Abstract

The title of Gerard Lebrun’s book on Hegel – La patience du concept – can be read in two opposed ways: as a trust in the teleology of history (when you think you are caught in a chaotic meaningless mess of events, be patient, wait and analyze and you will see that there is a deeper meaning behind this mess), or as the assertion of radical contingency (the stories that we tell ourselves about the chaotic mess we’re always come too late, after the fact, they are themselves contingent attempts to organize our experience into a meaningful Whole). Although the first reading is the usual one, the second one is the only option if one wants to assert Hegel as our contemporary.