SPECULATIVE IDENTITY AS ABSOLUTE SELF MEDIATION: A FEW APPRAISALS OF THE HEGELIAN LOGIC

Horațiu M. Trif-Boia
PhD, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Center for Applied Philosophy (CAPh) / Centrul de Filosofie Aplicată (CFA), ROMANIA, trif.horatiu@ubbcluj.ro

Abstract

Hegelian speculative thought structures its movement through immediately reflected change of opposites. This exchange within elements isn’t merely shifting heterogeneous objects as it doesn’t concern objects’ ontological condition either. The speculative is the opening where the internal constitution and effectiveness of any element is questioned and revealed as simultaneous and immediate overcome of subject and object since the horizon of this opening concerns the absolute conditions of content and form and where the method self-reflected within premises is questioned too. For the true Concept of philosophy, Hegel shows, immediate beginning of knowledge is immediate beginning of Being; and advancement from pure indeterminateness to determinate being’s development supposes self-mediation of the same absolute immediacy, since ineluctably the speculative can’t admit suppositions’ arbitrariness. But such radical endeavor is accomplishable if the ultimate truth of Being (Wesen) is absolutely mediated immediacy — namely Actuality (Wirklichkeit) is the expression of absolutely self-mediated absolute immediate Identity. This fundamental principle is mirrored in the Trinitarian ground of the Hegelian speculative philosophy which is the main doctrinal postulate that permeates the entire metaphysical endeavor of the German thinker.

In this, Hegel was singular, although the initiative of rebuilding philosophy without any prior supposition is not exclusively Hegelian. We can think about the Husserlian epoché as a project of redefining the limits of apodictic philosophy and the eidetic variation as the grounds for his fundamental insight (Einsicht). However, we have found that Husserlian phenomenology is yet deriving its entire structure within the realm of determinacy where the principle of determinate, and thus of formal identity, dominates. Hegelian identity is established precisely by an absolute rupture from formal relations and is an eminent case of a speculative opening towards the premises of a transcendent thinking whose eminence would ground the ultimate sight of genuine identity of appearance and essence, of thought and being.

Keywords: Hegel, Husserl, Maldiney, speculative logic, absolute identity, immediacy, mediation, phenomenology.