Theory and Praxis in the Jena Hegel

Abstract

In this article I analyze three questions outlining a certain way of understanding the relationship between theory and praxis in Hegel's philosophical development between 1802 and 1803 in Jena: dogmatism, understood as a superstitious form of consciousness, both spontaneous and doctrinaire, in which the subject adopts a submissive and contemplative attitude towards what is given; the epistemic significance of contradiction, which Hegel reconstructs in his reading of Sextus Empiricus, where he associates it with the authentic procedure of speculative knowledge; and, finally, the identification of the tasks of philosophy as a fundamentally critical knowledge, where idealism finds its justification as a transformative practice in and of the culture of its time. The paper concludes by raising questions about the heterogeneous meanings that Hegel himself associates with the place of negativity in thought.