Emilio's web-site

With what must the science end?

This is the title of the last chapter of Gillian Rose's book on Hegel, Hegel contra Sociology. I adore this book and I adore Rose's sentences. No, nobody would say this: it is an inordinately clunky Germanism and the question would be better put with a "where," usually, but not here, not for Rose, because she would never concede a spatial metaphor when one is not needed. Her severe style is a thing of exactness not clarity. Clarity is for the reader while the severe style "is designed solely to do justice to the integrity of the object." And the conceptual object here depends on the leaden language of the sentence: "science" as Wissenschaft, "end" as finis and as telos, even "must" evokes an obscure Sollen. This density comes cold. Rose says in the book that the severe style is unsuited to the problems of consciousness. Perhaps a wild exuberance would be better there. But it remains a pleasure to read her and I cannot get this sentence out of my head.