When Hegel erkläres - what Philosophers do

Philosophers deal with truth. Linguistically, we may aspect what Searle calls representative speech acts from them. They assert, they affirm, they conclude, they explain. When Hegel opens his enchanting preface to the Phenomenology with "Eine Erklärung, wie sie einer Schrift in einer Vorrede nach der Gewohnheit vorausgeschickt wird", the English translator (Pinkard) writes: "to begin, as writers usually do in a preface, by explaining", or (A.V. Miller): "It is customary to preface a work with an explanation" .

What kind of explanation? "über den Zweck, den der Verfasser sich in ihr vorgesetzt": "of the author's aim" ("sich vorsetzen" means: put in front of himself, like a glass), and about tendencies and relations to other thinkers. Indeed, the preface could contain an explanation. Certainly not a causal derivation of the theoretical work. Maybe a conceptually clear exposition of the author's point of view? But that would be the text in itself, not the preface. Explanation? If we take a look at the German word "Erklärung", we immediately see that it derives from "klar", Latin "clarus, a" (therefore Cicero, in his admirable Italian translation, chooses "chiarimento", wrongly).

The English correspondent would be "to declare". In fact, the German "erklären" can also be used in this sense: "to declare war": "Krieg erklären".

Hegel writes: "Erklärung über den Zweck", not "des Zwecks". "A declaration of the author's aim", that is what he is talking about.  

Later on, Hegel asserts: "Die Forderung von dergleichen Erklärungen sowie die Befriedigungen derselben gelten leicht dafür, das Wesentliche zu betreiben": "The demand for such explanations, as also the attempts to satisfy this demand, very easily pass for the essential business philosophy has to undertake". Again, these are "Erklärungen" of "aims and results", which in a preface necessarily are not developed through the movement of thought, as Hegel critically remarks: these are declarations. 

In his preface, Hegel is talking about the problem of declaring aims and results. Philosophers explain, that is sure, but they declare as well. What is the difference? An explanation remains true and clear independently of the author. A declaration instead does only make sense if we see the subject behind: somebody declares something, and indeed we continue treating philosophical thought as linked to historical persons, whatever the constant reference to something like "Hegel" or "Kant" may mean.

German for Philosophers: Chapter 17: Prefaces, introductions

German for philosophers, Chapter 17:

Anfänge / Beginnings

"The steeds that bear me carried me as far as ever my heart
Desired, since they brought me and set me on the renowned
Way of the goddess"

Someone is showing up, he starts speaking, and after a short time the listeners understand: this is a philosopher. How is this happening? Why do they listen? 


The philosopher is, so the definitions we usually get, talking about very general questions: about being, the good, about present, future and past as such ... but why? Will he be telling something the others do not know? Because he has followed, as Parmenides states, "the ways of the goddess"? 

We remember Pythagoras behind his drape mumbling the truth.  Why does it seem plausible that he is sitting behind, we are sitting in front of the cloth, and only he knows the truth? There is, as the Italian philosopher Carlo Sini has illustrated, a threshold between the supposed-to-be philosopher and us, the listeners. How does he create this distance between him and us?

The philosopher has to trigger in his listeners what Coleridge called the suspension of disbelief.

This can partially be done by position: a university teacher, a messenger of institutionalized knowledge, the one who passed many exams and selections, is supposed to be the one who knows. But philosophical knowledge is of a special kind. One might even question the right of university  professors to talk about truth... 

It has to be explained where the philosophical text comes from. That is what, after the titles on the cover,  prefaces do. Philosophically, though, these texts are supposed to treat the particular, the circumstances, everything irrelevant to the philosophical text in itself. What Genette described as paratexts, are impossible and necessary additions to the work of a philosopher. A brief look at writings of Wolff, Kant, Hegel, Fichte and Husserl seems to be interesting at that regard, at least to me.

Thesis: The difference between a novel and a philosophical work is that the latter needs a preface.