The very term ‘dialectic’ is redolent. No aspect of Hegel’s philo- sophy has been more interpreted, more misunderstood, and more controversial. Before we examine its precise structure, it is neces- sary to correct some misunderstandings and to sort through a few controversies.
The dialectic has been so controversial that some scholars even deny that Hegel had such a method.3 In the usual sense of the word, a ‘method’ consists in certain rules, standards and guidelines that one justifies a priori and that one applies to investigate a subject matter. But, in this sense, Hegel utterly opposed having a method- ology, and he was critical of philosophers who claimed to have one. Hence he objected to Kant’s epistemology because it applied an a priori standard of knowledge to evaluate all claims to knowledge; and he attacked Schelling’s Naturphilosophie because it mechanically applied a priori schemata to phenomena. Against all such a priori methods, Hegel insisted that the philosopher should bracket his standards, rules and guidelines and simply examine the subject matter for its own sake. The standards, rules and guidelines appropriate to a subject matter should be the result, not the starting point, of the investigation. So, if Hegel has any methodology at all, it appears to be an anti-methodology, a method to suspend all methods.

Hegel’s term for his own anti-methodology is ‘the concept’ (der Begriff), which designates the inherent form of an object, its inner purpose. It is the purpose of enquiry to grasp this inner form, Hegel argues, and it is for this reason that he demands suspending all preconceptions. If the philosopher simply applies his a priori ideas to the subject matter, he has no guarantee that he grasps its inner form or the object as it is in itself; for all he knows, he sees the object only as it is for him. When Hegel uses the term ‘dialectic’ it usually designates the ‘self-organization’ of the subject matter, its ‘inner necessity’ and ‘inherent movement’. The dialectic is what follows from the concept of the thing. It is flatly contrary to Hegel’s intention, therefore, to assume that the dialectic is an a priori methodology, or indeed a kind of logic, that one can apply to any subject matter. The dialectic is the very opposite: it is the inner movement of the subject matter, what evolves from it rather than what the philosopher applies to it.

It seems, then, that it would be only in the spirit of Hegel to banish all talk about method, let alone a dialectic. But this too would be only another misconception. Although Hegel thinks that the proper method for a subject matter cannot be determined a priori at the beginning of an enquiry, he still holds that it can be determined a posteriori at its end. When the dialectic of his subject matter ends, he can then abstract from it a general structure, though such a summary will have only a post facto validity. On just these grounds there is a detailed discussion of methodology at the end of the Science of Logic. Of course, the philosopher can discuss methodology even prior to enquiry – as Hegel himself does in the Phenomenology – but he must recognize that his conclusions are only preliminary, a mere assurance of the truth to be assessed by later investigation. Sure enough, Hegel often makes just these caveats in his prefaces and introductions. So we can talk about Hegel’s dialectic after all, and we can do so without violating his spirit, provided that we see it as nothing more than an a posteriori summary of the formal structure of his investigations.

Although it is possible to talk about a dialectic, it is advisable to avoid the most popular way of explaining it: in terms of the schema ‘thesis–antithesis–synthesis’. Hegel himself never used this termin- ology, and he criticized the use of all schemata.4 In the Phenomenology Hegel did praise ‘the triadic form’ that had been rediscovered by Kant, describing it even as ‘the concept of science’ (PG 41/¶50); but this is a reference to the triadic form of Kant’s table of cate- gories, not a method of thesis–antithesis–synthesis. Although Kant’s antinomies were the inspiration for Hegel’s dialectic, Hegel never used Kant’s method of exposition of thesis and antithesis. It has been said that this method was used by Fichte and Schelling, and then by extension wrongly attributed to Hegel; but it corresponds to nothing in Fichte or Schelling, let alone Hegel.5

Another common misconception is that the dialectic is some kind of alternative logic, having its own distinctive principles to compete with traditional logic. But Hegel’s dialectic was never meant to be a formal logic, one that determines the fundamental laws of inference governing all propositions, whatever their con- tent. In its most general form in the Science of Logic the dialectic is a metaphysics whose main task is to determine the general structure of being. Such a metaphysics does not compete with formal logic because it has a content all its own, even if a very general one, namely, the most general categories of being. Those who have pro- nounced the death sentence on Hegel’s logic have simply recycled the common misconception that it is a competitor to traditional logic.6

Still another popular misconception is that Hegel’s dialectic is committed to denying the laws of identity and contradiction. To be sure, Hegel criticized traditional logic for its strict and rigid adhe- rence to the laws of identity, contradiction and excluded middle. There are indeed passages in Hegel where he seems to countenance contradiction itself.7 His detractors have not been slow in pointing out the disastrous consequences: that it is possible to prove any proposition whatsoever.8 Still, even if Hegel is confused, his dia- lectic is not committed to a denial of these laws, and its operations really presuppose them. Hegel’s criticisms of traditional logic have to be understood in their original context, which shows that Hegel is not rejecting these laws themselves but simply the metaphysical application of them. More precisely, he is criticizing a very specific metaphysical doctrine: that we can completely determine sub- stance, reality in itself, through one predicate alone. Hegel rejects this claim because he thinks (on independent metaphysical grounds) that reality in itself is the universe as a whole, which has to be described as both F and -F. Since, however, he holds that F and -F are true of distinct parts of the whole, there is no violation of the law of contradiction. Indeed, the point of the dialectic will be to remove contradictions by showing how contradictory predicates that seem true of the same thing are really only true of different parts or aspects of the same thing. What Hegel is criticizing, then, is not the law of identity as such but the confusion of this law with the metaphysical claim that reality in itself must have one property and not another. We naturally but fallaciously move from ‘No single thing is both F and -F at the same time’ to ‘Reality as a whole cannot be both F and -F at the same time’. Because it is true of each single thing that it cannot be both F and -F, we conclude that reality as a whole cannot be both F and -F. The problem is that we treat reality as a whole as if it were just another entity, another part of the whole.