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Introduction

The triad consisting of a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthesis is called a dialectic. This triad and the term "dialectic" are usually used to describe the thought of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The terms also describe the philosophies of philosopher-economist Karl Marx and Philosopher-Theologian Paul Tillich. And, since the publication of an influential 1959 article by Gustav Mueller , almost all of Hegel's interpreters have been eager to reject the earlier belief that Hegel actually used thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectics. Thus, writing in 2007, almost fifty years after Mueller, Verene could write, "No first-rate Hegel scholar speaks of Hegel having a dialectic of thesis-antithesis-synthesis." In 2012, however, Wheat introduced extensive evidence, including twenty-eight dialectics from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and ten from The Philosophy of History, suggesting that Hegel actually did use thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectics.

The dialectic triad is this:

• Thesis: A simple verbless concept, usually consisting of only one or two words (e.g., "one"). Contrary to a common misunderstanding, the thesis is not a proposition (a statement affirming or denying something), an assertion, or a detailed argument. Sometimes each of a dialectic's three stages consists of two concepts ("unconscious union" = unconscious + union) rather than one.

• Antithesis: Another verbless concept that is the opposite of the thesis (e.g., "many," the opposite of "one"); it is not just something different or a possibly lengthy "reaction" to or refutation of the thesis. When the thesis has two concepts, the antithesis has the two opposite concepts (e.g., conscious + separation, the opposite of unconscious + union).

• Synthesis: A third verbless concept that somehow combines the thesis and antithesis into a sort of compromise (e.g., "one composed of many" or, in the two-concepts-per-stage format, "conscious" from the antithesis + "union" from the thesis).

The word "synthesis," in its general meaning, refers to a combining or putting together of parts. (Synthesis is the opposite of analysis, taking things apart.) In the context of dialectics, the synthesis combines the thesis and the antithesis, or the best parts thereof. Contrary to what some interpreters have said, the third stage is not a brand-new position that completely rejects both the thesis and the antithesis. Instead, the synthesis either (1) combines the best concept from each of the dialectic's first two stages, when there are two concepts per stage, or else (2) reveals a previously unrecognized identity between supposedly opposite concepts. In the dialectic that runs from (a) potential + truth to (b) actual + falsehood to (c) actual + truth, the synthesis combines "actual" from the antithesis with "truth" from the thesis. In the dialectic that runs from (a) God to (b) man to (c) God = man, God and man become identical when God is redefined as humanity (Hegel's disguised redefinition of "God" in simplified form, explained later in this article).

Among the opposing thesis-antithesis concepts used by Hegel are unconscious-conscious, potential-actual, union-separation, universal-particular, inner-outer, infinite-finite, God-man, essence-existence, natural-artificial, freedom-bondage, subject-object, and predator-victim. In Hegel's Faust dialectic, for example, the movement is from predator to victim to predator = victim. Faust himself is the synthesis, both predator (of Gretchen) and victim (of Mephistopheles).

Hegel's Dialectics

Most of Hegel’s dialectics have two concepts per stage. The synthesis combines the best concept from the antithesis with the best concept from the thesis. An example is Hegel’s freedom dialectic. This dialectic is hidden in Hegel’s famous master-and-slave parable; it also runs inconspicuously through the entire length of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (also translated Phenomenology of Mind), culminating in Spirit’s achieving freedom in the form of “self-realization” in the final pages of the book. The freedom dialectic:

• Thesis: potential + freedom
• Antithesis: actual + bondage
• Synthesis: actual + freedom

As in all two-concepts-per-stage dialectics, the two antithesis concepts are the opposites of (not just different from) their thesis counterparts. And the synthesis borrows one concept from each preceding stage. The freedom dialectic's synthesis combines “actual” (from the antithesis) with “freedom” (from the thesis).

Some dialectics use the a one-concept-per-stage format in which the synthesis reveals that the antithesis is really the thesis in disguise. An example from Hegel’s thought is the natural-artificial dialectic, wherein natural alludes to man and artificial alludes to what Hegel regarded as the man-made (artificial) God in heaven. Here is the dialectic:

• Thesis: natural (hidden in Phenomenology 's table-of-contents heading VII-A, “Natural Religion”)
• Antithesis: artificial (hidden in heading VII-B, “Religion in the Form of Art”)
• Synthesis: natural = artificial (hidden in heading VII-C, "The Revealed Religion")

The antithesis disguises the concept “artificial” by substituting the word “art.” But since “artificial” simply means man-made rather than naturally occurring, and since all art is man-made, one can easily deduce that “art” alludes to “artificial,” the opposite of “natural.” In this dialectic, “natural” is a proxy for man: all humans are natural beings. “Artificial” is a proxy for God. Hegel was a closet atheist who would lose his professorship and become unemployable if his atheism became known. Solomon writes: “Hegel really did have a secret, and . . . it has been well kept. The secret, abruptly stated, is that Hegel was an atheist. His ‘Christianity’ is nothing but nominal, an elaborate subterfuge to protect his professional ambitions in the most religiously conservative country in northern Europe.” Why the need to protect his ambitions? “Hegel had seen Spinoza’s Ethics condemned in Germany. He had seen Kant, whom he considered to be unquestioningly orthodox, censured and censored by the narrow-minded regime of Frederick William II. He had seen Fichte dismissed from the University of Jena for views that were (incorrectly) construed as atheistic.” Hegel regarded God as artificial, man-made,a product of the human imagination. The synthesis, natural (man) = artificial (God), is a coded way of saying man = God. This synthesis conveys Hegel’s hidden message of humanism: humanity is the true God.

Man = God oversimplifies Hegel’s concept of God–an atheistic redefinition of God, not a literal belief. Hegel invented a seemingly theistic or panentheistic (possessing a mind), or at least metaphysical (supernatural but mindless), entity he usually called Spirit but occasionally called God. Spirit is “all reality” and has both a physical side and a mental side. The physical side is every “object” in the universe, both natural objects and artificial objects. The Spirit-objects thus include the stars, planets, comets, clouds, mountains, raindrops, lakes, trees, weeds, humans, frogs, worms, haystacks, houses, fences, carts, ships, doorknobs, teacups, flags, and bread. Spirit’s mental side is the collective mind of man, but it is often described by Hegel in ways intended to convey the impression that Spirit’s mind is supernatural, akin to that of the Judeo-Christian God. Spirit’s mind is the most important part of Spirit; Phenomenology of Mind describes the evolutionary progress of Spirit from unconsciousness through non-self-conscious consciousness to conscious self-realization. So man is the essence of the Hegelian God: man is God’s mind (and part of God’s body). In that sense, man = God. Wheat writes: “Instead of possessing God-Jesus, who is dead and stays dead, Spirit possesses all human beings. All humans become part of Spirit. Man becomes God. This is atheism, pure and simple." Solomon puts it this way: “What then does Hegel’s conception of God admit which any atheist would not? To say that God exists is no more than to say that humanity exists. That is atheism.” Tucker writes that Hegel “gives us a picture of a self-glorifying humanity striving compulsively, and at the end successfully, to rise to divinity .” Findlay calls Hegel “the philosopher . . . of liberal Humanism.” And Kaufmann says Hegel did not believe in God, and his “God”’ was not the God of theism. “His religious position may be safely characterized as a form of humanism.”

A few of Hegel’s dialectics use a third format: (1) Thesis: universal (general), (2) Antithesis: particular, (3) Synthesis: universe composed of particulars. An alternative formulation of the same dialectic is one, many, and one composed of many. Both dialectics describe Hegel’s Spirit, which is a universe (one) composed of particular “objects” (many).

Before Mueller wrote his 1959 article, it was widely accepted that Hegel used thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectics. Philosophy and political science textbooks conveyed this idea. But the concept of dialectics was always discussed abstractly (thesis, antithesis, synthesis); no author offered a genuine example. Mueller argued that the idea that Hegel used dialectics was originally borrowed from an 1843 book by Chalybäus and that textbook writers simply copied the idea from their predecessors. That much may be true, but the deeper truth is that Hegel disguised his atheistic dialectics too artfully for Mueller and his followers to perceive them.

Walter Kaufmann, in his 1965 book Hegel: A Reinterpretation, became the first–and the most forceful–of a continuing series of interpreters who explicitly adopted Mueller’s conclusion. Kaufman added his own arguments opposing the belief that Hegel used dialectics. According to Kaufmann, although the dialectic triad is often thought to form part of an analysis of historical and philosophical progress called the Hegelian dialectic, the assumption is erroneous. Kaufman says that Hegel said “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” only once, and that Hegel was referring to Immanuel Kant’s work. Kant’s terminology, Kaufmann points out, was refined by the neo-Kantian philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Schelling also adopted the thesis-antithesis- synthesis terminology. But Hegel did not. Nor, according to Kaufmann, did Hegel use dialectics without using the thesis- antithesis-synthesis terminology: “Whoever looks for the stereotype of the allegedly Hegelian dialectic in Hegel’s Phenomenology will not find it.”

Wheat counters that Hegel did use dialectical terminology. Hegel refers six times in Phenomenology to “dialectical movement,” twice to “dialectical process,” and twice to “the dialectic;” and he says that the “triadic form” that was “rediscovered” but “uncomprehended” by Kant is “raised to its absolute significance,” becoming “scientific,” in Hegel’s own work. Hegel also used various substitute terms for “thesis,” “antithesis,” and “synthesis.” “Thesis,” for example, sometimes became “first stage,” “primitive stage,” “first moment,” or “first realization.” “Antithesis” became “negation,” “first negation,” “the negative factor,” “the negative element,” “second moment,” “second realization,” and “middle term.” “Synthesis” became “synthetic unity of the first two propositions” (thesis and antithesis), “synthetic connection,” “third moment,” “third stage,” “third attitude,” “third realization,” “union,” “unification,” “mediating term uniting inner and outer ,” “negation of the negation,” and so on. Hegel’s most common substitute term for all three stages is "moment,” which means “stage”–stage one, two, or three of a dialectic.

Kaufmann further supports his Hegel-didn’t-use-dialectics position with this argument: “What one does find on looking at at the table of contents is a very decided preference for triadic arrangements. . . . But these many triads are not presented or deduced by Hegel as so many theses, antitheses, and syntheses. It is not by means of any dialectic of that sort that his thought moves up the ladder to absolute knowledge.” But Wheat again disagrees. He contends that four table-of-contents triads do embody hidden dialectics. One of these is the natural-artificial dialectic already described. Another of those four table-of-contents triads is (1) sense certainty, referring to something general or universal, (2) perception, referring to something particular (the antithesis of universal), and (3) a concept Hegel calls force, which Hegel disguises by seeming to allude to gravity. ""Force" actually alludes to the dialectical "force" that unites universal and particular as universal = particulars, just as gravity unites two objects. Wheat notes that Hegel specifically states, “The activity of skepticism . . . exhibits the dialectical movement which Sense- certainty, Perception, and the understanding each is” (Hegel’s italics).

Kaufmann later attacks the idea that a triad in Hegel’s Philosophy of History embodies a dialectic. The triad is (1) oriental despotism, where only the one ruler is free, (2) Greco-Roman slavery, where some but not the slaves are free, and (3) Hegel’s Germanic monarchy, where all are free. Kaufmann states that “nobody could possibly construe” one-some-all as a dialectic. Wheat replies that Kaufmann is, in effect, barking up the wrong tree. The real dialectic, hidden (not openly stated like “one,” “some,” and “all”), is this: (1) Thesis: one ruler + one territory (oriental monarchy), (2) Antithesis: many rulers + many territories (Greek city-states), (3) Synthesis: one ruler + many territories (Hegel’s Prussia). The two-concept synthesis borrows one concept from the two-concept thesis and one from the two-concept antithesis. By making Prussia the culmination of history, Hegel was seeking to please his sponsor, king Frederick William III, who had made Hegel the official philosopher of Prussia. Wheat also introduces nine additional history dialectics taken from Hegel’s Philosophy of History.

Hegel's Spirit, which is not a real being, has a metaphorical life that imitates the union-separation-reunion life of God in the gospel of John (John 1:1,14). Tillich points out: “Obviously–and it was so intended by Hegel–his dialectics are the religious symbols of estrangement and reconciliation conceptualized and reduced to empirical descriptions.” God is (1) initially one person living in heaven, then (2) separates from himself by becoming the God-man (God incarnate: "the Logos became flesh") Jesus on earth while continuing to exist in heaven too, and finally (3) is reunited with himself in heaven when Jesus dies, is resurrected, and returns to heaven. In Hegel’s dialectics, Spirit is initially unconscious, because it has no mind: its mind is man's mind (Spirit has no supernatural mind), and man is not yet present on earth. (Although Hegel wrote long before Darwin’s theory of evolution appeared, he was aware that man had not always been around.) So, because Spirit has no mind with which to recognize the many “objects” that constitute itself (“all reality”), Spirit is initially incapable of becoming separated from itself through failure to recognize that the many seemingly “alien” objects are really itself. This gives us Stage 1: unconscious union. Spirit, like God at Stage 1, is a single unified entity, but unconsciously unified: unconscious (potential) + unity. Then man arrives, and Spirit acquires its Mind–the collective mind of man. Spirit, now conscious, sees the multitude of alien objects that surround it. By not realizing that the objects are in essence itself, Spirit drifts into its existential state of estrangement, or separation from itself. This gives us Stage 2: Spirit, like God at Stage 2, is now separated from itself. This is conscious separation: conscious (actual) + separation. Finally, Hegel, the world’s greatest mind. enters the picture. It dawns on him that all the objects that surround him are really himself, Spirit, because both he and they are essentially Spirit. This gives us Stage 3: Spirit, like God at Stage 3, is reunited with himself. This is the state of "self-consciousness," “self-realization,” or conscious unity: conscious (actual) + unity. And when Hegel thus “realizes” that he is Spirit -– he is really just redefining God -– he simultaneously realizes that humanity is God. Summary:

• Thesis: unconscious + union
• Antithesis: conscious + separation
• Synthesis: conscious + union

Hegel's “realization” that he is God (which he really knew at the start, when he invented Spirit) releases man from bondage to the supernatural God and to religion. By escaping from bondage to God, man achieves freedom. (Hegelian “freedom” is not a sociopolitical concept; it is a religious concept -- freedom from bondage to religious superstition.)

Marx's Dialectics

Hegel’s dialectic triad was later adopted by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Unlike Mueller, Kaufmann, and most other modern interpreters, Marx understood Hegel’s two-concepts-per-stage dialectical format. But he argued that Hegel turned dialectics upside down by placing the dialectical movement in the world of ideas, the world of the mind. The real dialectical movement, said Marx, was to be found in the material world, the world of production and other economic activity. Hence Marx’s thought is sometimes called “dialectical materialism.” (Marx never used the term himself.) Whereas Hegel merely pretends (for philosophical reasons) that dialectical movement determines the course of history, Marx perceived dialectics as a metaphysical force that actually determines the course of history. Although both Hegel and Marx were atheists, Marx was nonetheless a supernaturalist of sorts; he was a metaphysical supernaturalist who believed in metaphysical (supernatural) determinism of history.

Marx and Engels divided history into five periods: (1) primitive communism, or Gens, (2) slavery, (3) feudalism, (4) capitalism, and (5) final communism, which lay in the future. But how do you derive three dialectical stages from five periods? Bober was the first to point out that the three middle stages can be combined into one. These three stages display class societies (exploiting and exploited classes), the separation of man from the fruits of his production (which go to the exploiting class), and private property (replacing the communally owned property of Gens). The resulting three periods are (1) primitive communism, (2) private property or class societies, and (3) final communism. Bober asserted that these three periods constituted a dialectic, but he failed to show what that dialectic is; he offered labels but not substance. Nevertheless, hidden within these three periods is Marx’s overarching history dialectic:

• Thesis: communal ownership + poverty
• Antithesis: private ownership + wealth
• Synthesis: communal ownership + wealth.

As always when the dialectic uses the two-concepts-per-stage format, each antithesis concept is the opposite of (not just different from) its thesis counterpart. Likewise, the two-concept synthesis takes one concept from the two-concept thesis and one from the two-concept antithesis.

The above overarching dialectic (covering all five periods) can be reformulated as a freedom-and-bondage dialectic. Marx regarded the three middle periods as periods of bondage. Under slavery, the worker was literally a slave. Under feudalism, the feudal lord held the serf in bondage. Under capitalism, the bondage was more figurative than literal, but Marx and Engels asserted that the factory workers were enslaved: "Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker , and by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself." The following dialectic incorporates this concept of bondage:

• Thesis: freedom + poverty
• Antithesis: bondage + wealth
• Synthesis: freedom + wealth.

Bober recognized that the last three of Marx’s five historical stages (feudalism, capitalism, and final communism) embodied a less encompassing dialectic: “In Capital Marx depicts a dialectic formula on a reduced scale.” When Marx says (1) "the knell of capitalist private property sounds" and (2) capitalist ownership will be replaced by "the possession in common of the land and the means of production," he is clearly referring narrowly to capitalism, not collectively to the three preceding class-society periods. The new formula revolves around tool ownership. Under feudalism the workers (peasants and artisans) owned the tools of production–the hoe, the plow, the horse, the loom, the potter’s wheel, and sometimes the land. Under capitalism, ownership of the tools of production–primarily the factory and its machinery but also the agricultural tools–shifted to the capitalist. Under final communism, the workers will regain ownership of the tools. Bober, who didn’t understand the concept of dialectics, failed to show that the back-and-forth movement of tool ownership was the essence of Marx’s second dialectic. But the dialectic is this:

• Thesis: domestic production + worker ownership of tools
• Antithesis: factory production + capitalist ownership of tools
• Synthesis: factory production + worker ownership of tools (the workers will own the factories)

Once more, a two-concept synthesis borrows one concept from the thesis and one from the antithesis.

Overlooked by Bober is another reduced-scale dialectic covering just the first three periods (Gens, slavery, and feudalism) of Marx’s five historical periods. Tool ownership again plays a role: the workers owned the tools in the first period and the third but not in the second period, slavery. The slaves owned no tools. The dialectic:

• Thesis: classless society + worker ownership of tools
• Antithesis: class society + exploiter (slave owner) ownership of tools
• Synthesis: class society + worker ownership of tools

A common misconception about Marxian dialectics requires correction. Some writers have given a false base-superstructure interpretation to Marxian dialectics. Marx said that every historical period has an economic base and a superstructure of government, law, religion, and other aspects of culture and thought. The base and superstructure should be compatible. In a dialectic, they start out that way. Then the economic base changes, but the superstructure does not immediately change; base and superstructure are now in conflict. This is the antithesis stage (according to the false interpretation). Finally, and gradually, a new superstructure emerges, providing the dialectic’s synthesis. The following pattern results:

• Stage 1: base 1 + superstructure 1.
• Stage 2: base 2 + superstructure 1.
• Stage 3: base 2 + superstructure 2.

Four flaws in this pseudodialectic shine forth. First, whereas both parts of every two-parts-per-stage antithesis should clash with their thesis counterparts, only the bases clash in the above formula; the superstructures don't clash. Second, whereas the antithesis elements should be the opposite of their thesis counterparts, stage 2's base is merely different from–not the opposite of–the stage 1 base. Third, whereas the clash should be between stage 1 and stage 2, the really significant clash is within stage 2. There base 2 clashes with superstructure 1. Fourth, whereas a genuine synthesis should borrow from both the thesis and the antithesis, stage 3 incorporates nothing from the thesis: the “synthesis” does not synthesize. The base-superstructure “dialectic” formula is not Marx’s real two-concepts-per-stage formula, borrowed from Hegel. Base-superstructure provides a triad, but the triad is not a dialectic.

This nondialectical triad nevertheless clarifies another misconception about Hegelian dialectics. Textbook writers have always claimed that the synthesis of each dialectic becomes the thesis of a following dialectic. This pattern supposedly leads to a long chain of dialectics. But the truth is that none of Hegel's dialectics follows the alleged pattern. Neither do any of Marx's. But the above base-superstructure pseudodialectic does follow the pattern. And that base-superstructure pattern, not something in Hegel's dialectics, seems to be where the myth about follow-on dialectics originated.

Tillich's Dialectics

The third and last Hegelian dialectician was twentieth century philosopher-theologian Paul Tillich. Tillich described his thought as “neo-dialectical” and “dialectical realism.” Unlike Marx, Tillich closely followed Hegel’s dialectical model, putting dialectics back in the realm of ideas. In fact, the main difference between Hegel’s system and Tillich’s was that, whereas Hegel’s “God,” Spirit, was "all reality" and man’s mind was Spirit’s mind, Tillich’s God is more narrowly humanity, nothing else. This view is opposed by most of Tillich’s interpreters, who are unacquainted with dialectics and who variously regard Tillich as a theist, a deist, a panentheist, a pantheist, a mystic, or just an inscrutable writer. But four interpreters–Bernard Martin, Alasdair MacIntyre, Walter Kaufmann, and Leonard Wheat–lean toward (Martin) or else openly express (three authors) the view that Tillich was an atheist. And Tillich himself highlighted “something . . . that is fundamental to all my thinking–the antisupernaturalistic attitude” (italics added). An antisupernaturalistic attitude is incompatible with belief in a theistic God or even in a mindless metaphysical entity. Clearly rejecting the idea that his God is the traditional God, Tillich calls his redefined God (humanity) “the God above the God of theism.”

The three volumes of Tillich’s Systematic Theology are loaded with dialectics. Perhaps the most useful for illustrative purposes is the two-concepts-per stage dialectic that moves from theism (thesis) to atheism (antithesis) to humanism synthesis):

• Thesis: Yes to God + Yes to supernaturalism in general
• Antithesis: No to God + No to supernaturalism in general
• Synthesis: Yes to God + No to supernaturalism.

The synthesis, then, is a nonsupernatural God. But what is this nonsupernatural God? Theism (thesis) treats God as the source of wisdom and truth. Atheism (antithesis) treats man as the source of wisdom and truth. Humanism (synthesis) treats humanity as its “ultimate concern,” or figurative God; so both God and man are the source of wisdom and truth, because God and man are the same. This provides the dialectical format in which the antithesis is the thesis in disguise:

• Thesis: God
• Antithesis: man
• Synthesis: God = man.

Tillich’s account of man’s journey from theism to atheism to humanism also yields this dialectic:

• Thesis: potential + union (of God and man)
• Antithesis: actual + separation (of God and man)
• Synthesis: actual + union (of God and man).

Under theism, man worships God, but the God he worships is not the true God, humanity. So the union of the true God and man is only potential. The union becomes actual when man recognizes that there really is a God, and that this God is humanity. Incidentally, Tillich copies this dialectic from Hegel, whose dialectic is summarized above. Hegel uses it to describe Spirit’s journey from (1) unconscious union to (2) conscious separation to (3) conscious union. In the separation stage, “the object is revealed . . . and it does not recognize itself .” Embodied in this quotation is yet another dialectic:

• Thesis: subject
• Antithesis: object
• Synthesis: subject = object.

The synthesis recognizes that the perceiving subject (any person) and the perceived object (any external object, possibly another person) are both Spirit. When Spirit ultimately recognizes this at the end of Phenomenology, it achieves self-realization: it realizes that it is the totality of all objects in the universe, a union of particulars. As such, it is the divine, God. “Self-realization,” the synthesis, arrives when a certain philosopher–-part of Spirit’s mind–-appears and gives Spirit a boost in intelligence. Spirit then recognizes that all the objects it sees are not really external but are itself, Spirit, a single unified entity (a universe composed of particulars) and that it is the divine, God.

Additional Details

A notable additional feature of dialectics is the term “negation of the negation.” All three philosophers--Hegel, Marx, and Tillich--use "negation of the negation" as a synonym for “synthesis.” The antithesis is the first negation: it negates the thesis. The synthesis negates the first negation, hence is “the negation of the negation.”

Another feature, really just a supposed feature, has been discredited. Textbooks asserted, and professors taught, that each synthesis in Hegel’s thought became the thesis of a follow-on dialectic. But this belief isn’t true. With one exception, none of the thirty-eight dialectics Wheat identifies in Hegel’s thought becomes the thesis of the next dialectic. The exception is simply a coincidence, not part of a pattern. Also, in Marx’s two subperiod dialectics, the synthesis of the first subperiod (class society + worker ownership of tools) is not the thesis of the second subperiod (domestic production + worker ownership of tools).

See also

• Dialectic
• Dialectical Materialism
• The Phenomenology of Spirit
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Karl Marx
• Master-Slave Dialectic
• Paul Tillich

References

1. Gustav E. Mueller, "The Hegel Legend of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis," Journal of the History of Ideas 19:3 (1958), 411-14
2. Donald P. Verene, Hegel's Absolute: An Introduction to Reading the Phenomenology of Spirit (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007, 18.
3. Leonard F. Wheat, Hegel's Undiscovered Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis Dialectics: What Only Marx and Tillich Understood (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2012.
4. See Terry Pinkard, Hegel's Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 12; and Frederick Beiser, Hegel (New York: Routledge, 2005), 160-61.
5. Wheat, 48-60, 175-77
6. Wheat, 13-15,43-44, 57-58, 135-44, 154-61.
7. Solomon, 582.
8. Wheat, 59-60, 63, 97-100.
9. Wheat, 97, 103-106.
10. Robert Solomon, From Hegel to Existentialism, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 582.
11. Robert Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 66.
12. J. N. Findlay, The Philosophy of Hegel: An Introduction and Re-Examination (New York: Collier, 1958), 359
13. Walter Kaufmann, 'Hegel: A Reinterpretation (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1966), 273.
14. Wheat, 45, 48-50, 74-75, 133.
15. Walter Kaufmann, Hegel: A Reinterpretation (New York: Anchor Books, 1966), 154, n. 37.
16. Kaufmann, 154.
17. Wheat, 60-61
18. Kaufmann, 154-55
19. Wheat, 74-92.
20. G. W. F. Hegel, 'Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), para. 203.
21. Kaufmann, 249.
22. Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, v. 2, The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1967 ), 32-33.
23. Wheat, 208-223.
24. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, v. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 29.
25. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, ed. Frederick Engels (New York: Modern Library, n.d., first published 1906), Preface, 25.
26. M. M. Bober, Karl Marxc's Interpretation of History, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), 385; Robert Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961),227; Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 2, The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), 108; George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, rev. ed. (New York: Henry Holt,1950), 763; Samuel Enoch Stumpf, Philosophy: History & Problems, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1994), 417; Wheat, 264-66.
27. Bober, 386.
28. Wheat, 254-255.
29. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, trans. Samuel Moore (London: Penguin, 1985), 88.
30. Bober, 386.
31. Marx, ch. 32,837
32. Wheat, 261-63.
33. See, for example, Robert L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), 135-39.
34. Paul Tillich, The Protestant Era, abridged ed., trans. James Luther Adams (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), xxiv; Systematic Theology, v. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 234; cf. The Courage to Be (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1952), 88.
35. Wheat, 19-47, 93-98.
36. Bernard Martin, The Existentialist Theology of Paul Tillich (New Haven: College and University Press, 1963), 174-75; Alasdair MacIntyre, “God and the Theologians,” Encounter 21:3, 6; Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic (Garden City: Doubleday, 1961), 44, 93, 111, 130, 132; Wheat, 19-47, 93-98, 99-146.
37. Paul Tillich, Ultimate Concern: Tillich in Dialogue, ed. D. MacKenzie Brown (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 158.
38. Tillich, Courage, 186-88.
39. Wheat, 43-44.
40. Wheat, 45.
41. Wheat, 44.
42. Hegel, Phenomenology, trans. A.V. Miller, para.771.
43. Hegel, Phenomenology, trans. A. V. Miller, para. 107; Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. Miller (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1989), pp. 115, 116, 137, 178, 500, 603; Marx, Capital, chap. 32, 837; Tillich, Systematic Theology, v. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 403, 406; Tillich, Courage, 179.
44. Wheat, 47.

External links

• Website using the terms
• A passage from Karl Marx' works using the terms

• Philosophical phrases
• Theories of history
• Sociocultural evolution
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel