ABSTRACT
The terms ‘dialectical method’ and ‘dialectical logic’ are apt to mislead. Neither in Hegel nor in Marx is dialectical thinking really a set of procedures for inquiry, still less a set of rules for generating or justifying results. Only harm can be done by representing dialectic as analogous to formal logic or mathematics. The German idealists of Hegel’s generation are usually thought of (and think of themselves) as followers of Kant. But at least as important for understanding their philosophies is the revival of interest in Spinoza among late eighteenth century Germans, through the writings of such men as Lessing, Mendelssohn, Jacobi, Herder and Goethe. Hegel’s model of spirit’s creative activity is the organization of a living thing. But a living organism gives us only a first approximation to spirit, or rather is itself only an inadequate form in which the rational intelligibility of spirit manifests itself.
