Comments on §76, How Science is to Proceed
Hegel means to distance himself here from an objection or misunderstanding that would arise against his proposal. It might seem that in offering his critique of the epistemological method, Hegel's ultimate aim must be to set forth instead of alternative method, an analogue to the epistemological one, but which doesn't make its errors. But Hegel doesn't see himself as doing something like epistemology, but different and better. He says here: well, what good would it to do say we should get going not on those bases but these, what good would it do to make promises for our own orientation--isn't this what the epistemologist does as well? If we don't believe Kant on epistemology, why should we now believe Hegel? But Hegel thinks there is an alternative to any such method. He wants us to set about thinking, or in the language of action we might say to set about being, and see what comes of this. This move is anti-foundational in a peculiar way: we don't have an axiom here, we don't have anything solid we can wrap our hands around and call a starting-point, we just have the bare fact of our capacity for thinking/being. The only foundation we could have is a knowledge about what this--i.e. thinking/being--is, which is exactly what we don't know. Indeed, if there is such a solid ground to stand upon, it can only be found at the end of our project, not the beginning. To make appeals to a starting-point as if it contained in itself this foundation or this promise thus has the matter on it's head. Or to put it another way, Hegel wants to turn epistemology on it's head: we cannot first discover the nature of thought and then set out to employ it, but rather must set out to employ it and only thereby discover its nature. Seen in this light, the classical epistemological orientation appears to be, as Hegel says, a resistance against thinking/being.