Hegel’s Dialectic

Description

This book was written in 1968, and defended as a doctoral dissertation before the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) in 1969. It treats of the systematic views of Hegel which led him to give to the princi­ ple of non-contradiction, the principle of double negation, and the principle of excluded middle, meanings which are difficult to understand. The reader will look in vain for the philosophical position of the author. A few words about the intentions which motivated the author to study and clarify Hegel's thought are therefore not out of place. In the early sixties, when occupying myself with the history of Marxist philosophy, I discovered that the representatives of the logical-positivist tra­ dition were not alone in employing a principle of demarcation; that those of the dialectical Marxist tradition were also using such a principle ('self-move­ ment') as a foundation of a scientific philosophy and as a means to delimit unscientific ideas. I aimed at a clear conception of this principle in order to be able to judge whether, and to what extent, it accords with the foundations of the analytical method. In this endeavor I encountered two problems: (1) What is to be understood by 'analytical method' cannot be ascertained un­ equivocally. Front Matter....Pages I-XIII Introduction....Pages 1-12 Front Matter....Pages 13-13 Dialectic of the Real....Pages 15-26 Positive Dialectic....Pages 27-67 The Subject Matter of Dialectical Philosophy....Pages 68-100 Front Matter....Pages 101-102 ‘Metaphysics’ — a Philosophical Discipline....Pages 103-111 Metaphysical Method in General....Pages 112-120 Spinoza and Double Negation....Pages 121-124 Front Matter....Pages 125-126 Infinity....Pages 127-132 Absolute Necessity....Pages 133-142 Being is Thought....Pages 143-154 Back Matter....Pages 155-192