G.W.F. Hegel on the Beginning of Philosophy

Abstract

The article grounds today’s significance of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s his­tory of philosophy and describes his understanding of the beginning of philosophy. In the author’s opinion, the way Hegel considers the beginning of philosophy lets one turn to the works of the most famous classical scholars and trace the transformation of views on the genesis of the Greek philosophy and the European thought in general, as well as to consider issues arising in this regard. Among them, the author highlights the Eurocentric interpretation of the formula Vom Mythos zum Logos and the inconsis­tency of Hegel’s understanding of the historical development of philosophy. The au­thor reviews H. Glockner’s views on Phänomenologie des Geistes that turns into Abenteuer des Geistes. The author finds additional arguments in modern interpreta­tions of logos and myth as the path from logos to myth. Hegel’s confidence in the sci­entific progress was based on the idea of dialectical self-movement and was fraught with the retrospection concept. In Hegel’s concept of the substance-subject, human as a creative being was lost. The destruction of confidence in the historical progress ex­posed the irrational foundations of development and places the understanding of the historical and philosophical process in the context of a polycentric dialogue.