Retracing the Circular Ruins of Hegel's 'Encyclopedia'

Abstract

Let us construct a thought experiment ['Experiment']. Let us suppose Kierkegaard's "authorship," from 'Either/Or' to 'Concluding Unscientific Postscript', is a polemical reduplication of Hegel's system of speculative philosopy, which is represented most comprehensively by his 'Encyclopedia of the PhilosophIcal Sciences in Outline'. An extensive comparison of these works would be logistically unworkable within the scope of this essay, so I propose the following modification to the thought experiment. Since the 'Phenomenology of Spirit' precedes Hegel's 'Encyclopedia' and anticipates the essentials of the whole syste, it might be read as a preface to the 'Encyclopedia'. Climacus's 'Concluding Unscientific Postscript', on the other hand, retrospectively recuperates Kierkegaard's "authorship," repeating much of it in review. Since I will be arguing that the rhetorical structures of the 'Encyclopedia' and the "authorship" stand in an inverse relation to one another, I propose to compare the "Preface" to Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit' (as preface to the "system") with Johannes Climacus's 'Concluding Unscientific Postscript' (as postscript to the" authorship").