[15th Paragraph]
Above this passage stands a saying from an old fable. It appears first in Greek, then in Latin: “Here is Rhodes, here leap.”
The story behind it: a braggart boasts that he made a mighty leap on the island of Rhodes. There were plenty of witnesses there, he says. So someone tells him: then act as if this were Rhodes, and leap here.
What does this have to do with philosophy? It should not talk about faraway places and better worlds. Its task is to comprehend what is. For there is reason in what is.
Every person is a child of his time. In the same way, philosophy is its time grasped in thoughts. It is foolish to think a person could leap over his time. It is just as foolish to think a philosophy gets beyond its world.
Someone may still build himself a world as it ought to be. He has it only in his own head. There, one can think up all kinds of things. The head is patient.
Hegel’s text: Preface, paragraph 15 →