Abstract

Philosophy is a discipline characterized throughout its history by certain problems that seem to resist solution. How one is to begin a philosophical inquiry is one such problem. I examine this problem as it arises in Plato's Meno and Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. My thesis is that this problem, which suggests that there is no way to proceed, conceals within itself its own solution. There is no way to proceed because this problem marks the site where philosophical inquiry is to flourish. I call this flourishing activity dialectics. ;In my exposition of Plato's Meno I endeavor to show that when read within the context of the dialogue Meno's presentation of the problem of inquiry, which means to stifle all inquiry, really is nothing more than a recollection of what Meno has just experienced. Not knowing that the true end of the discussion has been to reveal to Meno the nature of his own ignorance, Meno is unable to recognize this end when he comes to it. A philosophical inquiry is prevented from proceeding because its true task is to recollect what first remains concealed as the unfounded assumptions from which it begins. In this dissertation I attempt to elucidate such an understanding of inquiry. ;With my exposition of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit I observe that we readers begin with an unexplained and unexamined ability to attend to the dialectic of natural consciousness. I then attempt to explain why this need not beg questions about how one is to begin a philosophical inquiry. I contend that the true task of a philosophical inquiry is not to grasp the truth but to comprehend those truths that we already possess. Thus our task as readers is to comprehend this dialectic which guides our reading. My thesis is that the Phenomenology of Spirit is about the reader. It is our experience as readers along the path of the exposition that is recollected with the presentation of each natural consciousness in turn. The exposition comes to an end when we are able to recollect in Absolute Knowing the entire course of our own knowing