Abstract

Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit is his answer to his own critique of Kant in "Belief and Knowledge". The epistemological and ethical ambiguities Hegel points out in Kant need not invalidate commonalities between the two philosophers. Particularly when we examine the triad "knowledge, foreknowledge, nescience", we find a variety of commonalities and divergences. Common approaches can be discovered in their normative and ethical interpretations of knowledge and foreknowledge. However, the metaphorical and prosaic strength of nescience caused Hegel to far outreach Kant in his argumentation and defense of philosophy’s knowledge-based („wissentschaftlich“) character within the canon of disciplines.