ABSTRACT
Relations (IR), a view that persists also in the humanities and social sciences more generally.
Even within Marxist scholarship, the ‘rational kernel’ of dialectics remains largely contained
in its mystical shell that Marx had sought to free it from, so long ago. So, what is dialectics:
a concept, a method, a process, an approach? What are its ontological and epistemological
boundaries and commitments? What are the intellectual origins of dialectics in the history of
ideas and what are the benefits of dialectical analysis in the discipline of IR?
