At the point in Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy at which his summary of Descartes is introduced, we find an enthusiastic outburst: "Here, we may say, we are at home, and like the mariner after a long voyage in a tempestuous sea, we may now hail the sight of land [lit. cry "Land, ho!': "Land' rufen]."¹ Descartes's standpoint is solid ground underfoot. So by contrast, the preceding period, the Middle Ages and Renaissance, was a voyage on the open sea. However that may be, we must have been sailing before we can cry: Land ho! We did not find ourselves on dry land from the start; that is a standpoint that we have had to navigate ourselves toward.