Hegel: philosophy as a system of reason

Abstract

After publishing several philosophical writings, Hegel devoted himself to the elaboration of what he called the System of Reason. This concept was systematized in his work Encyclopaedia of the philosophical sciences. In this book he outlines the general framework of the applications of knowledge to the multiple human activities, that is, knowledge in its universality. It is, therefore, a demonstration of the systematicity of thought, that is, of philosophy as a concept, as science. For Hegel, philosophy reflects all other sciences and can only be considered as a system. Although this theme is demonstrated in Hegel’s work indicated above, in this paper we refer only to the introductory part, consisting of its eighteen first paragraphs. Initially, however, we will give a presentation of this introductory part as a whole. For this, we will use the point of view of Bernard Bourgeois, a great interpreter of Hegel.