Robert Stern on Presuppositionlessness, Freedom and Willkür in Hegel’s Philosophy

Robert Stern and I share many views about Hegel. In this essay, however, I examine two disagreements between us. First, I consider the different justifications we provide for the “presuppositionless” character of Hegel’s logic. For Stern, this is justified solely by Hegel’s phenomenology, which undermines our basic assumptions one by one. In my view, however, systematic presuppositionlessness is also justified by the fact that free thought must begin by freeing itself, at one go, from everything that is simply given. — Second, I examine our differing conceptions of Willkür (often translated as “arbitrariness”). In my view, Willkür is, or includes, the act, with which freedom begins, of abstracting from everything given. For Stern by contrast, Willkür is not a form of freedom at all, but is simply willing on the basis of arbitrary desires and other contingencies. In the essay these differences are set in the context of a conception of true freedom that Stern and I both endorse.