Update Presuppositionlessness

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 We have looked at the reasons for why one might take presuppositionlessness as a methodological tenet. We will now look at what it means to be presuppositionless. Simply put, to be presuppositionless is to not be guided by preconceived notions. But how is this actually possible? If I am absolutely presuppositionless, then I cannot refer to language, experience, or history for my philosophy. But this is manifestly not Hegel’s approach. Not only is the SL written in German, but it makes use of the widest possible range of concepts from science and the history of philosophy – from the concept of the infinite to the dual concepts of action and reaction. Presuppositionlessness, then, cannot mean an abstraction from reality. So what exactly are we being presuppositionless about? Famously, Richard Dien Winfield, in his book Reason and Justice (1988), wrote that there are some presuppositions that are necessary for the simple doing of philosophy and that we should think of them as “enabling conditions”. There are some things, like language and experience, without which it would be impossible to even conceive of a presuppositionless project, let alone carry one out. Such things as language and experience, then, are so fundamental that one could not reasonably be sceptical about them since the very thought of scepticism about them is itself founded on the very things about which you are expressing scepticism. 
 
 Hegel shows his gratitude to these presuppositions in the preface to second edition of the SL. He writes: “but this traditional material, the familiar forms of thought, must be regarded as an extremely important source, indeed as a necessary condition and as a presupposition to be gratefully acknowledged even though what it offers is only here and there a meagre shred or a disordered heap of dead bones” (31). It is clear that Hegel accepts language, experience, and history as necessary presuppositions for doing philosophy. But if Hegel is not sceptical about the very medium through which we grasp and develop our understanding of the world, then about what is he sceptical? The answer is given in a passage a few pages down in the preface to the second edition of the SL: 
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 > “Such presuppositions as that infinity is different from finitude, that content is other than form, that the inner is other than the outer, also that mediation is not immediacy (as if anyone did not know such things), are brought forward by way of information and narrated and asserted rather than proved. But there is something stupid - I can find no other word for it - about this didactic behaviour; technically it is unjustifiable simply to presuppose and straightway assume such propositions” (41).
 
 Hegel’s concern has to do with whether our specifically philosophical assumptions are justified or not. Hegel is not out to question whether language is the best medium for us to do philosophy; or to investigate what happens if we abstract from experience. He takes these things as necessary presuppositions. Rather, Hegel is interested in whether we have actually comprehended the concept of infinity or the concept of mechanism. Obviously we already have these concepts. We already have the concept of infinity and the concept of mechanism – Hegel does not doubt that. But have we properly understood them? What is the infinite? Is it the unbounded? Is it absolutely opposed to the finite? Is it made up of infinite finites? Again, Hegel does not doubt that there is a concept of the infinite. Hegel doubts that we have an adequate comprehension of the infinite.