This doesn't pass the smell test for me.

It seems like you've taken a system of reasoning that was built through careful consideration (Kantianism), called the conclusions it meticulously built 'presuppositions' and hand-waved it without making substantive counterpoints.

The problem then, of course, is that burning down previous philosophy and starting 'without presuppositions' will lead inevitably to conclusions again, which you can once again call presuppositions and hand-wave.

If you have no external assumptions you can’t be wrong

This statement is self-refuting in multiple ways.

It is itself an assumption. It is assuming that it’s possible to have no external assumptions, that being wrong requires external assumptions, and that this principle is true. You’ve already violated your own standard.

Even basic logical reasoning requires assumptions. Like the principle of non-contradiction, or that our cognitive faculties can distinguish between valid and invalid inferences. Hegel’s work doesn’t actually proceed without assumptions either; it starts with the concept of “being” and builds from there using logical principles.

If you truly had no assumptions, you couldn’t even begin to reason or make any truth claims. You’d have no framework for distinguishing truth from falsehood, valid from invalid reasoning, or meaningful from meaningless statements.

You might avoid being wrong about empirical facts, but you’d also avoid being right about anything.

The real philosophical task isn’t to eliminate all assumptions (which is impossible), but to identify foundational commitments, examine them critically, and build carefully from the most defensible starting points we can find.

But those starting points are still assumptions, and at least for the time being, there’s no reason to believe we’ve sufficiently closed the knowledge gaps necessary to operate on anything but a base set of assumptions.

Those are all assumptions

Exactly

So forget about them and start from zero, from totally empty thinking

Can’t be done. That’s not how human brains work, and there’s no neurological basis for the claim that it is possible.

Look, this has come full circle and we’re both just restating our positions at this point.

If you’re not just trolling, I’d highly recommend you go read some of the criticisms of Hegel’s work.

You keep dismissing/side stepping the counterpoints raised here without providing substantive arguments to back up this dismissal, so I’ll leave it there.

> Forget about all that.

On what basis? The metaphysical substrate matters and can’t be simply hand waved away.

Your position here closely resembles religious faith, and that’s a bit of a problem if your goal is to convince other people of its correctness.

Religious faith is when you forget everything and do philosophy without assumptions? News to me

Yes it must be waved away, since the categories of metaphysics themselves must be discovered

Religious faith is when you take the words and ideas of a man - ideas that are highly controversial and not widely accepted by philosophers or scientists - and then claim with certainty that they are the absolute truth. It’s one thing to find those ideas interesting, but another entirely to bring this kind of absolute certainty.

Hegel’s work could be described as a hypothesis at best, yet you’re treating it as gospel truth despite the fact that most philosophers find his conclusions untenable and most scientists conclude that he couldn’t have had a proper understanding of science to reach the conclusions that he reached.

Your arguments up to this point are indistinguishable from the claims made by the religious folks in my life who say they have the absolute truth because of their belief in the Bible and relationship with Jesus.

Your only defense of Hegel’s work to this point amounts to “I believe it’s true” and have been entirely circular.