Con Hegel, oltre Hegel: sistema ed epoca in Remo Bodei

Abstract

Written in memory of Remo Bodei, who passed away on November 7, 2019, this paper reconstructs the significance of his book Sistema ed epoca in Hegel (System and Epoch in Hegel) 1975. Bodei’s monograph deeply changed the interpretation and the image of Hegel’s thought within the Italian culture: by analyzing the Hegelian relationship between absolute knowledge and time, speculative reason and history, ‘system’ and ‘epoch’, Bodei showed that Hegel conceived philosophy not only as the highest comprehension (and therefore accomplishment) of its own time, but he also thought of it as a critical knowledge opposing the resistances to change and a statement about the new epoch. As he deconstructed some interpretations of Hegel’s thought, influenced by Marxism, Neo-positivism, and Existentialism, Bodei applied this Hegelian idea of philosophy to his own ‘epoch’, that is to the philosophical debate and to the reality of the 1970s.