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(2013) Transcendental history, Dordrecht, Springer.

The shipwreck of the subject

Søren Gosvig Olesen

pp. 76-87

At the point in Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy at which his summary of Descartes is introduced, we find an enthusiastic outburst: "Here, we may say, we are at home, and like the mariner after a long voyage in a tempestuous sea, we may now hail the sight of land [lit. cry "Land, ho!': "Land' rufen]."1 Descartes's standpoint is solid ground underfoot. So by contrast, the preceding period, the Middle Ages and Renaissance, was a voyage on the open sea. However that may be, we must have been sailing before we can cry: Land ho! We did not find ourselves on dry land from the start; that is a standpoint that we have had to navigate ourselves toward.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1057/9781137277787_6

Full citation:

Gosvig Olesen, S. (2013). The shipwreck of the subject, in Transcendental history, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 76-87.

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