Hegel's Dialectical Logic

by Ermanno Bencivenga

"This account of Hegelian logic makes a case for its enormous seductiveness, its surprising presence in the collective consciousness, and the dangers associated therewith. Offering comprehensive coverage of Hegel's important works, Ermanno Bencivenga avoids getting bogged down in short-lived scholarly debates to provide a work of permanent significance and usefulness.". "This study first sets dialectical logic in opposition to its fundamental alternative - Aristotelian, analytic logic - by presenting a concise account of the latter and bringing out the main points of contrast. Bencivenga then introduces Hegel's logic as a semantics of narratives: the initial metaphor is Wittgenstein's family resemblances, which gets articulated by addressing Hegelian absolute idealism. The notion of a narrative is further clarified in terms of (narrative) probability. Bencivenga also discusses both memory and consciousness, and he addresses the puzzle of how spiritual movement can be dominated by neces