Speculative Philosophy

In this illuminating volume, Donald Phillip Verene challenges philosophy to pass beyond the limits of criticism and reflection toward a form of speculative philosophy that express the Hegelian sense in which the True is the whole and the Socratic sense in which the aim of philosophy is self-knowledge. In this original and illuminating work, the reader is invited to approach philosophy as an activity that can instruct, delight, and move. On this view, philosophy can be seen as a key to human education, a mastery of humane letters, and a part of the repulic of the liberal arts. Embracing this approach to philosophy, Verene argues, involves moving beyond modern philosophy's analytical encounter with experience, one that emphasizes argument and criticism at the expense of the Socratic search for self-knowledge. Relying on insights from Vico and Hegel, Verene introduces a new sense of reason, one that sees the True as the whole and that connects reason to the ancient sense of speculation. Reflection and criticism are given their due, but the reorientation of philosophy toward the speculative grasp of the whole of things allows memory, imagination, and dialectical ingenuity to take on philosophical form. In the end, this work show how speculation, symbolic form, metaphor, poetry, and rhetoric are natural parts of philosophical thinking. Contents 8 Preface 10 Introduction: On Philosophical Tetralogy 16 Chapter 01. The Canon of the Primal Scene in Speculative Philosophy 28 Chapter 02. Philosophical Pragmatics 40 Chapter 03. Putting Philosophical Questions (in)to Language 50 Chapter 04. Absolute Knowledge and Philosophical Language 62 Chapter 05. The Limits of Argument: Argument and Autobiography 74 Chapter 06. Philosophical Aesthetics 82 Chapter 07. Philosophical Memory 96 Chapter 08. Culture, Categories, and the Imagination 110 Chapter 09. Metaphysical Narration, Science, and Symbolic Form 124 Chapter 10. Myth and Metaphysics 136 Notes 154 Index 172 The Author 176