Hegel’s Idealistic Dialectic

While Kant’s method was aimed at discovering how objective truth could become possible, the method of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) is the logic of thought, called dialectic, which is identified with the logic of reality.

Kant proposed a priori concepts in order to guarantee the objective truth. Hegel, on the other hand held that, while a concept is a priori, it moves by transcending itself. That is, from the position of affirming itself, the concept comes to know that there exists a determination incompatible with itself, and then transcends both these two contradictory determinations in order to develop to a position that synthesizes the two. Hegel named these three stages “in itself,” “for itself,” and “in and for itself.”

These three stages are also called affirmation, negation, and negation of negation; or thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Hegel regarded contradiction to be the driving force of the self-development of a concept. He said, “Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity.” ³ In this way, the logic of self-development through contradiction is the root of Hegel’s dialectic.

Hegel states that a concept develops by itself to become an Idea; the concept (Idea) negates itself, is alienated and emerges as Nature; then develops through human being as Spirit. Thus, Hegel’s dialectic is the method of development of a concept, and at the same time the method of development of the objective world.