To Be is to Be an Anecdote: Hegel and the Therapeutic Absolute

Anecdote: The narrative of a detached incident, or of a single event, told as being in itself striking or interesting.

— OED

Anecdotes, it would seem, are of small importance to philosophy. Philosophy is a set of arguments. Philosophical arguments reach universal conclusions, and so cannot make use of particular premises. According to the above definition, which is the Oxford English Dictionary’s, anecdotes claim to be striking or interesting, which they cannot be to all people equally. They are therefore merely particular and, like the figures of rhetoric, are to be banned from philosophy’s search for truth. Why even think about them?