Al di là della riflessione. Sulla nozione di "speculativo" nel pensiero di Hegel

The article aims at providing a critical analysis of the Hegelian use of the notion of “speculation”, in particular by highlighting its specificity with respect to the history of ancient and modern philosophy. In order to do so, the article starts with a brief analysis of the meaning of this notion in the Western tradition, with particular reference to late antiquity, medieval philosophy and Kantian philosophy. A special attention is devoted to the etymology of the term “speculatio” and to the importance of two metaphors, the mirror and the specula. After having pointed out a double meaning of the notion of speculation throughout the tradition, the article argues that while Hegel takes this notion from Kant’s philosophy and emphasizes the relationship between speculation and contradiction already introduced by Kant, he also develops an original understanding of the notion of speculative thought, according to which there is a fundamental distinction between speculation and reflection. In this way, Hegel provides an expressivist and no longer representationalist account of speculation, whose structure is no longer grasped by the metaphor of the mirror.