The Dialectical Method

Most people, if they have heard anything about Hegel, associate him with the "dialectical method" he claimed to use. The associated "Hegelian dialectic" is often cavalierly explained as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Yet, in fact, Hegel never wrote any substantial account of dialectical logic or dialectical method.

This book reopens the whole question of the dialectical method in a contemporary context. Dialectical logic is explained in terms of variations on indirect proof translatable into today's standard formal logic, and evidence is given that it can be found embedded in individual and collective histories. Hegel scholar Clark Butler distinguishes Hegel's use of the dialectical method for understanding the standpoint of the present from its little-recognized adaptation by Sigmund Freud and from its well-known use by Karl Marx. Butler notes a strong convergence emerging from the historical Hegel, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism. Beyond Hegel scholarship, he suggests ways of continuing Hegel's work in our own time.

This book will be of interest not only to Hegel scholars but also to students of history, psychoanalysis, Marxism, theology, and formal logic.