Hegel opens the first book of his Science of Logic with the statement of a problem: "The beginning of philosophy must be either something mediated or something immediate, and it is easy to show that it can be neither the one nor the other, so either way of beginning runs into a rebuttal." Despite its significant placement, exactly what Hegel means in his expression of this problem, and exactly what his solution to it is, remain unclear. In this book Robert Dunphy provides a detailed, critical engagement with Hegel's problem of beginning, and with the various putative solutions that Hegel might be thought to put forward. The book also provides original interventions into discussions concerning Hegel's wider logical project, the relationship between his Logic and his Phenomenology, and his engagement with the Pyrrhonian skeptical tradition.
Robb Dunphy is an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg. He has previously held research fellowships at the Goethe University Frankfurt, University College Dublin, and the University of Hamburg, and has taught philosophy at Northeastern University London, the University of Winchester, and the University of Sussex. His primary research interests are in the theoretical philosophy of Kant and the German Idealists and in the history of scepticism. He is the co-editor of Metaphysics as a Science in Classical German Philosophy and has published research articles in journals including Apeiron, The Review of Metaphysics, the Hegel Bulletin, and Logos and Episteme.
Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: With What Must the Beginning of the Science be Made? 0.0 Introduction 0.1 Hegel's Logic and its Beginning 0.2 Hegel and Pyrrhonian Scepticism 0.3 A Brief Precis of "With what must the beginning of the science be made?" 0.4 Conclusion Chapter 1: Hegel and Pyrrhonian Scepticism 1.0 Introduction 1.1 Sextus' Account of Pyrrhonism 1.2 Hegel and Pyrrhonism 1.3 Conclusion Chapter 2: A Short History of the Problem of Beginning 2.0 Introduction 2.1 The Objective and the Subjective Beginning 2.2 The Methodological Beginning 2.3 The Modern Problem of Beginning 2.4 Hegel on First Principles and the Beginning 2.5 Conclusion Chapter 3: The Problem of Beginning 3.0 Introduction 3.1 The Problem of Beginning: Preliminary Investigation 3.2 The Problem of Beginning as an Agrippan Problem 3.3 The Solution to the Problem of Beginning 3.4 Alternatives Criticised, Objections Anticipated 3.5 Conclusion Chapter 4: Mediation I: Phenomenology 4.0 Introduction 4.1 The Phenomenology and the Beginning of the Logic 4.2 Some Problems 4.3 Conclusion Chapter 5: Mediation II: Completed Scepticism 5.0 Introduction 5.1 A Third Solution? 5.2 Completed Scepticism 5.3 Conclusion Bibliography Index
