Much of contemporary research on Hegel’s philosophy consists in attempts to actualize Hegel’s thought. This holds true of Butler’s Dialectical Method, which not only explores the logical structures at the basis of Hegel’s dialectic, but also seeks to demonstrate its validity as a method applicable in the human and social sciences. The text is divided into three parts. The first explores the historical roots of Hegel’s dialectic. While the second part focuses on Hegel’s texts, in particular the Science of Logic, the third part sheds light on possible applications of Hegel’s dialectical method.
In chapter 1 of the first part, Butler traces the root of speculative philosophy to Pythagoreanism, by arguing that both systems assume the oneness between the individual human soul and the cosmos on the one hand, and between the knowing consciousness and the all-inclusive absolute on the other. The progressive redemption of the human soul which is at stake in Pythagoreanism testifies to the same dynamics as Hegel’s dialectic: the starting point is a process of self-abstraction of the soul from the macrocosm, which corresponds to the negation of the soul’s concrete nature. The redemption process is the negation of the first negation.
Butler’s thesis that Pythagoras represents the historical source of Hegel’s dialectic is original, but supported—as the author himself notes—only by some passages in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy. This raises doubts about Butler’s thesis. The traditional reading, which sees the most important historical source of Hegel’s dialectic in his confrontation with Kant, seems to be more compatible with Butler’s interpretation of dialectical logic, because it considers dialectical logic to emerge from the internal critique of the finite determinations of the understanding.
In the second chapter, Butler presents Sophocles’s tragedy as the poetic root of Hegel’s dialectic. In this context Butler identifies the same logic of the redemption process of the individual soul. Tragic heroes and heroines abstract a single aspect of their identity and take it as their whole identity, which implies a contradictory and false self-conception. Besides classical tragedy, Butler takes into account Hegel’s analysis of Judaism and Christianity in his Early Theological Writings. As in the case of classical tragic heroes and heroines, the attention is focused on the notion of fate, which for Butler is a sort of poetic anticipation of the immanent necessity characterizing the dialectical process.
In the third chapter, the author shows that Hegel’s dialectic is similar to the structure of indirect proofs as conceived by Zeno. Butler is certainly right in viewing Zeno’s dialectic as a source of Hegel’s conception of dialectic. Nevertheless, some passages of the logic show that speculative thought is not reducible to the deductive process characterizing Zeno’s indirect proof: ‘the ancient dialecticians must be granted the contradictions that they pointed out in motion; but it does not follow that therefore there is no motion, but on the contrary, that motion is existent contradiction itself’ (WL: 440). In this sense, Butler’s account of dialectical logic as a progressive correction of limited descriptions of the absolute runs the risk of being, at least, one-sided. Rather than being grounded on the necessity of resolving contradictions, ‘speculative thinking consists solely in the fact that thought holds fast contradiction’ (WL: 440). This casts doubt on the second main thesis of Butler’s chapter, namely that dialectical logic is ‘a particular use of a particular kind of deductive logic’ (52). As I see it, one should not conceive of dialectical logic as a specific kind of formal logic, because dialectical logic covers a domain far wider than the one with which formal logic deals.
In this second part Butler attempts to outline the rules of the dialectical method that are discussed from a historical point of view in the first part. His aim is to make these rules explicit through a rational reconstruction in terms of twentieth-century symbolic logic. The six rules that he identifies and formalizes in terms of quantification logic are:
1. abstraction: an element (property or term) of a conceptual content is abstracted from other aspects of the same content, to which it is inherently related;
2. absolutization: the abstracted element is supposed to exhaust the whole conceptual content;
3. abstraction/positing the other: the other elements of the conceptual content are abstracted too, i.e., they are considered in separation from the first ‘absolutized’ aspect;
4. negation of the other: since the first element is supposed to be exhaustive with respect to the conceptual content, the other elements are negated;
5. self-negation: since the negated elements are essential in the constitution of the conceptual content, their negation implies the negation of the conceptual content itself (its definition on the basis of the first abstracted element is self-contradictory and false);
6. negation of the negation: in order for the contradiction to be resolved, the ‘negation of the other’ has to be negated, i.e., the first abstracted element has to be recognized to be necessarily in relation to the other elements in the constitution of the conceptual content at stake.
The logical rules in question are not supposed to be externally applied to a specific content. In this way, Butler tries to save his reading from the traditional criticism of any effort to formalize Hegel’s method. Nevertheless, it seems to me that Butler’s formalization is unable to account for the dynamic of Hegel’s dialectical process, in which form and content are not only interdependent but are one and the same thing. Butler, though rightly underlining the deductive character of the dialectical process, does not provide any clue as to how it is both an analytic and synthetic process. Moreover, his conception of the absolute as a substance to which a series of (relational) properties are ascribed is problematic. Even if these properties become increasingly comprehensive, the ‘substance-properties’ pattern of thought is precisely the one that Hegel aims to undermine through the development of his logical system.
Other points in Butler’s formalization call for further elaboration. Just to mention a few examples, Butler does not explain how the classical notion of negation on which his formalization draws can account for Hegel’s notion of negativity, or in what sense the role that contradiction plays in the system is reducible to the falsification-function that it plays in indirect proof. Butler’s interpretation of dialectical logic fits, at least in part, with Hegel’s conception of logic and dialectic in the early Jena years. During this phase, Hegel considered logic to consist in a critical analysis of the finite determinations of the understanding, intended to prove that they are unable to provide a complete comprehension of the absolute. Nevertheless, it is hard to square Butler’s interpretation with Hegel’s mature conception of logic.
In chapter 6, Butler interprets Hegel’s method as a hermeneutic method capable of interpreting empirical history and the actual world. In this reading of Hegel’s thought, dialectic, far from being monological, is radically dialogical. According to Butler, the speculative philosopher needs to relate to other subjects in world history and in the history of philosophy, and he or she has to take into account their standpoints as the expression of the dialectical and historical self-development of the absolute. The dialectic of this process follows the general rules outlined in the previous chapter. In this dialogue with the past, the speculative philosopher analyses the arising and overcoming of contradictory situations according to a dialectical process that leads to the present. In Butler’s view, the comprehension of subjects acting in world history and in the history of philosophy, in their unique individuality and in their dialectical potential, is a necessary condition for comprehending one’s own time.
Arguing for the hermeneutic value of the dialectical method, the final chapter of this second part of the book investigates the relationship between dialectical logic and world history. Hegel considers universal history to consist in the gradual development of the idea of freedom. In Butler’s reading, rather than being the self-determination of pure thought ex nihilo, Hegel’s dialectical logic is a reconstruction of the dialectical development of world history on the abstract level of pure concepts. This does not mean that history shapes logic, but rather that logic is embedded in history. Hence, Butler claims that logic and history have to be seen not as two separate processes, but as the two sides—the abstract one and the concrete one—of the same coin, that is, as the process of self-construction of the all-inclusive absolute. However, Butler’s claim that ‘logic presupposes world history as that from which it should be abstracted’ (146), seems to be at odds with Hegel’s assertion that his logic is presuppositionless and atemporal. Butler does not explain whether he thinks the two approaches are compatible.
In the third part of the book, the author explores possible applications of Hegel’s method to other topics than the ones treated by Hegel. In chapter 8, he outlines a dialectical reconstruction of the American counter-culture in the second half of the twentieth century, in which he sees a re-enactment of the dialectic of observing reason from the Phenomenology of Spirit. He conceives of a particular historical phase as the result of the necessity of overcoming an incoherence in an earlier phase. According to this interpretation, the development of a new form of counter-culture consists in a series of earlier counter-cultures, each of which failed to achieve its aim.
In chapter 9 Butler investigates the convergence between psychoanalysis and dialectics. The psychoanalytic account of the psychosexual and psychosocial development of the individual is reinterpreted according to the dialectic of consciousness and self-consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit. In the last part of the chapter, Butler draws on the six rules pointed out in chapter 5 to provide ‘additional hedonistic motivations for adopting each position in psychoanalytic thought according to the pleasure principle, or for cutting short its adoption due to the pain of anxiety’ (210). On the basis of this analysis, Butler traces some correspondences between certain mental disturbances and some stages of the dialectical process (211–15).
Chapter 10 examines the use and further implications of the dialectical method in Marx. According to the historical-materialist version of the dialectical method, human history starts with the immediate unity of humankind and nature. The invention of disciplined labour separated human beings from nature. Since humankind exists only in and through nature, it needs to reconcile with it. Considering this, Butler’s question is whether such a reconciliation is really possible. If so, this would imply the universal implementation of civil, political and economic human rights in an institutionalized form. Yet the author underlines the fact that the phenomenon of poverty seems to disconfirm Hegel’s definition of the absolute: in our time only a minority of human beings participate in great art, higher religion and philosophy. Butler’s conclusion is that we need to think through the present world’s contradictions and to find a way to resolve them through the negation of the present forms of domination and through an actual realization of freedom.
Butler’s effort to demonstrate the relevance of the dialectical method is of course affected by his general account of the dialectic outlined in the second part of the book, which in my view is not unproblematic. Moreover, as a result of the heterogeneity of the fields that he discusses, Butler’s analyses remain rather superficial. More generally, it is difficult to see the unity of Butler’s project, which may be too ambitious to be articulated in a single book. Yet despite the problematic points mentioned above, the book undeniably presents interesting ideas on the actualization of Hegel’s thought, especially concerning its interaction with analytic philosophy and the convergences with other disciplines—psychoanalysis, history, etc.—which could be explored in further research on Hegel’s thought.
