Science as Experience of Freedom: Hegel on the Scientific Nature of Philosophy

What will be considered here is the relationship that is established in Hegel between the notion of philosophy and that of science. To highlight the characteristics of this peculiar scientific nature of philosophy, we must also investigate the relationship that philosophy establishes, according to Hegel, with the non-philosophical sciences. What I intend to highlight here is (a) what are the characteristics that, according to Hegel, make philosophy scientific, and (b) what is the relationship that is established in Hegel’s system of philosophy between philosophical science and non-philosophical sciences. Moving from this general picture, the path I will follow will start from what one can call the paradoxical nature of the scientific nature of philosophy in Hegel. Then I analyze the roots of this paradoxical nature in the Kantian conception of philosophy as an activity. I will then return to Hegel to highlight the difference in status betweenphilosophy and non-philosophical science. I then investigate Hegel’s statement concerning the genesis of philosophy from experience and the complex relation between philosophy and non-philosophical sciences. Finally, in the conclusion, I demonstrate how Hegelian exceptionalism is based on a conception of philosophy as a radical experience of freedom.