Ioannis Trisokkas

I firstly argue that there are two ways of thematizing silence philosophically, either as a phenomenon of the world or as the silencing of the philosopher, and that the second way constitutes a problem without whose solution the first way of thematization cannot occur. Secondly, I discuss Pyrrhonian scepticism as that philosophical theory which generates the silencing of the philosopher and repudiate three objections to the claim that this scepticism is not spuriously constructed. Next I show how the German philosopher Georg Hegel proposes to refute Pyrrhonian scepticism in his magnum opus, the Science of Logic. Finally, I draw the consequences of Hegel’s solution to the problem for a specific attempt in the history of philosophy to secure a place for silence in ontological theory and practice.

In his Introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy (2008), entitled ‘The Puzzling Hegel Renaissance’, Frederick Beiser, the editor of the volume, claims that Anglophone Hegel research has been in the main deeply problematic and proceeds to offer a program of research for its rejuvenation. The paper argues that the reasons based on which he exercises his critique (antiquarianism and anachronism) fail on internal grounds and that, therefore, Hegelforschung should not be reduced to his proposed research program (Konstellationsforschung). The argument is built around four Hegelian themes: (a) the nature of the Hegelian categories, (b) Hegel’s philosophy of nature, (c) the relation between antiquarianism and our culture, and (d) Hegel’s methodology.