Le « vouloir » dans le « dire ». Remarques sur l’instanciation du discours hégélien

Hegel has often been accused of not being able to say what he meant. Different reasons are invocated to support this hypothesis: weakness of style, political timidity and vanity. But none are really persuasive. Our hypothesis is rather that the obscurity of the Hegelian discourse is due in large part to a deliberate will to avoid superficial communication and to compel reader to assimilate the meaning which lies behind the well-known representations. To support our hypothesis, we show which kind of relation between will and words is developed in the writing of Hegelian system (in its phenomenological and encyclopaedic version). The idea of a gap between saying and meaning is explicitly characterised at the beginning of the Phenomenology. The language sways between the subjective power of enunciation and the objective world to express. Hegel shows however that this matter is not dead end. By reflecting into the words, which are used for its experience, the consciousness knows itself as well as the external world. In the Phenomenology, Hegel seems to solve at the theorical level the antagonism between saying and meaning, but we can ask ourselves if he practically manages to say what he means. Is still remain a gap between the content of what is said and the understanding of the reader? If it is difficult to conclude definitely about the success or not of a communication, we can describe, nevertheless, the means that Hegel uses to attain its purpose. It appears also that there is a dialogical dialectic, which is implemented in the encyclopaedic system. This kind of dialectic is developed through a game between the scientific discourse and its remarks, which ones appear in the Hegelian writing since the presentation concerns the science as it is in itself and no more as it is for a consciousness. The function of remarks is to suscitate the reader’s will to understand by reconstructing the logical content of the system in different contexts. Aim is also that science appears not as an external discourse (saying), but as an internal signification (meaning). The characterisation of the layout of the Hegelian system makes thus possible to show more clearly its purpose, which is to be an institution of sense.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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