical-real process consists in the stance that holds opposite contradictory determinations in their unity and grasps them positively as unity. This is the moment in which the truth of the process conclusively emerges. This is also the properly systematic gesture whereby the concept connects the dynamic of contradiction and negativity to the positive totality that results from the act of embracing the contradiction and thinking it through. Herein, in the speculative, we have the movement of Auflösung that is, at once, the dissolution and the solution of the immanent contradiction along with the institution of the higher totality of determination19.
15Having to limit myself to these few Hegelian passages (among the many that could have been selected), and before proceeding, in the next section, to lay out my theses on dialectic-speculative thinking, I want to sum up three points that connect Hegel’s reflection on speculative Vernünftigkeit and the speculative Vernünftiges to the issue of the philosophical comprehension of the actual world.
16First, relevant in the discussion outlined above is Hegel’s transformation of the psychological or, with Kant, transcendental power or faculty of reason – merely subjective and constitutively opposed to the object (Gegen-stand) as well as to the world – into Vernünftigkeit and das Vernünftige. This transformation, to be sure, amounts to the shift to a different level of discourse: Vernünftigkeit/das Vernünftige encompass both the subject and the world thereby indicating the higher totality to which philosophical thinking should be directed. As mentioned above, while these terms are difficult to univocally determine (and indeed translate), they signal the abandonment of the phenomenological (or transcendental) perspective of consciousness and the gesture whereby rationality becomes objective, immanent, and actual within the world. This is the properly speculative dimension of thinking. In this framework, second, “the speculative” (das Spekulative) is neither a perspective nor an accomplishment of subjective reason but rather a constitutive feature of actuality itself. It indicates a specific ontological dimension – or a “side”, as it were – of the world whereby actuality is recognized as dynamic and internally differentiated, as a complex totality and unity of contradictory elements and processes. The speculative – and properly, the dialectic-speculative – brings to light these features of the actual world. Third, Hegel’s Begriff indicates the grasp proper of the speculative in this true sense – a grasp that is both cognitive and ontological. The Logic as the science of the concept in the form of the concept is the discipline that articulates the “pure” dimensions of dialectical-speculative rationality, hence offers the “method” through which philosophy is tasked with addressing the features of its own actual and historical world.
- 20 Again, in this essay I can only present the outline of such a position. A more detailed discussion (...)
17At this point and set against this background, I turn to the presentation of three theses that articulate a Hegelian view of dialectic-speculative rationality for today’s world. Following the considerations above, I propose this view as the basis for an epistemology and an ontology but also for a practical philosophy20.
(i) My first thesis posits that dialectic-speculative rationality is the dynamic of an ongoing process just as the truth that belongs to it displays the dynamic structure of a process. At stake herein is the question of what thinking in and as a process properly is and what the implications of conceiving rationality in this form are.
- 21 Significantly, the Hegelian concept displays some of the constitutive features of intuition, see Nu (...)
- 22 Cf. Hegel, 1986, 3: 20; 17f..
18On the one hand, this claim establishes that dialectic-speculative rationality is fundamentally discursive. Its dimension is, with Hegel, the dialectic-speculative “concept” (Begriff). As cognitive activity, rationality engages in a discursive self-mediating movement that is the opposite of the instantaneous, immediate, and utterly indeterminate grasp proper of intuition. This latter, however, is not discarded but rather considered as a moment within the articulation of discursive rationality itself21. Anchored in the process of speculative thinking, truth is not achieved or, rather, simply and immediately given as a first; just as truth is not the possession of a few superior minds endowed with an allegedly infallible although not publicly accessible intuition. As Hegel puts it (against Schelling and against all pretentions of intellectual intuition), “science” is not “the esoteric possession of only a few individuals”. In fact, “only what is completely determinate is at the same time exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and possessed by everybody”. This latter is the process of rationality in its successive and discrete articulation and determination22. Such a process is necessarily open to critique, public, and intersubjectively shared but also collectively instituted. For, critique, refutation, and public input are the engines of the movement as they carry the process on to its successive mediation and further determination.
19Thus, discursively truth is not a first but rather the result achieved at the end of a long and winding road (the odos in meta-odos which is the “method”) – a result always to be taken together with the path that has led to it. No shortcuts are allowed on this path in which trial and error are as constitutive as unwavering certainty and success. Discursive rationality demands hard work, and its results require the patience connected to such work. Poignant Hegelian images are yet again available to us to illustrate this thought: nothing can be achieved in science, he offers, without “the seriousness, the suffering, the patience, and the labor of the negative”23. This is a direct implication of the connection between the dialectical and the speculative within the process of discursive rationality.
- 24 Here I shall only recall Hegel’s definition of the phenomenological path as “sich vollbringender Sk (...)
20The thesis that posits dialectic-speculative rationality as the dynamic of a cognitive process contains – should contain – an important lesson for us today. No instant gratification and no privilege of revelation is available to dialectic-speculative rationality in the slow and arduous process of comprehension it pursues. This may be hard for us to accept – for us living in the age of short attention spans, abbreviated even monosyllabic communication, impatience with complexity, dissatisfaction with determinate meaning. Indeed, the demand of dialectic-speculative rationality may be hard to accept for a mindset that refuses to engage in the process of knowing (or in knowing as a process). This is, however, the only way in which truth can be achieved. In its radical manifestations, such a mindset aims, of course, at rejecting truth tout court and even at eliminating truth from the public discourse by undermining it entirely. In so doing, however, it behaves in ways akin to the radical skeptic, whom Hegel’s dialectic already confronted and against whom dialectic-speculative rationality remains the strongest and most successful response24.
21The further related point is that dialectic-speculative discursivity implies openness to “refutation” (Widerlegung)25. Self-refutation is a necessary position within all dialectic-speculative process as such. Herein the denier of truth (i.e., ultimately, the stubborn position of the understanding that resists accepting truth as the movement of contradiction) becomes itself the position to be refuted within the overall process of truth. Recall the way in which, on Hegel’s view, the understanding transformed into “das Verständige” leads on to the (negative and positive) moment of das Vernünftige. It ultimately does so necessarily and inescapably – through an act of self-refutation, as it were. For, even when it resists and denies the transition, it cannot avoid performing the transition to the negative-rational moment of the process. In fact, das Vernünftige is already there, embedded in the dynamic of the intellectual moment as such, always undermining it but also, at the same time, guaranteeing its final success.
- 26 As is, for example, the world that is the object of metaphysical cosmology (see Nuzzo 2021).
- 27 Hegel, 1986, 3: 54f..
- 28 See Hegel, 1986, 7: 25.
- 29 See Hegel, 1986, 3: 35.
22On the other hand, and this is the ontological side of the first thesis that complements the epistemological side, given that rationality is both a form of thinking and the form of rational objectivity or actuality, from the claim that dialectic-speculative rationality is the dynamic of an ongoing process it follows that the actual “world” in which all thinking is necessarily inscribed as its ultimate horizon is the unitary dynamic nexus of a manifold of interconnected processes. These are, more pointedly, historical processes. Thus, dialectic-speculative rationality is the “world” as the ongoing historical process of actuality. This thesis has important ramifications. For one thing, it implies that the “world” (or rationality in its objective form and actual presence) is not an abstract ontological entity, given once and for all in its fixed structure and in its given ontological hierarchies26. The world is the ongoing process – the flux, as it were – of its own making, transforming, dissolving, and remaking. For another thing, the world is, most properly, the interconnection (or, traditionally, ordo et connectio) of different types of processes. In the complex world-nexus that is world-history not everything happens at the surface and not everything happens within the same timeframe and with the same kind of visibility; possibilities are latent that is up to us to actualize or need their own time to be actualized. Hegel’s reminder, we have seen, concerns the “logical necessity” that governs the process of actuality. “Logical necessity”, he maintains, consists in being the concept in one’s very being or reality (“in seinem Sein sein Begriff zu sein”)27. Such being and the act of being the concept – and behaving like the concept – however, may not be evident at the surface of things. It may operate, slowly and (to us) hiddenly, at the deep core of actuality28. Or it may happen to be a well-known and generally felt stance without being truly and conceptually grasped precisely in its necessity (Hegel’s Bekanntes that is not automatically also Erkanntes)29. And finally, it may display figures that fundamentally enlarge or even refute (in an act of internal Widerlegung) what is taken to be rational at a certain point in history or within a certain culture, that is, what is taken to be the dominant form of rationality. This is, after all, what it means for rationality to be a dialectical-speculative process.
(ii) My second thesis posits that dialectic-speculative rationality is fundamentally systematic. Both in thinking and in actuality the process of rationality is the interconnected whole of a “system” of mutually interdependent developments. This thesis follows from the first one and displays two sides, one epistemological the other ontological, and leads, this time, to the practical validity of speculative rationality. Drawing the systematic structure of dialectic-speculative thinking to the center, I now want to briefly dwell on the conditions of completeness and immanence.
23The first character of systematicity is completeness. In the process of dialectic-speculative rationality truth demands completeness in the effort of knowing and in the self-constituting movement of actuality. The system is the unique totality of a self-referential circular movement. As such, the process that institutes the totality of the system is necessarily a complete process. Formally, although, importantly, not materially, nothing can be added to it from within (as in the case of an organism and of life itself that as a whole grows only up to the point dictated by its own nature and not indefinitely although, materially, it renews itself all the time). While the structures and the principles that guide the systematic process of rationality in its form are exhausted by its self-constitution and are displayed in a closed set (just as the concepts in Kant’s “complete” table of the categories and the logical determinations of the Begriff in Hegel’s Logic), materially and historically the process of rationality is inexhaustible and always bound to its open-ended renewal.
- 30 See above, thesis (i).
- 31 Hegel, 1986, 7: 25.
24Moreover, systematic completeness implies that if we cannot take shortcuts along the way30, neither can we stop short of the end of the task, i.e., we cannot claim true conceptual understanding of a stage of the overall process that is the world unless and until we have fully exhausted our task by following it through in all its consequences – the consequences that can immediately be seen and those that are instead long-ranging and as yet unseen. Within the process of reality, on the other hand, the condition of completeness concerns the constitution of the different “figures” (Gestalten) of the actual world, of the different epochs of world-history to which philosophical thinking is directed. And herein lies the truth of Hegel’s famous dictum concerning the posthumous character of the philosophical and conceptual grasp of the world: “As the thought of the world, [philosophy] appears only at a time when actuality has gone through its formative process and attained its completed state”31.
25Completeness and thoroughness understood in this way as requisites of systematicity stand opposite to the habits of fragmentary and scattered thinking as well as to the rashness of judgment dominant in today’s discourse and education. They are, in fact, essential requirements of the speculative. Furthermore, the dialectical relation that connects formal completeness and material open-endedness in the structure of the system should make us aware of the dangers inherent in the capitalist global imperative of unconstrained and unlimited growth. Thus, on the model I am proposing, economic, technological, and social growth but also economic, technological, and political expansion cannot be unlimited. The earth-world may indeed be unable to support it and collapse under its weight. In point of fact, this contradiction may very well open up a new phase of world-history. The self-contained and self-regulating logic of the system not the bad infinite of the always progressing unending line is the actual shape of the rational process of the world.
- 32 See ivi: 130; Arendt 1977: 224f..
26The second character of systematicity I want to underscore is immanence. The system of dialectic-speculative rationality is the world in which all thinking is inscribed and takes place. The position of immanence indicates that thinking must recognize the system of the world (the cosmos) as its ultimate horizon: nothing is thinkable without that horizon; all activity of thinking is meaningful only within it. In other words, there is no transcendence to which speculative rationality can appeal but also no neutral standpoint (or “view from nowhere”) that can inform it. The uniqueness of the actual world also implies that no postponing of the task to another world is possible. This means, ultimately, that there is no absolute truth, no moral good, and no right and justice without and beyond the actuality of the world and the full commitment to it. An uncompromising position such as the one described by the Latin adage “fiat iustitia, pereat mundus” is untenable, as Hegel and Arendt maintain against Kant’s embrace of its radical stance32. Quite simply, justice just as truth and the good cannot be upheld without the world. Justice just as truth and the good is meaningless without the world. The world is the actual dimension of truth and freedom (although actuality in its rationality is not the only ontological dimension of the world).
27But the position of immanence also implies rationality’s direct involvement and engagement in all that happens in the world. Dialectically, the act of distancing oneself from the object observed (in order to observe it) is the act that connects thinking deeper to that same object. Dialectically, thinking is immersed within the actuality it attempts to understand (i.e., it is immanent within it) but, as we have seen with Hegel, it also comes always after a shape or figure of the world has completed is process of formation33. Thinking is both contemporaneous and posthumous vis à vis the process of actuality. Or, immanence always and necessarily points to its own transcendence, just as completeness always leads on to its own excess, i.e., to the system’s further material renewal.
28From the condition of immanence that anchors dialectical-speculative rationality to the ongoing process of the world it follows that thinking must rely exclusively on its own resources as it progresses in its activity and succeeds in its endeavor. This condition hints at the peculiar type of autonomy and self-sufficiency proper to dialectical speculation. For, strict immanence implies that no appeal to external interventions, external aims, interests, and presuppositions is possible in order for the process of rationality to proceed in the movement that constitutes it for what it properly is. It consequently implies that success as well as failure lie exclusively in what thinking is capable of achieving out of itself alone and from the position of immanence. Nothing else is to be thanked or, alternatively, blamed for either. In this way, the position of immanence summons thinking to its utmost creativity.
- 34 Cf. Kant, 1787: 561; Kant 1781: 533; Kant 1783: §53 Remark.
29Kant famously defines “transcendental freedom” or freedom in the cosmological sense (which is the ground of practical or moral freedom) as “spontaneity”, namely, as the capacity to “begin a state of affairs out of itself” or absolutely, as it were34. Kant, however, struggles with the condition of immanence which, ultimately, he cannot embrace. The rationality that enacts transcendental and practical freedom is cut off from the actual world as the noumenon is from the phenomenon (and the intelligible character is from the sensible character of the agent). Hegel, instead, by making rationality entirely immanent within the world shows its creative power in relation to the process that is the world itself. Freedom is reason’s self-actualization in the world and as the world.
(iii) Along with immanence, the interconnectedness of the processes characterizing the system of rationality grounds my third thesis, which directly concerns the practical significance of dialectic-speculative rationality. Dialectic-speculative rationality is originally and constitutively practical – in the broadest sense of ‘practical’ that connects ethical praxis and political action with poiesis and a pragmatic meaning of history. Quite generally, the originally practical validity of dialectic-speculative thinking is set in contrast to traditional speculation, which designates instead a purely theoretical and contemplative form of rationality but is also set in contrast, more specifically, to Kant’s conception of speculative reason in its distinction from practical reason.
- 35 Cf. Hegel, 1986, 7: 26. See Nuzzo 2021.
- 36 Hegel, 1986, 8: §79 and Remark.
30The world-process is, directly, the product of dialectic-speculative thinking’s activity. Speculative rationality makes and produces the world it inhabits. This is the world that Hegel characterizes as the “ethical universe” in which rationality displays its public and social-political efficacy35. But it is also the historical world that, in its turn, fundamentally shapes that rationality in its ongoing and open-ended development. Ultimately, in its practical dimension, dialectic-speculative thinking is responsible for the changing, self-transforming nature of actuality. Hegel’s passage concerning the basic underlying structures of “every logical-real formation (jedes Logisch-Reelle[n])”36 should be read in this crucial practical and poietic sense and seen as directed both to the world and (reflectively) to rationality itself.
31The crucial character of systematicity that constitutes the basis on which rationality displays its originally practical validity is interconnectedness. Herein my claim is that the systematic process of dialectic-speculative rationality is the complex whole of a manifold of (relatively) independent but also inter-dependent and interconnected processes (the immanent parts of the whole). The world is the interconnected unique order – the ordo et connectio – of a pluralistic process. It is the complex movement whereby rationality produces itself materially, figuratively, and historically in its actuality. To be within the world, then, is to gain awareness of the historical and pluralistic nature of the processes held together by the world-whole. But it is also to be able to grasp the points of interconnection – the transitions and the crises – that properly constitute the structure of the world. On the other hand, to be within the world is to become aware of the deep and far-reaching consequences of the agency that belongs to each one of the generative points within the process. To be within the world is a fundamentally practical act – it is an active, never a passive stance.
- 37 With a different conception of the monads-parts, though.
32With regard to this crucial condition, I want to underscore only the following points. The condition of interconnectedness should be held against the isolationist fragmentation of our world but also against the claim of dominance raised by some parts of the whole over other parts as well as over the whole itself. Interconnectedness exposes the illusory character of isolationist independence but also the illusory character of all forms of dominance. Set against the backdrop of the world’s totality, which is the system in which all processes are inscribed and from which all processes depend (as the whole that makes the parts possible), the parts ought to recognize their interdependence as well. Which means that, truly, each of us is responsible for the state and the well-being of the whole world as well as for the state and well-being of all the other parts. Indeed, our action constantly and unavoidably reflects and reverberates throughout the whole. Our world is ultimately a Leibnizian world37 – but also, somehow, a Sartrean world for the responsibility that its structure puts on us all. In our action, we are accountable in front of the whole world. We really have nowhere to hide both because the world-whole cannot be transcended (given the position of immanence) and because our action in its immediate as well as far-reaching consequences is bound to eventually come to light. This is ultimately the Hegelian meaning of actuality as Wirklichkeit. It is the actuality of action and the actuality in action by which the world is constituted in the plurality of its processes. In this way, interconnectedness also discloses the public character of dialectic-speculative rationality.
33On the epistemological front, on the other hand, interconnectedness discloses the necessarily interdisciplinary nature of dialectic-speculative rationality – the manifold sources to which such rationality owes its productivity, creativity, and efficacy (the Wirken of Wirklichkeit, yet again). While underscoring the discursive nature of dialectic-speculative rationality, i.e., its being rooted in the dimension of the speculative concept, I hinted at the fact that intuition, but also, I should add, imagination and different forms of perception are constitutive of discursivity as well. Just as the understanding is taken up in the movement of speculative rationality, so is the intuitive grasp and the creative power of the imagination. Against the fragmentation of disciplinary divisions and hierarchies, dialectic-speculative thinking is the field of an expanded rationality made up of coordinated fields of knowing and practices set in the relation of a mutual exchange. This is indeed the ongoing validity of the “system” of philosophy for today’s world (but recall, the system is an open process not a concluded object).
34To conclude, I have offered three connected theses in defense of a dialectic-speculative form of rationality that while arising out of the Hegelian paradigm has an eye to the problems and challenges of our contemporary world. While some of the features that emerge from my proposal can easily be accepted, others, such as systematicity and the insistence on the world-totality, may be resisted as rooted in a way of thinking that privileges dominance and closure. In characterizing the world as a pluralistic, interconnected, and open-ended process, I have intended to strongly resist the pitfalls of many views of systematicity and propose dialectic-speculative rationality as the only way out of a crisis that seems only to become deeper and more impervious to be overcome.