thesis antithesis synthesis in storytelling

Matthew Rettino

Harness the Power of Dialectical Opposites to Enhance Your Storytelling

This is an article I wrote for Medium.com.

I recently attended a screenwriting workshop in which I was told not to listen to screenwriting gurus . The key to writing a good story is not in placing an inciting incident on page 23. Rather, it is in understanding the inherent rule behind storytelling itself, the dialectical juxtaposition of opposites.

This is a principle present at every level of storytelling, from the three-act structure to individual scenes, beats, or, in prose fiction, even individual sentences.

The screenwriting charlatans will tell you: put the inciting incident on page 23. But they never ask, “Why?” This is the problem addressed by John Yorke in his excellent book Into the Woods , which discusses the dialectical basis of narrative . My screenwriting workshop instructor recommend it to me, since it offers a much better perspective on storytelling than most screenwriting gurus provide.

Yorke argues that the three-act structure is based on the dialectical juxtaposition of opposites and that the dialectical structure permeates every aspect of art and storytelling.

But what does he mean by dialectical ?

In philosophy, dialectics is the process of arriving at the truth through counter argument . The stronger the counter argument, the stronger the argument becomes. It follows the following structure: a thesis is stated (“All swans are white”), an antithesis is presented (“But there are black swans”), and a synthesis resolves the two (“Swans may be both white and black”). At the end of this process, the philosopher arrives closer to the truth.

Yorke’s observation that narrative is fundamentally about observing the world, processing it, and arriving at a conclusion came as a revelation for me. I’d encountered Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and the three-act structure before, but I’d never had it explained to me like this. Few books on the writer’s craft explain the “Why?” behind narrative structure so compellingly.

Which is why I’ve decided to take Yorke one step further. In his book, he focuses on the three-act and five-act plot. However, if you look at prose fiction under a microscope, paragraph by paragraph, the dialectic juxtaposition of opposites reiterates itself fractally, even at the sentence level . This plays a crucial role in keeping readers engaged page by page.

You can write compelling prose by harnessing the power of dialectical opposites. Before I explain how, however, let me first go over how dialectics apply to the three-act structure, since the same principle will apply at the sentence level.

Dialectics in the Three-Act Story Structure

Many stories, from The Godfather to Shakespearean plays such as Hamlet , Julius Caesar , and Macbeth –and even Pixar movies–follow a dialectical three-act structure. Like a dialectical argument, the stories break down into acts consisting of a “thesis,” “antithesis,” and “synthesis.”

A typical three-act story begins with a first act that presents the status quo. The second act challenges the status quo, precipitating a crisis, and the third act reconciles the two states, resolving the conflict. In this way, the structure of a dialectical argument maps onto narrative; an overarching theme is argued, counter argued, and synthesized.

For example, in the first act of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather , Michael Corleone is a war veteran who wants nothing to do with the mafia. In the second act , he makes the irrevocable decision to participate in the mafia. By the third act , he’s stepped into his father’s shoes as the head of his crime family and has become the devil; his innocence is forever lost.

In the thematic struggle between innocence and power, the dialectical synthesis results in Michael’s spiritual death—a tragedy.

Although some writers use the three-act structure to mark changes in interpersonal conflict or even setting, treating it as a dialectical structure that charts character change can be more useful . After all, taking The Godfather for an example, Michael’s inner journey is one between opposites: from innocence to violence. And the way these opposites resolve is through a dialectical structure.

Pixar movies work in opposites as well: a trash-cleaning robot who finds himself on a cruise ship in space ( Wall-E ) and a fish from the big ocean who finds himself in a dentist’s fish tank ( Finding Nemo ). The audience is compelled by these opposites to see how the stories eventually resolve.

It’s a principle that also works on the micro-level of a sentence.

Dialectics on the Sentence Level

Moving from screenwriting to prose fiction, I’ve observed that sentences may also exhibit a dialectical structure. In compelling prose, opposites are often presented within a sentence to create tension between two ideas or images .

Names of emotions might contrast, such as fear and curiosity , or a set of images, such as a rainstorm in the desert . In the reader’s brain, a synthesis occurs, suturing the gap between the disparate images in order to create meaning and flesh out an image that is only presented in fragments. The reader is engaged, because the prose inhabits a contradiction.

It’s relatively easy to learn this technique and apply it to your own prose. As an example, I’ve provided an excerpt from one of my personal favourite novels: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer . VanderMeer’s prose style is laced with inherent tension, a simultaneous sense of forward momentum and dread.

In this scene, two characters, the surveyor and the biologist (the first-person narrator), are exploring an underground stairway for traces of a mysterious, possibly extraterrestrial organism.

“Should we go back?” the surveyor would say, or I would say. And the other would say, “Just around the next corner. Just a little farther, and then we will go back.” It was a test of a fragile trust. It was a test of our curiosity and fascination, which walked side by side with our fear. A test of whether we preferred to be ignorant or unsafe. The feel of our boots as we advanced step by careful step through that viscous discharge, the way in which the stickiness seemed to mire us even as we managed to keep moving, would eventually end in inertia, we knew. If we pushed it too far. (Jeff VanderMeer, Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy, 39)

Starting from the top, the reader is immediately confronted with the question of why both the surveyor and the biologist could have spoken the dialogue. Why not specify who said what? The reader, even if only on an unconscious level, attempts to resolve this contradiction through synthesis.

As a reader, I formed the opinion that it must reveal more about their situation to know that it doesn’t matter who is talking at any single moment. They’re both reluctantly pushing the other deeper into the thrall of curiosity.

Next, inner emotional conflict is demonstrated by the contrast between fear and curiosity . These contrasting emotions are not precise opposites, but they’re far from identical in a conventional sense. Before the reader vicariously experiences these emotions, they must confront the intellectual problem of how the emotions “fear” and “curiosity” may be related.

Can fear and curiosity be the same emotion? VanderMeer doesn’t simply give the reader the answer. What he does is say that these emotions walk “side by side” (a personification recalling the biologist and the surveyor, who also walk side by side). This way, the reader’s imagination is engaged in imagining what this “fearful curiosity” must feel like.

Andrew Stanton and Bob Peterson, the writers of Finding Nemo , once said: “ Good storytelling never gives you four, it gives you two plus two … Never give the audience the answer; give the audience the pieces and compel them to conclude the answer” (qtd. in Yorke 113). To give his readers a taste of the complex emotion he wanted them to experience, VanderMeer gave them fear and curiosity and let them imagine the rest.

The power of VanderMeer’s prose comes, at least in part, from his ability to suggestively juxtapose disparate words and images . The reader must synthesize these in order to create meaning. Providing the reader with the emotions “curiosity” and “fear,” VanderMeer allows the reader to decide for themselves what feelings the biologist is experiencing.

Now, at one level, synthesis is part of the fundamental process of reading and experiencing the world. Readers do it all the time, no matter the quality of the prose. However, when the text presents irreconcilable contradictions, the dialectics of the text become more powerful and the reader engages even more.

Just as the philosopher gets closer to the truth when faced with a stronger counter argument, so do readers become more engaged when words and images are more starkly contrasted.

To return to Annihilation , the ideas of knowledge and danger are juxtaposed again later: “The test of whether we preferred to be ignorant or unsafe.” Here, the word choice is more complex, since the phrasing emphasizes the opposites of the conventional values of knowledge and safety. The biologist may prefer ignorance, which is ironic given her profession as a scientist. It also suggests that, perhaps, the biologist also wishes to be put in danger.

The reader synthesizes these contradictions, which compels them to read on.

Lastly, there’s the image of how the viscous slime sticks to the soles of the biologist’s boots, resisting her desire to step deeper down the stairs to discover the organism. On a linguistic level, “moving” and “inertia” are both opposites. Their appearance within a single sentence creates contradiction, probably in a more powerful way than if they’d been placed in separate sentences.

Opposites charge sentences with dialectical tension. The biologist is both descending the staircase and being resisted. But will her movement or inertia win out in the end?

This tension compels the reader to read on. Oppositions of this sort carry the reader right on through the story.

You could imagine that the sustaining tension emerges from the inner and outer conflicts of the characters. But on a stylistic level, contrasting word choices and structuring sentences as contradictions are crucial ingredients. I would even venture to say dialectical language can sustain reader interest irrespective of the idea of “character and “conflict.”

In conclusion, juxtaposing opposites can imbue inherent tensions into the reading experience, making your pose irresistible to readers. By harnessing the power of dialectics, your story structure will be stronger at a fractal level: both in terms of plot, and in terms of style.

In the words of the great philosopher and literary critic, Gyorgy Lukács, “ The essence of art is form; it is to defeat opposition, to conquer opposing forces, to create coherence from every centrifugal force” (qtd. in Yorke 231). Embed that centrifugal force in your sentences and plot, and you can infuse your prose with the storytelling power of Jeff VanderMeer in Annihilation .

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Persuasive Writing In Three Steps: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis

April 14, 2021 by Ryan Law in

Great writing persuades. It persuades the reader that your product is right for them, that your process achieves the outcome they desire, that your opinion supersedes all other opinions. But spend an hour clicking around the internet and you’ll quickly realise that most content is passive, presenting facts and ideas without context or structure. The reader must connect the dots and create a convincing argument from the raw material presented to them. They rarely do, and for good reason: It’s hard work. The onus of persuasion falls on the writer, not the reader. Persuasive communication is a timeless challenge with an ancient solution. Zeno of Elea cracked it in the 5th century B.C. Georg Hegel gave it a lick of paint in the 1800s. You can apply it to your writing in three simple steps: thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

Use Dialectic to Find Logical Bedrock

“ Dialectic ” is a complicated-sounding idea with a simple meaning: It’s a structured process for taking two seemingly contradictory viewpoints and, through reasoned discussion, reaching a satisfactory conclusion. Over centuries of use the term has been burdened with the baggage of philosophy and academia. But at its heart, dialectics reflects a process similar to every spirited conversation or debate humans have ever had:

• Person A presents an idea: “We should travel to the Eastern waterhole because it’s closest to camp.”
• Person B disagrees and shares a counterargument: “I saw wolf prints on the Eastern trail, so we should go to the Western waterhole instead.”
• Person A responds to the counterargument , either disproving it or modifying their own stance to accommodate the criticism: “I saw those same wolf prints, but our party is large enough that the wolves won’t risk an attack.”
• Person B responds in a similar vein: “Ordinarily that would be true, but half of our party had dysentery last week so we’re not at full strength.”
• Person A responds: “They got dysentery from drinking at the Western waterhole.”

This process continues until conversational bedrock is reached: an idea that both parties understand and agree to, helped by the fact they’ve both been a part of the process that shaped it.

Dialectic is intended to help draw closer to the “truth” of an argument, tempering any viewpoint by working through and resolving its flaws. This same process can also be used to persuade.

Create Inevitability with Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis

The philosopher Georg Hegel is most famous for popularizing a type of dialectics that is particularly well-suited to writing: thesis, antithesis, synthesis (also known, unsurprisingly, as Hegelian Dialectic ).

• Thesis: Present the status quo, the viewpoint that is currently accepted and widely held.
• Antithesis: Articulate the problems with the thesis. (Hegel also called this phase “the negative.”)
• Synthesis: Share a new viewpoint (a modified thesis) that resolves the problems.

Hegel’s method focused less on the search for absolute truth and more on replacing old ideas with newer, more sophisticated versions . That, in a nutshell, is the same objective as much of content marketing (and particularly thought leadership content ): We’re persuading the reader that our product, processes, and ideas are better and more useful than the “old” way of doing things. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis (or TAS) is a persuasive writing structure because it:

• Reduces complex arguments into a simple three-act structure. Complicated, nuanced arguments are simplified into a clear, concise format that anyone can follow. This simplification reflects well on the author: It takes mastery of a topic to explain it in it the simplest terms.
• Presents a balanced argument by “steelmanning” the best objection. Strong, one-sided arguments can trigger reactance in the reader: They don’t want to feel duped. TAS gives voice to their doubts, addressing their best objection and “giv[ing] readers the chance to entertain the other side, making them feel as though they have come to an objective conclusion.”
• Creates a sense of inevitability. Like a story building to a satisfying conclusion, articles written with TAS take the reader on a structured, logical journey that culminates in precisely the viewpoint we wish to advocate for. Doubts are voiced, ideas challenged, and the conclusion reached feels more valid and concrete as a result.

There are two main ways to apply TAS to your writing: Use it beef up your introductions, or apply it to your article’s entire structure.

Writing Article Introductions with TAS

Take a moment to scroll back to the top of this article. If I’ve done my job correctly, you’ll notice a now familiar formula staring back at you: The first three paragraphs are built around Hegel’s thesis, antithesis, synthesis structure. Here’s what the introduction looked like during the outlining process . The first paragraph shares the thesis, the accepted idea that great writing should be persuasive:

Next up, the antithesis introduces a complicating idea, explaining why most content marketing isn’t all that persuasive:

Finally, the synthesis shares a new idea that serves to reconcile the two previous paragraphs: Content can be made persuasive by using the thesis, antithesis, synthesis framework. The meat of the article is then focused on the nitty-gritty of the synthesis.

Introductions are hard, but thesis, antithesis, synthesis offers a simple way to write consistently persuasive opening copy. In the space of three short paragraphs, the article’s key ideas are shared , the entire argument is summarised, and—hopefully—the reader is hooked.

Best of all, most articles—whether how-to’s, thought leadership content, or even list content—can benefit from Hegelian Dialectic , for the simple reason that every article introduction should be persuasive enough to encourage the reader to stick around.

Structuring Entire Articles with TAS

Harder, but most persuasive, is to use thesis, antithesis, synthesis to structure your entire article. This works best for thought leadership content. Here, your primary objective is to advocate for a new idea and disprove the old, tired way of thinking—exactly the use case Hegel intended for his dialectic. It’s less useful for content that explores and illustrates a process, because the primary objective is to show the reader how to do something (like this article—otherwise, I would have written the whole darn thing using the framework). Arjun Sethi’s article The Hive is the New Network is a great example.

The article’s primary purpose is to explain why the “old” model of social networks is outmoded and offer a newer, better framework. (It would be equally valid—but less punchy—to publish this with the title “ Why the Hive is the New Network.”) The thesis, antithesis, synthesis structure shapes the entire article:

• Thesis: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram grew by creating networks “that brought existing real-world relationships online.”
• Antithesis: As these networks grow, the less useful they become, skewing towards bots, “celebrity, meme and business accounts.”
• Synthesis: To survive continued growth, these networks need to embrace a new structure and become hives.

With the argument established, the vast majority of the article is focused on synthesis. After all, it requires little elaboration to share the status quo in a particular situation, and it’s relatively easy to point out the problems with a given idea. The synthesis—the solution that needs to reconcile both thesis and antithesis—is the hardest part to tackle and requires the greatest word count. Throughout the article, Arjun is systematically addressing the “best objections” to his theory and demonstrating why the “Hive” is the best solution:

• Antithesis: Why now? Why didn’t Hives emerge in the first place?
• Thesis: We were limited by technology, but today, we have the necessary infrastructure: “We’re no longer limited to a broadcast radio model, where one signal is received by many nodes. ...We sync with each other instantaneously, and all the time.”
• Antithesis: If the Hive is so smart, why aren’t our brightest and best companies already embracing it?
• Thesis: They are, and autonomous cars are a perfect example: “Why are all these vastly different companies converging on the autonomous car? That’s because for these companies, it’s about platform and hive, not just about roads without drivers.”

It takes bravery to tackle objections head-on and an innate understanding of the subject matter to even identify objections in the first place, but the effort is worthwhile. The end result is a structured journey through the arguments for and against the “Hive,” with the reader eventually reaching the same conclusion as the author: that “Hives” are superior to traditional networks.

Destination: Persuasion

Persuasion isn’t about cajoling or coercing the reader. Statistics and anecdotes alone aren’t all that persuasive. Simply sharing a new idea and hoping that it will trigger an about-turn in the reader’s beliefs is wishful thinking. Instead, you should take the reader on a journey—the same journey you travelled to arrive at your newfound beliefs, whether it’s about the superiority of your product or the zeitgeist-changing trend that’s about to break. Hegelian Dialectic—thesis, antithesis, synthesis— is a structured process for doing precisely that. It contextualises your ideas and explains why they matter. It challenges the idea and strengthens it in the process. Using centuries-old processes, it nudges the 21st-century reader onto a well-worn path that takes them exactly where they need to go.

Ryan is the Content Director at Ahrefs and former CMO of Animalz.

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Understanding Dialectical Forms in Stories: Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis.

Every good, water-tight story must assume a dialectical form in which the audience is taken through a logical journey and the process of arriving at a believeable end.

This ideology is what must guide every storyteller in telling believeable stories visually in the sense that, should a story be broken down into the basic three act structure; the act one introduces us to a proposition—an idea we would want the audience to buy into—and act two brings us to an opposition—an opportunity for the audience to decide if the proposition we put forward in act one still stands or not; now in the face of an opposition.

In simpler terms, this is where conflicts are introduced in story structures to test the truism or the validity of the proposition we submitted to the audiences' view in act one. This proposition often comes as premises of a story or the background with the characters subjected to acting and reacting to such premise.

In complex story structures, this premise is spread out through and through the entire story in such a way that for every little thesis that a writer raises, he also raises an antithesis, and the result from this logical exercise births a synthesis that would further move the story forward to another layer of thesis, a countering antithesis and a synthesis; till we all arrive at the final resolution.

Over the years, we've seen the complexity of such story structures in Christopher Nolan's pieces. How he weave the stories around a dialectical form without following a linear progression has been one thing that has continually draw the audience in; of course, the Crime/Psychological thriller audience.

But relating this to Nollywood, and breaking it down in the simplest of terms and language; we might want to see why most of the stories you saw and was disappointed in didn't follow or assume the dialectical form optimally and religiously.

If a story doesn't hold to an extent a logical and believable event timelines (plots), it becomes nauseating to believe or get invested—emotionally or otherwise—in the progression of such. What more? If such story does not give a room for the audience to think or come up with their version of antithesis and consequently, a synthesis; it becomes a case of forcing a narrative down the throat of the audience—when in actual sense of it, all we need to do as storytellers is play the suggestive card.

Taking Squid Game into account, the thesis the creators tries to put forward was simple: Everyone deserves a shot at fortune; everyone who has made some serious money mistakes. It was a simple proposition. But the antithesis stands at: Not everyone deserves to live should they miss this shot. Because, what could they possibly live for?

And right there, we have the audience put forward their antithesis too. Some in favour of the creator's antithesis and others with opposing views. This way, the story was able to draw people in and get them invested emotionally because it follows a logical progression of creating first, a premise, a story, characters, actions and reactions and the resultant effect of those action and reactions without throwing in "a save the cat in its drowning moment" metaphors.

The creators only played the suggestive card but made sure they drew a synthesis from their thesis and antithesis. And that is why we have player 456 or what's that number again, going back to the game.

Thesis: Everyone deserves a shot at fortune regardless of their numerous money mistakes.

Antithesis: Not everyone deserves to live should they miss their shot at that fortune.

Synthesis: Nobody should be made to take a shot at fortune this way at all.

Do you agree with the creator's Hypothesis now?

Yes? No? Which ever your answer is, they have been able to engage you in a logical exercise via visual storytelling and you should learn from this as you seek to independently produce films that transcends your local audience.

To Your Blockbuster—

Daniel Olas

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Teaching as Storytelling: Why You Might Ditch the Syllabus & Tell a Great Story Instead

Stories are powerful and can help give meaning to your curriculum.

The start of this school year must be compelling. In 2021, the last thing students need is to be handed a list of rules, due dates, and topics. They need meaningful connections to curricular content and to one another. So, let’s turn a sleepy syllabus into an exciting story. Let’s help students see themselves as active participants in an unfolding, larger context.

Here is an example of how a seventh-grade history teacher opened her first class using storytelling:

What does it mean to be Texan? And how has this changed over time? How do nature and culture impact who you are and how you see the world? The story of Texas shows how where we live impacts how we live and that new groups bring about new ideas that often lead to conflict as well as integration and changes to worldview. We’ll explore these ideas with American Indian groups, European colonization, Mexican Independence, and finally, the Texas Revolution─with each new context further developing our understanding of human-environment interaction as well as culture, change, and identity. 

And here is the way a middle school mathematics teacher framed the year ahead as a classic Hero’s Journey:

Call to Adventure : Are you ready to solve the world’s problems? Can we use mathematics to simplify complexity and find amicable solutions?

Trials and Tribulations : Reasoning through complexity is no easy task. Can we use our number sense and critical thinking to creatively communicate our ideas?

The Abyss : We will face known and unknown variables and quantities changing at different rates. We might have to adjust our perspective to find the best angle or approach to have the best chance of convincing people we can help the world. 

The Return : How have you made the complex seem simple? Are you able to maximize space, establish the best investment, or tell someone their chances of winning the lottery? How will your new reasoning and wisdom help you solve the world’s problems?

In both these examples, teachers use narrative elements─character and story arc─to help students see the big picture of what they are going to learn. The benefits are many and include giving students a context, the Why of the study, an active role in the quest to know more, clarity on what’s expected of them, and a reassuring reminder that the learning process has ups and downs, and that’s more than OK.

The Call of Stories

Since the beginning of time, stories have kindled the human spirit. Stories teach us who we are and how to literally survive and thrive. Through storytelling, important information is handed down from generation to generation. Revered medical school professor and author Robert Coles examined in The Call of Stories the ways that stories help shape our imagination and morality and help us articulate the narrative of our own lives. More recently, cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham (2009) provides four reasons why stories are a motivating structure for students.

• Stories are easy to comprehend because they’re a structure familiar to everyone.
• Stories are engaging because they demand frequent medium-difficulty inferencing that encourages us to constantly think about their meaning.
• We remember stories because they have a causal structure, and that structure helps us retain information.
• Stories have emotional resonance because they humanize abstract ideas (Willingham, 2009, p. 66-75).

Tools to Stay the Course

Take a moment to remember a time when you were dizzy with overwhelm in a class, or in a formidable book passage, or facing an assignment. You probably thought something along the lines of, There is no way I’m going to get through this… It’s an awful feeling. As teachers, we can ease this anxiety by letting students know that two seemingly conflicting things are true about learning:

• Learning is not linear; it occurs through a complex set of experiences that require us to question what we understand, persevere as we experience confusion or cognitive dissonance, and ultimately gain new understandings that inevitably raise new questions and uncertainties. In short, disequilibrium is part of learning, not an intellectual shortcoming.
• There are structures to lean on as learners and tools that help us navigate the high seas of complex concepts. Consider how the following structures might help your students orient themselves at the outset of your course. Select one to write the story of your course. Observe how it plays out; try various structures over time to discover which ones engage learners the most.

Potential Structures for the Story of Your Course

1. chronology.

The most familiar and straightforward way to structure your course is to arrange it in chronological order. However, just because it’s familiar doesn’t mean it has to be boring! By exploring how the events of one period or movement evolve and flow into the next, you’ll be challenging students’ ability to understand how cause and effect relationships shape history, paradigms, and scientific eras. When students have the ability to place a particular method or discovery within a broader timeline, they can think more deeply and abstractly about its context. Whether we’re inferring like a historian, hypothesizing like a scientist, or composing like a journalist, the ability to trace our thinking back to a particular moment in history is a useful one.

2. Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis

Although we believe the world is becoming increasingly complex, it’s never been a simple place. History and science are filled with competing theories and belief systems that rose to prominence, were challenged, and either replaced or synthesized into new theories that drove humanity forward. Famous historian Georg Hegel had an entire theory of history and philosophy based on such a pattern.

What we’re suggesting is certainly an over-simplification but can provide some inspiration for creating a narrative for your course. For example, each quarter, your students could explore a conceptual relationship that seems to make a concrete claim— think, systems require order and cohesion to flourish sufficiently . Your students could read books that create that theme, study empires or nation states at the height of their powers, or evaluate healthy biomes and ecosystems. Your next unit would then challenge that principle, showing students that when systems become stagnant or inflexible, they can become oppressive or break down , for example. Then your students could read texts with a similar theme, learn about the breakdown of empires, or study how human pollution is damaging various ecosystems. The overall idea is to lead students towards a clear conclusion, then challenge them by complicating their understanding with each new unit. In addition to providing an organizing logic and sequence to your course, this will help push students to always challenge their assumptions.

3. Hero’s Journey

Joseph Campbell was an anthropologist who studied and spent time with cultures all over the world. Though each culture was different in many ways, much of their stories followed a similar arc, a structure Campbell called the monomyth, and we’ve come to know as the hero’s journey. In fact, countless of our favorite movies today, from Star Wars to Moana, follow a similar structure. Due to its ubiquity, it’ll be quickly recognizable to students. Below is a quick overview of how it can provide you with a structure for your course.

• The Call to Adventure : What kind of adventure or quest will your students be embarking on in your course? How can you invite them to join in and leave their comfort zone?
• Trials & Tribulations: What kind of challenges will they encounter in your course? What skills will they need to succeed? What knowledge? How can your course build these competencies in such a way that students know they’ll need them to succeed on their journey?
• The Abyss: Consider having students launch into a massive project or self-directed unit of study once they’ve acquired all the skills necessary. How can they use the knowledge they’ve gained thus far in your course to conquer a problem in their lives?
• The Return: How can you close your year in a way that promotes student reflection and spreads the word about their work over the course of the year? The end of the year is a time for students to internalize and share what they’ve learned.

Sentence Stems for Thinking About Teaching as Storytelling

The following sentence stems can help you brainstorm the story of your course.

This course is about…  

This year we will…

We will begin by ___, then we’ll _____, and finally, we’ll ____ all in order to understand that ____.   

Try it out and see how it sets a direction for your course and a different tone for the year!

This blog is an adapted excerpt from Learning That Transfers , by Julie Stern, Krista Ferraro, Kayla Duncan, and Trevor Aleo. For more ways to engage students, check out their suite of online courses .

What are your thoughts on teaching as storytelling? Please share in the comments!

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Business Storytelling Frameworks: The Remarkable Power of Narrative

Stories can build an emotional connection with your audience. Emotions drive engagement and conversions. However, not every story is captivating. Business storytelling frameworks help you craft stories that lure your audience into your narrative, capture and hold their attention, and bring them to the story climax that triggers actions.

Business storytelling frameworks make sure that you use the full power of a consistent storyline to build tension, trigger the right emotions, and guide the audience toward a desired outcome.

Learn how business storytelling frameworks can help you craft stories like a pro and discover the most used business storytelling frameworks. If you pay attention you will recognize some of them from emails you received and landing pages you visited.

What is Business storytelling?

Have you ever felt that many online entrepreneurs are telling the same story in their sales copy? Something along this line: “I faced this problem that you also have, I tried all solutions and tips but nothing worked for me, then I found this one simple hack and suddenly it all became a breeze, and now I am a successful billionaire traveling the world and having fun. And I have created this magic product that lets you find success in no time.”

That is because this is the most common storytelling framework used in business content marketing: The Hero’s Journey.

Other storytelling frameworks also work well to build a brand and business. Although stories and storytelling are known to build community and speak to your audience on an emotional level, not every story captures attention and triggers emotions.

Knowing about the most important story frameworks can tremendously help to build tension and invoke the emotions that have the power to make you money.

Business storytelling purposefully uses stories to achieve business goals and specific outcomes. These stories are carefully crafted to make the audience take action. They use emotions and mental triggers.

Importance of Storytelling in Business

Stories have tremendous power when used strategically.

Telling stories in your marketing content has some important benefits:

• Stories make content memorable
• Stories make your content stand out from mere facts
• Stories make your content relatable and trustworthy
• Stories add YOU and your personality to your content 
• Stories inspire engagement
• Stories can help to explain complex matters
• Stories can build emotional connections and community

The Psychological Impact of Stories

We can explain the emotional effect of a great story as a chemical process with dopamine and cortisol. But the impact of storytelling is a lot more complex.

Processing facts activates two areas of the brain, stories activate additional areas. Logic undoubtedly lets us search for facts for proof, our brain looks for stories instead to make sense of complex matters and trust the narrative.

Stories synchronize the audience and storyteller. If you want your audience to think in a specific way, your story can achieve that by relating experiences that are similar to the ones of your audience. Readers can identify with the storyteller or protagonist.

Stories inspire emotions. Emotionally charged triggers cause the brain to release dopamine which creates a pleasurable response and makes it easier to remember the story.

conflict boosts attention and memory. That is why conflict is often part of the business storytelling frameworks.

Stories can make us feel passion, sadness, hardships and joy, meaning and purpose. Effective stories can take us through complete emotional journeys. Have you ever read a story and cried or felt anger? Then you know what I mean.

Good stories help to structure content and guide the reader through complex matters.

Stories play with the images they paint in our brains. These images make stories memorable.

Stories have the power to influence our way of thinking. You can ultimately use this to make your audience take the desired action.

Why Business Storytelling Frameworks Matter

It took me a while to discover the power of storytelling .

As a mathematician, I tend to cut down content until mere facts remain. But content focused on facts is often not the best or most efficient content.

Not everyone is a born storyteller. Even with the knowledge about the power of storytelling, it may be hard to turn topics into stories – or even discover stories worth telling.

You have to learn not to stray too far from the purpose of your content and stick to a line of thoughts and arguments that will take the reader on a journey with your story.

You have to find the balance between the emotional side of your story and the information it contains.

That is when storytelling frameworks come into the game.

If you want to start using storytelling in your online content, storytelling frameworks can tremendously help craft a consistent storyline for the purpose at hand.

Storytelling frameworks do just that: they provide you with a framework for your story. A framework that guides you through the necessary stages to tell an exciting story that triggers emotions, builds tension, and plays with the psychological impact of content.

You can choose from various frameworks for different situations and purposes.

Once you have read about the most common business storytelling frameworks, you will be able to recognize them in newsletters, blog posts, and sales letters – even on some product landing pages.

Common Business Storytelling Frameworks

#1 the hero’s journey.

The Hero’s Journey is a widely used framework that is also referred to as the monomyth. It describes the common structure of stories across cultures and time periods. It is a universal pattern that can be found in myths, legends, fairy tales, novels, films, and even business stories. follows a straightforward outline:

The Hero’s Journey is a twelve-stage process that guides the protagonist from their ordinary life to their ultimate transformation. The stages are as follows:

1. The Ordinary World: Introduces the protagonist (aka hero) and their everyday life. Establishes the protagonist’s desires and goals.

2. The Call to Adventure: The protagonist is presented with an opportunity or challenge that disrupts their ordinary life. The call to adventure marks the beginning of the hero’s journey.

3. Refusal of the Call: The protagonist initially resists or hesitates to accept the call to adventure. They may fear the challenges or responsibilities that lie ahead.

4. Meeting the Mentor: The protagonist encounters a wise and experienced mentor who provides guidance, support, and encouragement. The mentor helps the protagonist prepare for the challenges they will face on their journey.

5. Crossing the Threshold: The hero takes the first step into the unknown, embarking on the treacherous path of their journey. They leave behind their ordinary life and enter a world of adventure and transformation.

6. Tests, Allies, and Enemies: The hero faces a series of obstacles and challenges, they encounter allies who help them and enemies who hinder their progress. They learn new skills, develop their courage, and grow as a person.

7. Approach to the Inner Cave: The hero approaches the central challenge or confrontation that lies at the heart of their quest. They face their deepest fears, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities.

8. Ordeal: The hero faces the ultimate test, facing their deepest fears and vulnerabilities. They may lose everything they hold dear and face their mortality.

9. Reward: The hero acquires a treasure, knowledge, or power that will aid them in completing their quest. This could be physical, symbolic, or spiritual in nature.

10. The Road Back: The hero begins their journey back home, bearing the fruits of their adventure. They face new challenges and temptations as they seek to return to their world.

11. Resurrection: The hero faces a final challenge or temptation that threatens to derail their return. They must overcome their doubts and reaffirm their commitment to their purpose.

12. The Return with the Elixir: The hero is transformed and victorious, overcoming their limitations and achieving their true potential. They share their newfound wisdom and experiences with the world, inspiring others to embark on their own journeys of self-discovery.

The Hero’s Journey is a powerful tool for storytelling because it taps into our shared human experiences of transformation, growth, and overcoming challenges. It is a universal language that you can use to connect with audiences on a deep emotional level.

It is often used in sales messages where the “elixir” becomes the new super product. The hero now puts everything he experiences and learns into a product that will make it so much easier for all buyers to achieve the same results without all the struggles.

#2 The Three-Act Structure

The Three-Act Structure is a storytelling framework that divides the narrative into three distinctive elements:

• Confrontation

The Setup introduces the setting, the characters and their relationships. An inciting incident disrupts the protagonist’s ordinary life and propels them into the main conflict. The conflict or the problem clearly defines the protagonist’s challenge or goal. In a business context, this is the challenge or problem the main character (often that is you or one of your clients whose story you are telling) of the story is facing and the kind of solution they are looking for.

The Confrontation is the heart of the story, where the protagonist faces escalating challenges and obstacles, leading to their transformation. It’s a period of rising action, with the protagonist’s growth and determination being tested. The protagonist is presented with new challenges and obstacles they have to overcome. In a business context, this often describes all the solution attempts and failures. With every failure and struggle the tension (and desperation) rises.

The Resolution brings the story to a close:

• Pre-Climax: A rising tension and sense of urgency as the protagonist approaches the climax.
• Climax: The culmination of the story’s conflict, where the protagonist must make a critical decision or take decisive action. This is often a give up or try one more time situation. The idea for a new tactic or solution attempt is presented.
• Resolution: The conflict is resolved, and the protagonist achieves their goal or faces the consequences of their choices. This usually is the discovery of the one big solution that they have been looking for all the time but never found. But now, finally, they have the secret key to solve the problem.
• Denouement: The aftermath of the climax, where loose ends are tied up and the story’s themes are explored. Proof for the concept should be presented: Numbers to showcase the success, and case studies of clients who have already tried the solution.

#3 The Freytag’s Pyramid

Freytag’s Pyramid is a dramatic structure commonly used in literature and storytelling to map out the rise and fall of tension within a narrative. It was introduced by German novelist and playwright Gustav Freytag in his book “Die Technik des Dramas” (The Technique of the Drama) in 1863.

The pyramid consists of five narrative sections:

• Exposition: This is the introduction to the characters, setting, and the basic situation. It provides the necessary background information to understand the story.
• Rising Action: In this phase, the central conflict or problem begins to develop. Events and complications arise, building the tension and leading towards the story’s climax.
• Climax: The climax is the turning point of the story. It is the moment of greatest tension, where the conflict reaches its peak. The main character faces a critical decision or confrontation that will determine the outcome of the story.
• Falling Action: After the climax, the story begins to wind down. Loose ends are tied up, and the intensity of the conflict diminishes. The consequences of the climax start to unfold.
• Resolution(Denouement): This is the final outcome of the story. Any remaining questions are answered, and the characters’ fates are revealed. The resolution provides closure to the narrative.

#4 The StoryBrand framework

The StoryBrand framework is a marketing and communication strategy developed by Donald Miller, outlined in his book “Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen.” This framework is designed to help businesses and individuals create a clear and compelling message that resonates with their audience. The central idea is to position the customer as the hero of the story, with the business or brand serving as a guide to help the hero (the customer) overcome challenges and achieve success. 

Here are the key components of the StoryBrand framework:

• Character (Hero): In the StoryBrand framework, the customer is the hero. The business or brand is positioned as the guide, not the hero. This shift in perspective helps create a customer-centric message.
• Problem: Identifying the problem also sets the stage for the solution provided by the business or brand.
• Guide (Mentor): Position the business or brand as the guide or mentor who can help the hero (customer) overcome the challenges. 
• Plan: Clearly outline a plan or solution that the business offers to address the customer’s problem. Provide a roadmap for the customer to follow.
• Call to Action: Communicate the next steps or actions that the customer should take. 
• Success (Transformation): Paint a picture of what success looks like for the customer after using the product or service. 
• Failure (Cost of Inaction): Highlight the negative consequences of not taking action. 

The StoryBrand framework is widely used in marketing and brand messaging to create a narrative that resonates with customers, clarifies the value proposition, and ultimately drives engagement and conversions. It’s especially popular for its simplicity and focus on creating a customer-centric story.

#5 The Pixar Story Framework

The Pixar Story Framework, also known as the Pixar Pitch, is a storytelling structure attributed to the creative minds at Pixar Animation Studios. While not as formalized as some other storytelling frameworks, it’s often discussed as a loose guide to creating compelling and emotionally resonant narratives. This framework is not only used in the creation of Pixar’s animated films but has also become popular as a general storytelling guideline. The key elements of the Pixar Story Framework include:

• Once upon a time…: This sets the stage for the story by introducing the main characters, the setting, and the initial situation.
• Every day…: Describes the normal life of the characters before the central conflict or inciting incident occurs.
• One day…: This is the inciting incident, the event that disrupts the normal routine and sets the main plot in motion. It introduces the main conflict or challenge that the characters must face.
• Because of that…: Describes the series of events or consequences that unfold as a direct result of the inciting incident. Each action leads to a reaction, and the story develops in response to the initial challenge.
• Because of that…: This is a continuation of the cause-and-effect chain. The characters respond to challenges and conflicts, with each new action leading to further consequences.
• Until finally…: This is the climax or resolution of the story. It represents the culmination of the character’s journey and the resolution of the central conflict. The characters undergo a transformation or achieve a goal.
• And ever since then…: This provides a glimpse into the new normal or the changed world after the resolution of the conflict. It shows the lasting impact of the characters’ journey.

The Pixar Story Framework is a simple yet effective way to outline the key components of a narrative. It emphasizes the importance of character development, cause and effect, and the transformational journey. While it may not be as rigid as some other storytelling frameworks, it offers a flexible guide for crafting engaging and emotionally resonant stories.

Most classic fairy tales that I have been told in my childhood follow more or less the Pixar Story Framework. As a business storytelling framework, I would use it for a social media post, blog article or an email – not so much for a sales page.

#6 The Problem-Agitate-Solve(PAS) framework

The Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS) framework is a copywriting and marketing approach used to structure persuasive messages and content. It is designed to engage and persuade an audience by addressing a problem, agitating that problem to emphasize its impact, and then presenting a solution. The PAS framework is often employed in sales pages, advertisements, social media hooks and other marketing materials. 

Here’s a breakdown of each component:

• Problem: Begin by identifying and stating the problem that your target audience is facing. The goal is to resonate with the reader or viewer by addressing a challenge or pain point that they can relate to. The more accurately and empathetically the problem is articulated, the more likely the audience will be to continue reading or listening.
• Agitate: After presenting the problem, agitate it by delving deeper into the pain, frustration, or negative consequences associated with it. The idea is to make the problem feel more acute and pressing, intensifying the emotional impact on the audience. This step aims to create a sense of urgency and a heightened desire for a solution.
• Solve: Once the problem has been clearly stated and agitated, present the solution. This is where you introduce your product, service, or idea as the answer to the audience’s problem. Communicate how your solution addresses the challenges highlighted earlier and provides relief or improvement. The emphasis here is on positioning your offering as the remedy to the audience’s pain points.

The PAS framework is effective because it taps into the psychology of problem-solving and emotional engagement. By addressing a problem the audience cares about, making it feel more pressing, and then presenting a solution, marketers aim to guide the audience towards a desired action, such as making a purchase or taking a specific next step.

#7 The Context, Action, Results (CAR) framework

The Context, Action, Results (CAR) framework is a structured approach to sharing personal experiences clearly and concisely. It helps to focus on the key elements of a story, making it more engaging and memorable for the audience.

The CAR framework consists of three main components:

Context: Provide some background information, including the situation, the task at hand, or the challenge you faced. Describe the context in which your actions took place. 

Action: Describe the specific actions you took to address the situation or challenge. Be specific and provide examples of your actions. Focus on the actions that were relevant to the outcome and the learning experience.

Results: State the positive or negative outcomes of your actions. Quantify the results whenever possible by using numbers, percentages, or other measurable metrics. Explain the impact of your actions on the situation or the overall goal.

By following the CAR framework, you can effectively communicate your experiences, skills, and accomplishments in a way that is clear, concise, and memorable for the audience. 

#8 The Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis framework

The Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis framework is a method of critical thinking. It involves presenting opposing viewpoints and then synthesizing them to reach a higher level of understanding. It is a common approach in philosophy, argumentation, and persuasive writing.

The thesis is a proposition or statement that presents a particular point of view or position on an issue. It is the initial statement that sets the stage for the argument and provides the foundation for the subsequent discussion.

Antithesis:

The antithesis is the opposing viewpoint or position that challenges the thesis. It presents a different perspective on the issue, highlighting the weaknesses or limitations of the thesis. The antithesis plays a crucial role in stimulating critical thinking and exploring the complexities of the topic.

The synthesis is the process of reconciling the thesis and antithesis, attempting to find a middle ground or a more nuanced understanding of the issue. It involves combining the strengths of both viewpoints while acknowledging and addressing the limitations of each. The synthesis represents a higher level of understanding that goes beyond the mere presentation of opposing arguments.

The Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis framework is not just about presenting different perspectives; it is about using those perspectives to drive deeper understanding and learning. It encourages active engagement with ideas, challenging assumptions, and seeking more comprehensive insights. This process is essential for critical thinking, effective communication, and personal growth.

#9 The Situation, Complication, Question, Answer (SCQA) framework

The Situation, Complication, Question, Answer (SCQA) framework is a versatile tool that can be used for a variety of purposes, including:

• Problem-solving: By clearly defining the problem, identifying the root cause of the complication, and formulating a question that addresses the issue, the SCQA framework can help you effectively identify and address problems.
• Decision-making: By outlining the situation, considering potential complications, framing questions that weigh the pros and cons of each option, and evaluating the answers, the SCQA framework can guide you toward well-informed decisions.
• Communication: By structuring your communication around the SCQA framework, you can effectively convey information, address concerns, and promote understanding.

The Situation sets the stage for the discussion by providing background information and context. It describes the current state and the problem or challenge at hand.

Complication:

The complication arises from the situation and introduces the obstacle or challenge that needs to be addressed. It describes the specific issue, the problem that needs to be solved, or the question that needs to be answered. 

The question is the crux of the SCQA framework. It arises from the Situation and Complication, and it prompts the search for an answer or solution.

The answer provides the solution or resolution to the complication. It solves the problem or provides the answer to the question. The answer should be well-supported, relevant, and actionable.

The SCQA framework can be applied in various contexts, from personal problem-solving to professional decision-making to effective communication. By following the SCQA steps, you can ensure that your discussions are clear, focused, and lead to meaningful outcomes.

Consider Business Storytelling Frameworks for your content!

Business storytelling frameworks provide you with a framework of suspense that speaks to the audience on an emotional level. The stories usually start by establishing a setting where the protagonist in the story is at a point in their journey where potential customers are right now. The stories continue to build a connection with the audience by relating the struggles, conflicts and challenges that the audience also experiences. The climax of the story is the discovery of a solution. This can then lead to an offer or trust building via numbers and results.

For successful business storytelling, ensure the context of your story is relevant to the question or the point you want to convey.

Avoid vague or generic descriptions. These fail to trigger emotions within your audience. Your personal story and experience speak to your audience on an emotional level when the story relates to feelings and situations your audience is familiar with and is looking for a way out.

Business storytelling frameworks help to structure your thoughts, organize information, and communicate effectively. They are a useful tool when you want to utilize emotional content.

But never forget that the effectiveness of any narrative depends on the storyteller’s ability to craft a resonant, authentic, and rich storyline. Don’t get lost in the frameworks if they stop the flow of your narrative. They are frameworks, you are the storyteller.

Learn all the other parts of content creation in this guide!

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Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis

Summary: Storytellers can use a thesis-antithesis-synthesis story structure to illustrate change and convey a story’s thematic argument.

“The hero . . . discovers and assimilates his opposite. . . . He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty, and life, and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable. Then he finds that he and his opposite are not of differing species, but one flesh.” — Joseph Campbell ( Campbell , Page 160)

In storytelling, thesis-antithesis-synthesis is a structural tool for illustrating change and conveying theme.

“You take a thesis. That’s a statement. Something is true. And then you apply to that an antithesis. ‘No, that’s not true and here’s why.’ Those things collide and in theory what results from that is a new thesis called the synthesis.” ( Mazin )

Structurally, thesis-antithesis-synthesis uses a complex bracketing form to demonstrate change. Thus, it’s based on comparisons , and its main effect is to convey meaning to the audience.

In addition to being a bracketing form, thesis-antithesis-synthesis is a particular application of the rule of three . As such, the form may also help deliver satisfaction, especially when applied to the whole-story level.

Theme in three-act structure

On a high level, thesis-antithesis-sythesis can be viewed in terms of a three act structure. Using mythologist Joseph Campbell’s terminology (with interpretation by screenwriter and story theorist Christopher Vogler), the Ordinary World in the first act is the thesis. ( Vogler , Page 103) The Special World of the second act is the antithesis. ( Vogler , Page 103) And, the hero’s Return as “master of the two worlds” ( Campbell , Page 326) in the third act is the synthesis.

• Act one: thesis A protagonist begins a story with a “lie she believes.” ( Weiland , Page 15) This is the starting thesis we see in the Ordinary World — a claim about the way life works, which the story’s thematic argument will prove is untrue.
• Act two: antithesis The story world and plot repeatedly challenge the protagonist’s mistaken belief until she can no longer hold onto it. In an archetypal character arc, this culminates in an All is Lost moment. ( Snyder , Page 86) The protagonist must go on a soul-searching journey (represented by the Dark Night of the Soul phase) ( Snyder , Page 88) and come to a point of acceptance (often represented by an Epiphany and Recommitment). ( Truby , Page 302)
• Act three: synthesis Newly equipped with the thematic truth of the story (the synthesis), the protagonist challenges and defeats the antagonistic force, “embodying the truth of the theme . . . through action.” ( Mazin )

All three in each act

While it’s useful to think broadly about the structure of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis aligning neatly with the three structural acts of the story, in truth all three can (and probably should — at least in larger stories) be present right from the first act.

To see this more clearly, we can take on a perspective from Vogler, who sees thesis and antithesis in terms of the story’s protagonist and antagonist:

“We could say the protagonist’s point of view or style of living is the thesis of the story. The antithesis is the antagonist’s opposing viewpoint and style. The synthesis is whatever resolves the polarized conflict at the end.” ( Vogler , Page 403)

The protagonist is first confronted by the antithesis not during the second act but earlier, in the middle of the first act.

The antagonistic force is often at work even in the beginning of a story. It upsets the balance of the story world in a “Tipping of the Apple Cart” . Yet, while the protagonist may learn of the antagonistic force early on, it’s at the Call to Adventure that the antithesis first becomes becomes the protagonist’s problem . At that point, it’s impossible for her to ignore.

For example, in George Lucas’ 1974 film Star Wars: A New Hope , the story opens with antagonist Darth Vader seeking to recapture a set of stolen plans for a battle station. This introduces the antagonistic force, which protagonist Luke Skywalker must eventually overcome. Later, when Obi-Wan Kenobi invites Luke to become a Jedi, Luke is confronted with whether or not to align himself with the side opposing Vader.

What about the synthesis? It can be there in the first act, too.

In the tradition of the “Hollywood formula” there’s a reflection character who speaks the thematic truth (synthesis) to the protagonist early on in the story. ( Kowal ) Of course, at that point the protagonist is committed to believing the lie of the thesis, so she rejects it. But it sets up for the story to come.

Let’s look at an example from Crutiz’s 1942 film Casablanca , as explained by editorial director Lou Anders.

Early in the first act, there’s a scene in which protagonist Rick Blaine and Louis, a character designed to help challenge Rick’s thesis, have a conversation.

“The expression of theme is when [Louis] tells Rick, ‘I think you have the letters of transit’ and Rick says, ‘I stick my neck out for no one and nobody.’ And he says, ‘No, you don’t. You’re still a patriot.’” ( Kowal )

In the story’s climax, Rick will choose the cause of freedom over his personal desires, an action that confirms Louis’ insight.

“When Rick gives up the girl in the end, he says, ‘I was right, Ricky, you are a patriot.’ They say, ‘This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’ Bring the curtain down on that line.” ( Kowal )

The payoff in the climax lands because it was set up in the first act. This suggests that even the synthesis, which won’t be triumphant until the third act, has at least a preview in the story’s beginning.

In the second act, the protagonist is confronted with a world that’s different than her own, one where the antithesis looms large. If the first act is the “opening statement” of each side in a trial, the second act is a back-and-forth as the thesis and antithesis each try to argue their case.

In general, the protagonist still pursues her original “thesis” approach through most of the second act. However, she does experience glimpses of the synthesis. This can be especially effective at key moments, like the midpoint of the story. ( Mazin )

For example, in the midpoint of Spielberg’s 1993 film Jurassic Park , Dr. Grant risks his life to save the children, an act that’s out of character with his “thesis” of avoiding uncontrollable futures. Yet it gives a significant hint at where his character will be by the end of the story.

In the midpoint of Jane Austen’s 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice , protagonist Elizabeth Bennet and romantic interest Mr. Darcy speak openly to one another for the first time. While it’s an antagonistic exchange, it’s the first chip in their respective armors, opening a way for the relationship to later come to fruition.

In the All is Lost moment and Dark Night of the Soul, the antithesis definitively disproves the protagonist’s thesis. This utter defeat forces the protagonist into a dilemma. She has tried every possible way to rescue her thesis, and nothing has worked. To move on, she must finally abandon her thesis and accept the truth of the synthesis. (Or, in a tragedy, she is unable to accept the synthesis, and her choice to return obstinately to her failed thesis dooms her.)

In Pride and Prejudice , at the All is Lost moment, Elizabeth’s fifteen-year-old sister elopes with a soundrel. In a piquant Dark Night of the Soul scene, Elizabeth realizes that Mr. Darcy can now no longer associate with her because of the social stigma. While before she disdained his regard (thesis), to her surprise, she finds she grieves the loss. This introduces the first hint that maybe there was something between her and Mr. Darcy after all (synthesis).

In the beginning of the third act, the protagonist has often accepted the truth of the synthesis but not yet fully embraced it. That’s what happens in the climactic moment.

The protagonist may face a temptation to return to the thesis. She must reject that temptation and completely inhabit the synthesis. ( Mazin )

For example, there’s a moment in Star Wars: A New Hope in which Luke must choose between using the conventional method of defeating the enemy — represented by use of his targeting computer — versus giving himself up to the mystical Force tradition to which he has been introduced. At the enouragement of Obi-Wan to “Trust the Force,” Luke chooses to believe. He switches off the targeting computer, and his decision results in victory.

The final surrender and letting go of the thesis definitively overcomes the antithesis. This restores a new, synthesis-based equilibrium to the world.

Change in individual scenes

I’m a proponent of the fractal theory of story structure. That is, that the core structures of story are repeated at different resolutions, from scene to sequence to act on up.

“Imagine looking at a photograph of the branching of a tree: remove any knowledge of scale or context and it would be impossible to tell whether you were looking at twig, branch or trunk; each unit replicates both a smaller and a larger one. And so it is with drama. Stories are built from acts, acts are built from scenes and scenes are built from even smaller units called beats.” ( Yorke , Page 78)

If fractal theory is correct, you should be able to see thesis-antithesis-synthesis working on the individual scene level. And, in fact, it is present.

Editor and Story Grid creator Shawn Coyne suggests that good scenes must involve change. ( Coyne , Page 201) Something must be different in the plot or the characters by the end of the scene, or else the scene has no structural purpose in the story.

Thus, every scene must move from a starting point (a thesis) through some kind of opposition (an antithesis) and arrive at a new, changed resolution point (a synthesis).

Let’s look a bit closer at the midpoint scene from Pride and Prejudice .

In the scene’s immediate context, Elizabeth has just learned that Mr. Darcy hurt her sister Jane. Jane was in love with Mr. Darcy’s friend, Mr. Bingley. Unbeknownst to Jane, Mr. Darcy contrived to thwart Jane’s chances with Mr. Bingley. Elizabeth smarts from the discovery, livid at how Mr. Darcy so casually and cruelly ruined her sister’s hopes.

Elizabeth’s friends are on their way to visit Rosings Park. Mr. Darcy will be there. So, Elizabeth begs to stay home. Her goal is to have space to process her frustration and — at all costs — to avoid Mr. Darcy. This is the starting point for the scene (thesis).

Her solitude is short-lived however. It’s not long before she receives a visit from none other than Mr. Darcy himself. This introduces the antithesis, the conflict that presents the main opposition to her plan. She wanted to avoid Mr. Darcy, but now he has come to her.

The conflict escalates. Elizabeth is as polite as decorum demands, but she wants Mr. Darcy to leave — and quickly. He does not leave. He moves restlessly around the room until things finally reach a breaking point. Mr. Darcy turns to Elizabeth and, to her shock, proposes that she marry him!

Elizabeth is thunderstruck, but she’s in no state of mind to accept him. The gloves come off, and Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy speak their minds openly for the first time. Elizabeth shares her disdain for Mr. Darcy’s coldness and cruelty, and he conveys his contempt for her social relations’ poor standing and even worse behavior.

While it’s rife with conflict, this shift results in synthesis — deep change that will have story-altering consequences. Each now views their relationship (and the other) very differently than before.

In your own storytelling, thesis-antithesis-synthesis can be a tool for thinking about how to illustrate change and convey theme.

On the scene and sequence level, you can think about it as a way to craft structural markers for the plot. A scene begins with a starting point (thesis). You introduce some form of opposition (antithesis). The two battle with each other, and the thesis becomes untenable. This results in a change (synthesis). Then, the process repeats.

On a whole-story level, you can think of thesis-antithesis-synthesis as a way to communicate your thematic argument. Your protagonist begins with a certain thematic belief (thesis). That belief is challenged and shown to be incorrect (antithesis). To reach resolution, the protagonist must abandon her incorrect belief and embrace a true belief about the world (synthesis).

For more on thesis-antithesis-synthesis, listen to writer and director Craig Mazin’s Scriptnotes podcast episode, “How to Write a Movie,” from which this note borrows heavily.

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Beginning, Middle and End

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Trey Parker, creator of South Park, uses an “And, But and Therefore” organization for each script. This was brought to my attention in Randy Olson’s terrific book .  Connection: Hollywood Storytelling Meets Critical Thinking. 

This three-part form is not just found in writing. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his contemporaries were guided by the structure of exposition, development and resolution when composing sonatas.

In photography, people use the rule of thirds  – placing your subject in either the left or right side of the frame – when composing a photo to create more tension, energy and interest. I think the rule of thirds relates to three-act story structure because the imbalance of subject – not being placed in the center of the pic – creates the same tension and energy that conflict/confrontation/development/antithesis does for narrative. That’s probably why a great picture is worth a thousand words, because it presents your brain with the visual content from which it creates a story to find meaning and truth in the image.

In sales, I once had a client describe the process as “Find the hurt, amplify the pain, and heal the wound.” See the set-up, conflict and resolution in his approach?

The next time you have a story to tell, don’t worry about being an expert storyteller. Simply hijack the mind by giving it what it wants, what it needs… a story with a beginning, middle and an end. You’ll know when it works when your audience goes, “Uh-huh, Uh-oh, Aha!”

You’ll even be more popular at parties.

About Park Howell & The Business of Story

Park Howell is a trusted brand story strategist and sought-after keynote speaker on story marketing. His book, Brand Bewitchery , offers a comprehensive guide to attract loyal customers and conjure word-of-mouth marketing.

The widely popular  Business of Story podcast  helps leaders of purpose-driven organizations clarify their stories to grow revenue and amplify their impact. 

Learn more about working with Park Howell and getting your brand story straight through  workshops  or inspiring storytelling keynote presentations .

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Hegel’s Dialectics

“Dialectics” is a term used to describe a method of philosophical argument that involves some sort of contradictory process between opposing sides. In what is perhaps the most classic version of “dialectics”, the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato (see entry on Plato ), for instance, presented his philosophical argument as a back-and-forth dialogue or debate, generally between the character of Socrates, on one side, and some person or group of people to whom Socrates was talking (his interlocutors), on the other. In the course of the dialogues, Socrates’ interlocutors propose definitions of philosophical concepts or express views that Socrates challenges or opposes. The back-and-forth debate between opposing sides produces a kind of linear progression or evolution in philosophical views or positions: as the dialogues go along, Socrates’ interlocutors change or refine their views in response to Socrates’ challenges and come to adopt more sophisticated views. The back-and-forth dialectic between Socrates and his interlocutors thus becomes Plato’s way of arguing against the earlier, less sophisticated views or positions and for the more sophisticated ones later.

“Hegel’s dialectics” refers to the particular dialectical method of argument employed by the 19th Century German philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel (see entry on Hegel ), which, like other “dialectical” methods, relies on a contradictory process between opposing sides. Whereas Plato’s “opposing sides” were people (Socrates and his interlocutors), however, what the “opposing sides” are in Hegel’s work depends on the subject matter he discusses. In his work on logic, for instance, the “opposing sides” are different definitions of logical concepts that are opposed to one another. In the Phenomenology of Spirit , which presents Hegel’s epistemology or philosophy of knowledge, the “opposing sides” are different definitions of consciousness and of the object that consciousness is aware of or claims to know. As in Plato’s dialogues, a contradictory process between “opposing sides” in Hegel’s dialectics leads to a linear evolution or development from less sophisticated definitions or views to more sophisticated ones later. The dialectical process thus constitutes Hegel’s method for arguing against the earlier, less sophisticated definitions or views and for the more sophisticated ones later. Hegel regarded this dialectical method or “speculative mode of cognition” (PR §10) as the hallmark of his philosophy and used the same method in the Phenomenology of Spirit [PhG], as well as in all of the mature works he published later—the entire Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences (including, as its first part, the “Lesser Logic” or the Encyclopaedia Logic [EL]), the Science of Logic [SL], and the Philosophy of Right [PR].

Note that, although Hegel acknowledged that his dialectical method was part of a philosophical tradition stretching back to Plato, he criticized Plato’s version of dialectics. He argued that Plato’s dialectics deals only with limited philosophical claims and is unable to get beyond skepticism or nothingness (SL-M 55–6; SL-dG 34–5; PR, Remark to §31). According to the logic of a traditional reductio ad absurdum argument, if the premises of an argument lead to a contradiction, we must conclude that the premises are false—which leaves us with no premises or with nothing. We must then wait around for new premises to spring up arbitrarily from somewhere else, and then see whether those new premises put us back into nothingness or emptiness once again, if they, too, lead to a contradiction. Because Hegel believed that reason necessarily generates contradictions, as we will see, he thought new premises will indeed produce further contradictions. As he puts the argument, then,

the scepticism that ends up with the bare abstraction of nothingness or emptiness cannot get any further from there, but must wait to see whether something new comes along and what it is, in order to throw it too into the same empty abyss. (PhG-M §79)

Hegel argues that, because Plato’s dialectics cannot get beyond arbitrariness and skepticism, it generates only approximate truths, and falls short of being a genuine science (SL-M 55–6; SL-dG 34–5; PR, Remark to §31; cf. EL Remark to §81). The following sections examine Hegel’s dialectics as well as these issues in more detail.

1. Hegel’s description of his dialectical method

2. applying hegel’s dialectical method to his arguments, 3. why does hegel use dialectics, 4. is hegel’s dialectical method logical, 5. syntactic patterns and special terminology in hegel’s dialectics, english translations of key texts by hegel, english translations of other primary sources, secondary literature, other internet resources, related entries.

Hegel provides the most extensive, general account of his dialectical method in Part I of his Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences , which is often called the Encyclopaedia Logic [EL]. The form or presentation of logic, he says, has three sides or moments (EL §79). These sides are not parts of logic, but, rather, moments of “every concept”, as well as “of everything true in general” (EL Remark to §79; we will see why Hegel thought dialectics is in everything in section 3 ). The first moment—the moment of the understanding—is the moment of fixity, in which concepts or forms have a seemingly stable definition or determination (EL §80).

The second moment—the “ dialectical ” (EL §§79, 81) or “ negatively rational ” (EL §79) moment—is the moment of instability. In this moment, a one-sidedness or restrictedness (EL Remark to §81) in the determination from the moment of understanding comes to the fore, and the determination that was fixed in the first moment passes into its opposite (EL §81). Hegel describes this process as a process of “self-sublation” (EL §81). The English verb “to sublate” translates Hegel’s technical use of the German verb aufheben , which is a crucial concept in his dialectical method. Hegel says that aufheben has a doubled meaning: it means both to cancel (or negate) and to preserve at the same time (PhG §113; SL-M 107; SL-dG 81–2; cf. EL the Addition to §95). The moment of understanding sublates itself because its own character or nature—its one-sidedness or restrictedness—destabilizes its definition and leads it to pass into its opposite. The dialectical moment thus involves a process of self -sublation, or a process in which the determination from the moment of understanding sublates itself , or both cancels and preserves itself , as it pushes on to or passes into its opposite.

The third moment—the “ speculative ” or “ positively rational ” (EL §§79, 82) moment—grasps the unity of the opposition between the first two determinations, or is the positive result of the dissolution or transition of those determinations (EL §82 and Remark to §82). Here, Hegel rejects the traditional, reductio ad absurdum argument, which says that when the premises of an argument lead to a contradiction, then the premises must be discarded altogether, leaving nothing. As Hegel suggests in the Phenomenology , such an argument

is just the skepticism which only ever sees pure nothingness in its result and abstracts from the fact that this nothingness is specifically the nothingness of that from which it results . (PhG-M §79)

Although the speculative moment negates the contradiction, it is a determinate or defined nothingness because it is the result of a specific process. There is something particular about the determination in the moment of understanding—a specific weakness, or some specific aspect that was ignored in its one-sidedness or restrictedness—that leads it to fall apart in the dialectical moment. The speculative moment has a definition, determination or content because it grows out of and unifies the particular character of those earlier determinations, or is “a unity of distinct determinations ” (EL Remark to §82). The speculative moment is thus “truly not empty, abstract nothing , but the negation of certain determinations ” (EL-GSH §82). When the result “is taken as the result of that from which it emerges”, Hegel says, then it is “in fact, the true result; in that case it is itself a determinate nothingness, one which has a content” (PhG-M §79). As he also puts it, “the result is conceived as it is in truth, namely, as a determinate negation [ bestimmte Negation]; a new form has thereby immediately arisen” (PhG-M §79). Or, as he says, “[b]ecause the result, the negation, is a determinate negation [bestimmte Negation ], it has a content ” (SL-dG 33; cf. SL-M 54). Hegel’s claim in both the Phenomenology and the Science of Logic that his philosophy relies on a process of “ determinate negation [ bestimmte Negation]” has sometimes led scholars to describe his dialectics as a method or doctrine of “determinate negation” (see entry on Hegel, section on Science of Logic ; cf. Rosen 1982: 30; Stewart 1996, 2000: 41–3; Winfield 1990: 56).

There are several features of this account that Hegel thinks raise his dialectical method above the arbitrariness of Plato’s dialectics to the level of a genuine science. First, because the determinations in the moment of understanding sublate themselves , Hegel’s dialectics does not require some new idea to show up arbitrarily. Instead, the movement to new determinations is driven by the nature of the earlier determinations and so “comes about on its own accord” (PhG-P §79). Indeed, for Hegel, the movement is driven by necessity (see, e.g., EL Remarks to §§12, 42, 81, 87, 88; PhG §79). The natures of the determinations themselves drive or force them to pass into their opposites. This sense of necessity —the idea that the method involves being forced from earlier moments to later ones—leads Hegel to regard his dialectics as a kind of logic . As he says in the Phenomenology , the method’s “proper exposition belongs to logic” (PhG-M §48). Necessity—the sense of being driven or forced to conclusions—is the hallmark of “logic” in Western philosophy.

Second, because the form or determination that arises is the result of the self-sublation of the determination from the moment of understanding, there is no need for some new idea to show up from the outside. Instead, the transition to the new determination or form is necessitated by earlier moments and hence grows out of the process itself. Unlike in Plato’s arbitrary dialectics, then—which must wait around until some other idea comes in from the outside—in Hegel’s dialectics “nothing extraneous is introduced”, as he says (SL-M 54; cf. SL-dG 33). His dialectics is driven by the nature, immanence or “inwardness” of its own content (SL-M 54; cf. SL-dG 33; cf. PR §31). As he puts it, dialectics is “the principle through which alone immanent coherence and necessity enter into the content of science” (EL-GSH Remark to §81).

Third, because later determinations “sublate” earlier determinations, the earlier determinations are not completely cancelled or negated. On the contrary, the earlier determinations are preserved in the sense that they remain in effect within the later determinations. When Being-for-itself, for instance, is introduced in the logic as the first concept of ideality or universality and is defined by embracing a set of “something-others”, Being-for-itself replaces the something-others as the new concept, but those something-others remain active within the definition of the concept of Being-for-itself. The something-others must continue to do the work of picking out individual somethings before the concept of Being-for-itself can have its own definition as the concept that gathers them up. Being-for-itself replaces the something-others, but it also preserves them, because its definition still requires them to do their work of picking out individual somethings (EL §§95–6).

The concept of “apple”, for example, as a Being-for-itself, would be defined by gathering up individual “somethings” that are the same as one another (as apples). Each individual apple can be what it is (as an apple) only in relation to an “other” that is the same “something” that it is (i.e., an apple). That is the one-sidedness or restrictedness that leads each “something” to pass into its “other” or opposite. The “somethings” are thus both “something-others”. Moreover, their defining processes lead to an endless process of passing back and forth into one another: one “something” can be what it is (as an apple) only in relation to another “something” that is the same as it is, which, in turn, can be what it is (an apple) only in relation to the other “something” that is the same as it is, and so on, back and forth, endlessly (cf. EL §95). The concept of “apple”, as a Being-for-itself, stops that endless, passing-over process by embracing or including the individual something-others (the apples) in its content. It grasps or captures their character or quality as apples . But the “something-others” must do their work of picking out and separating those individual items (the apples) before the concept of “apple”—as the Being-for-itself—can gather them up for its own definition. We can picture the concept of Being-for-itself like this:

Later concepts thus replace, but also preserve, earlier concepts.

Fourth, later concepts both determine and also surpass the limits or finitude of earlier concepts. Earlier determinations sublate themselves —they pass into their others because of some weakness, one-sidedness or restrictedness in their own definitions. There are thus limitations in each of the determinations that lead them to pass into their opposites. As Hegel says, “that is what everything finite is: its own sublation” (EL-GSH Remark to §81). Later determinations define the finiteness of the earlier determinations. From the point of view of the concept of Being-for-itself, for instance, the concept of a “something-other” is limited or finite: although the something-others are supposed to be the same as one another, the character of their sameness (e.g., as apples) is captured only from above, by the higher-level, more universal concept of Being-for-itself. Being-for-itself reveals the limitations of the concept of a “something-other”. It also rises above those limitations, since it can do something that the concept of a something-other cannot do. Dialectics thus allows us to get beyond the finite to the universal. As Hegel puts it, “all genuine, nonexternal elevation above the finite is to be found in this principle [of dialectics]” (EL-GSH Remark to §81).

Fifth, because the determination in the speculative moment grasps the unity of the first two moments, Hegel’s dialectical method leads to concepts or forms that are increasingly comprehensive and universal. As Hegel puts it, the result of the dialectical process

is a new concept but one higher and richer than the preceding—richer because it negates or opposes the preceding and therefore contains it, and it contains even more than that, for it is the unity of itself and its opposite. (SL-dG 33; cf. SL-M 54)

Like Being-for-itself, later concepts are more universal because they unify or are built out of earlier determinations, and include those earlier determinations as part of their definitions. Indeed, many other concepts or determinations can also be depicted as literally surrounding earlier ones (cf. Maybee 2009: 73, 100, 112, 156, 193, 214, 221, 235, 458).

Finally, because the dialectical process leads to increasing comprehensiveness and universality, it ultimately produces a complete series, or drives “to completion” (SL-dG 33; cf. SL-M 54; PhG §79). Dialectics drives to the “Absolute”, to use Hegel’s term, which is the last, final, and completely all-encompassing or unconditioned concept or form in the relevant subject matter under discussion (logic, phenomenology, ethics/politics and so on). The “Absolute” concept or form is unconditioned because its definition or determination contains all the other concepts or forms that were developed earlier in the dialectical process for that subject matter. Moreover, because the process develops necessarily and comprehensively through each concept, form or determination, there are no determinations that are left out of the process. There are therefore no left-over concepts or forms—concepts or forms outside of the “Absolute”—that might “condition” or define it. The “Absolute” is thus unconditioned because it contains all of the conditions in its content, and is not conditioned by anything else outside of it. This Absolute is the highest concept or form of universality for that subject matter. It is the thought or concept of the whole conceptual system for the relevant subject matter. We can picture the Absolute Idea (EL §236), for instance—which is the “Absolute” for logic—as an oval that is filled up with and surrounds numerous, embedded rings of smaller ovals and circles, which represent all of the earlier and less universal determinations from the logical development (cf. Maybee 2009: 30, 600):

Since the “Absolute” concepts for each subject matter lead into one another, when they are taken together, they constitute Hegel’s entire philosophical system, which, as Hegel says, “presents itself therefore as a circle of circles” (EL-GSH §15). We can picture the entire system like this (cf. Maybee 2009: 29):

Together, Hegel believes, these characteristics make his dialectical method genuinely scientific. As he says, “the dialectical constitutes the moving soul of scientific progression” (EL-GSH Remark to §81). He acknowledges that a description of the method can be more or less complete and detailed, but because the method or progression is driven only by the subject matter itself, this dialectical method is the “only true method” (SL-M 54; SL-dG 33).

So far, we have seen how Hegel describes his dialectical method, but we have yet to see how we might read this method into the arguments he offers in his works. Scholars often use the first three stages of the logic as the “textbook example” (Forster 1993: 133) to illustrate how Hegel’s dialectical method should be applied to his arguments. The logic begins with the simple and immediate concept of pure Being, which is said to illustrate the moment of the understanding. We can think of Being here as a concept of pure presence. It is not mediated by any other concept—or is not defined in relation to any other concept—and so is undetermined or has no further determination (EL §86; SL-M 82; SL-dG 59). It asserts bare presence, but what that presence is like has no further determination. Because the thought of pure Being is undetermined and so is a pure abstraction, however, it is really no different from the assertion of pure negation or the absolutely negative (EL §87). It is therefore equally a Nothing (SL-M 82; SL-dG 59). Being’s lack of determination thus leads it to sublate itself and pass into the concept of Nothing (EL §87; SL-M 82; SL-dG 59), which illustrates the dialectical moment.

But if we focus for a moment on the definitions of Being and Nothing themselves, their definitions have the same content. Indeed, both are undetermined, so they have the same kind of undefined content. The only difference between them is “something merely meant ” (EL-GSH Remark to §87), namely, that Being is an undefined content, taken as or meant to be presence, while Nothing is an undefined content, taken as or meant to be absence. The third concept of the logic—which is used to illustrate the speculative moment—unifies the first two moments by capturing the positive result of—or the conclusion that we can draw from—the opposition between the first two moments. The concept of Becoming is the thought of an undefined content, taken as presence (Being) and then taken as absence (Nothing), or taken as absence (Nothing) and then taken as presence (Being). To Become is to go from Being to Nothing or from Nothing to Being, or is, as Hegel puts it, “the immediate vanishing of the one in the other” (SL-M 83; cf. SL-dG 60). The contradiction between Being and Nothing thus is not a reductio ad absurdum , or does not lead to the rejection of both concepts and hence to nothingness—as Hegel had said Plato’s dialectics does (SL-M 55–6; SL-dG 34–5)—but leads to a positive result, namely, to the introduction of a new concept—the synthesis—which unifies the two, earlier, opposed concepts.

We can also use the textbook Being-Nothing-Becoming example to illustrate Hegel’s concept of aufheben (to sublate), which, as we saw, means to cancel (or negate) and to preserve at the same time. Hegel says that the concept of Becoming sublates the concepts of Being and Nothing (SL-M 105; SL-dG 80). Becoming cancels or negates Being and Nothing because it is a new concept that replaces the earlier concepts; but it also preserves Being and Nothing because it relies on those earlier concepts for its own definition. Indeed, it is the first concrete concept in the logic. Unlike Being and Nothing, which had no definition or determination as concepts themselves and so were merely abstract (SL-M 82–3; SL-dG 59–60; cf. EL Addition to §88), Becoming is a “ determinate unity in which there is both Being and Nothing” (SL-M 105; cf. SL-dG 80). Becoming succeeds in having a definition or determination because it is defined by, or piggy-backs on, the concepts of Being and Nothing.

This “textbook” Being-Nothing-Becoming example is closely connected to the traditional idea that Hegel’s dialectics follows a thesis-antithesis-synthesis pattern, which, when applied to the logic, means that one concept is introduced as a “thesis” or positive concept, which then develops into a second concept that negates or is opposed to the first or is its “antithesis”, which in turn leads to a third concept, the “synthesis”, that unifies the first two (see, e.g., McTaggert 1964 [1910]: 3–4; Mure 1950: 302; Stace, 1955 [1924]: 90–3, 125–6; Kosek 1972: 243; E. Harris 1983: 93–7; Singer 1983: 77–79). Versions of this interpretation of Hegel’s dialectics continue to have currency (e.g., Forster 1993: 131; Stewart 2000: 39, 55; Fritzman 2014: 3–5). On this reading, Being is the positive moment or thesis, Nothing is the negative moment or antithesis, and Becoming is the moment of aufheben or synthesis—the concept that cancels and preserves, or unifies and combines, Being and Nothing.

We must be careful, however, not to apply this textbook example too dogmatically to the rest of Hegel’s logic or to his dialectical method more generally (for a classic criticism of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis reading of Hegel’s dialectics, see Mueller 1958). There are other places where this general pattern might describe some of the transitions from stage to stage, but there are many more places where the development does not seem to fit this pattern very well. One place where the pattern seems to hold, for instance, is where the Measure (EL §107)—as the combination of Quality and Quantity—transitions into the Measureless (EL §107), which is opposed to it, which then in turn transitions into Essence, which is the unity or combination of the two earlier sides (EL §111). This series of transitions could be said to follow the general pattern captured by the “textbook example”: Measure would be the moment of the understanding or thesis, the Measureless would be the dialectical moment or antithesis, and Essence would be the speculative moment or synthesis that unifies the two earlier moments. However, before the transition to Essence takes place, the Measureless itself is redefined as a Measure (EL §109)—undercutting a precise parallel with the textbook Being-Nothing-Becoming example, since the transition from Measure to Essence would not follow a Measure-Measureless-Essence pattern, but rather a Measure-(Measureless?)-Measure-Essence pattern.

Other sections of Hegel’s philosophy do not fit the triadic, textbook example of Being-Nothing-Becoming at all, as even interpreters who have supported the traditional reading of Hegel’s dialectics have noted. After using the Being-Nothing-Becoming example to argue that Hegel’s dialectical method consists of “triads” whose members “are called the thesis, antithesis, synthesis” (Stace 1955 [1924]: 93), W.T. Stace, for instance, goes on to warn us that Hegel does not succeed in applying this pattern throughout the philosophical system. It is hard to see, Stace says, how the middle term of some of Hegel’s triads are the opposites or antitheses of the first term, “and there are even ‘triads’ which contain four terms!” (Stace 1955 [1924]: 97). As a matter of fact, one section of Hegel’s logic—the section on Cognition—violates the thesis-antithesis-synthesis pattern because it has only two sub-divisions, rather than three. “The triad is incomplete”, Stace complains. “There is no third. Hegel here abandons the triadic method. Nor is any explanation of his having done so forthcoming” (Stace 1955 [1924]: 286; cf. McTaggart 1964 [1910]: 292).

Interpreters have offered various solutions to the complaint that Hegel’s dialectics sometimes seems to violate the triadic form. Some scholars apply the triadic form fairly loosely across several stages (e.g. Burbidge 1981: 43–5; Taylor 1975: 229–30). Others have applied Hegel’s triadic method to whole sections of his philosophy, rather than to individual stages. For G.R.G. Mure, for instance, the section on Cognition fits neatly into a triadic, thesis-antithesis-synthesis account of dialectics because the whole section is itself the antithesis of the previous section of Hegel’s logic, the section on Life (Mure 1950: 270). Mure argues that Hegel’s triadic form is easier to discern the more broadly we apply it. “The triadic form appears on many scales”, he says, “and the larger the scale we consider the more obvious it is” (Mure 1950: 302).

Scholars who interpret Hegel’s description of dialectics on a smaller scale—as an account of how to get from stage to stage—have also tried to explain why some sections seem to violate the triadic form. J.N. Findlay, for instance—who, like Stace, associates dialectics “with the triad , or with triplicity ”—argues that stages can fit into that form in “more than one sense” (Findlay 1962: 66). The first sense of triplicity echoes the textbook, Being-Nothing-Becoming example. In a second sense, however, Findlay says, the dialectical moment or “contradictory breakdown” is not itself a separate stage, or “does not count as one of the stages”, but is a transition between opposed, “but complementary”, abstract stages that “are developed more or less concurrently” (Findlay 1962: 66). This second sort of triplicity could involve any number of stages: it “could readily have been expanded into a quadruplicity, a quintuplicity and so forth” (Findlay 1962: 66). Still, like Stace, he goes on to complain that many of the transitions in Hegel’s philosophy do not seem to fit the triadic pattern very well. In some triads, the second term is “the direct and obvious contrary of the first”—as in the case of Being and Nothing. In other cases, however, the opposition is, as Findlay puts it, “of a much less extreme character” (Findlay 1962: 69). In some triads, the third term obviously mediates between the first two terms. In other cases, however, he says, the third term is just one possible mediator or unity among other possible ones; and, in yet other cases, “the reconciling functions of the third member are not at all obvious” (Findlay 1962: 70).

Let us look more closely at one place where the “textbook example” of Being-Nothing-Becoming does not seem to describe the dialectical development of Hegel’s logic very well. In a later stage of the logic, the concept of Purpose goes through several iterations, from Abstract Purpose (EL §204), to Finite or Immediate Purpose (EL §205), and then through several stages of a syllogism (EL §206) to Realized Purpose (EL §210). Abstract Purpose is the thought of any kind of purposiveness, where the purpose has not been further determined or defined. It includes not just the kinds of purposes that occur in consciousness, such as needs or drives, but also the “internal purposiveness” or teleological view proposed by the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle (see entry on Aristotle ; EL Remark to §204), according to which things in the world have essences and aim to achieve (or have the purpose of living up to) their essences. Finite Purpose is the moment in which an Abstract Purpose begins to have a determination by fixing on some particular material or content through which it will be realized (EL §205). The Finite Purpose then goes through a process in which it, as the Universality, comes to realize itself as the Purpose over the particular material or content (and hence becomes Realized Purpose) by pushing out into Particularity, then into Singularity (the syllogism U-P-S), and ultimately into ‘out-thereness,’ or into individual objects out there in the world (EL §210; cf. Maybee 2009: 466–493).

Hegel’s description of the development of Purpose does not seem to fit the textbook Being-Nothing-Becoming example or the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model. According to the example and model, Abstract Purpose would be the moment of understanding or thesis, Finite Purpose would be the dialectical moment or antithesis, and Realized Purpose would be the speculative moment or synthesis. Although Finite Purpose has a different determination from Abstract Purpose (it refines the definition of Abstract Purpose), it is hard to see how it would qualify as strictly “opposed” to or as the “antithesis” of Abstract Purpose in the way that Nothing is opposed to or is the antithesis of Being.

There is an answer, however, to the criticism that many of the determinations are not “opposites” in a strict sense. The German term that is translated as “opposite” in Hegel’s description of the moments of dialectics (EL §§81, 82)— entgegensetzen —has three root words: setzen (“to posit or set”), gegen , (“against”), and the prefix ent -, which indicates that something has entered into a new state. The verb entgegensetzen can therefore literally be translated as “to set over against”. The “ engegengesetzte ” into which determinations pass, then, do not need to be the strict “opposites” of the first, but can be determinations that are merely “set against” or are different from the first ones. And the prefix ent -, which suggests that the first determinations are put into a new state, can be explained by Hegel’s claim that the finite determinations from the moment of understanding sublate (cancel but also preserve) themselves (EL §81): later determinations put earlier determinations into a new state by preserving them.

At the same time, there is a technical sense in which a later determination would still be the “opposite” of the earlier determination. Since the second determination is different from the first one, it is the logical negation of the first one, or is not -the-first-determination. If the first determination is “e”, for instance, because the new determination is different from that one, the new one is “not-e” (Kosek 1972: 240). Since Finite Purpose, for instance, has a definition or determination that is different from the definition that Abstract Purpose has, it is not -Abstract-Purpose, or is the negation or opposite of Abstract Purpose in that sense. There is therefore a technical, logical sense in which the second concept or form is the “opposite” or negation of—or is “not”—the first one—though, again, it need not be the “opposite” of the first one in a strict sense.

Other problems remain, however. Because the concept of Realized Purpose is defined through a syllogistic process, it is itself the product of several stages of development (at least four, by my count, if Realized Purpose counts as a separate determination), which would seem to violate a triadic model. Moreover, the concept of Realized Purpose does not, strictly speaking, seem to be the unity or combination of Abstract Purpose and Finite Purpose. Realized Purpose is the result of (and so unifies) the syllogistic process of Finite Purpose, through which Finite Purpose focuses on and is realized in a particular material or content. Realized Purpose thus seems to be a development of Finite Purpose, rather than a unity or combination of Abstract Purpose and Finite Purpose, in the way that Becoming can be said to be the unity or combination of Being and Nothing.

These sorts of considerations have led some scholars to interpret Hegel’s dialectics in a way that is implied by a more literal reading of his claim, in the Encyclopaedia Logic , that the three “sides” of the form of logic—namely, the moment of understanding, the dialectical moment, and the speculative moment—“are moments of each [or every; jedes ] logically-real , that is each [or every; jedes ] concept” (EL Remark to §79; this is an alternative translation). The quotation suggests that each concept goes through all three moments of the dialectical process—a suggestion reinforced by Hegel’s claim, in the Phenomenology , that the result of the process of determinate negation is that “a new form has thereby immediately arisen” (PhG-M §79). According to this interpretation, the three “sides” are not three different concepts or forms that are related to one another in a triad—as the textbook Being-Nothing-Becoming example suggests—but rather different momentary sides or “determinations” in the life, so to speak, of each concept or form as it transitions to the next one. The three moments thus involve only two concepts or forms: the one that comes first, and the one that comes next (examples of philosophers who interpret Hegel’s dialectics in this second way include Maybee 2009; Priest 1989: 402; Rosen 2014: 122, 132; and Winfield 1990: 56).

For the concept of Being, for example, its moment of understanding is its moment of stability, in which it is asserted to be pure presence. This determination is one-sided or restricted however, because, as we saw, it ignores another aspect of Being’s definition, namely, that Being has no content or determination, which is how Being is defined in its dialectical moment. Being thus sublates itself because the one-sidedness of its moment of understanding undermines that determination and leads to the definition it has in the dialectical moment. The speculative moment draws out the implications of these moments: it asserts that Being (as pure presence) implies nothing. It is also the “unity of the determinations in their comparison [ Entgegensetzung ]” (EL §82; alternative translation): since it captures a process from one to the other, it includes Being’s moment of understanding (as pure presence) and dialectical moment (as nothing or undetermined), but also compares those two determinations, or sets (- setzen ) them up against (- gegen ) each other. It even puts Being into a new state (as the prefix ent - suggests) because the next concept, Nothing, will sublate (cancel and preserve) Being.

The concept of Nothing also has all three moments. When it is asserted to be the speculative result of the concept of Being, it has its moment of understanding or stability: it is Nothing, defined as pure absence, as the absence of determination. But Nothing’s moment of understanding is also one-sided or restricted: like Being, Nothing is also an undefined content, which is its determination in its dialectical moment. Nothing thus sublates itself : since it is an undefined content , it is not pure absence after all, but has the same presence that Being did. It is present as an undefined content . Nothing thus sublates Being: it replaces (cancels) Being, but also preserves Being insofar as it has the same definition (as an undefined content) and presence that Being had. We can picture Being and Nothing like this (the circles have dashed outlines to indicate that, as concepts, they are each undefined; cf. Maybee 2009: 51):

In its speculative moment, then, Nothing implies presence or Being, which is the “unity of the determinations in their comparison [ Entgegensetzung ]” (EL §82; alternative translation), since it both includes but—as a process from one to the other—also compares the two earlier determinations of Nothing, first, as pure absence and, second, as just as much presence.

The dialectical process is driven to the next concept or form—Becoming—not by a triadic, thesis-antithesis-synthesis pattern, but by the one-sidedness of Nothing—which leads Nothing to sublate itself—and by the implications of the process so far. Since Being and Nothing have each been exhaustively analyzed as separate concepts, and since they are the only concepts in play, there is only one way for the dialectical process to move forward: whatever concept comes next will have to take account of both Being and Nothing at the same time. Moreover, the process revealed that an undefined content taken to be presence (i.e., Being) implies Nothing (or absence), and that an undefined content taken to be absence (i.e., Nothing) implies presence (i.e., Being). The next concept, then, takes Being and Nothing together and draws out those implications—namely, that Being implies Nothing, and that Nothing implies Being. It is therefore Becoming, defined as two separate processes: one in which Being becomes Nothing, and one in which Nothing becomes Being. We can picture Becoming this way (cf. Maybee 2009: 53):

In a similar way, a one-sidedness or restrictedness in the determination of Finite Purpose together with the implications of earlier stages leads to Realized Purpose. In its moment of understanding, Finite Purpose particularizes into (or presents) its content as “ something-presupposed ” or as a pre-given object (EL §205). I go to a restaurant for the purpose of having dinner, for instance, and order a salad. My purpose of having dinner particularizes as a pre-given object—the salad. But this object or particularity—e.g. the salad—is “inwardly reflected” (EL §205): it has its own content—developed in earlier stages—which the definition of Finite Purpose ignores. We can picture Finite Purpose this way:

In the dialectical moment, Finite Purpose is determined by the previously ignored content, or by that other content. The one-sidedness of Finite Purpose requires the dialectical process to continue through a series of syllogisms that determines Finite Purpose in relation to the ignored content. The first syllogism links the Finite Purpose to the first layer of content in the object: the Purpose or universality (e.g., dinner) goes through the particularity (e.g., the salad) to its content, the singularity (e.g., lettuce as a type of thing)—the syllogism U-P-S (EL §206). But the particularity (e.g., the salad) is itself a universality or purpose, “which at the same time is a syllogism within itself [ in sich ]” (EL Remark to §208; alternative translation), in relation to its own content. The salad is a universality/purpose that particularizes as lettuce (as a type of thing) and has its singularity in this lettuce here—a second syllogism, U-P-S. Thus, the first singularity (e.g., “lettuce” as a type of thing)—which, in this second syllogism, is the particularity or P —“ judges ” (EL §207) or asserts that “ U is S ”: it says that “lettuce” as a universality ( U ) or type of thing is a singularity ( S ), or is “this lettuce here”, for instance. This new singularity (e.g. “this lettuce here”) is itself a combination of subjectivity and objectivity (EL §207): it is an Inner or identifying concept (“lettuce”) that is in a mutually-defining relationship (the circular arrow) with an Outer or out-thereness (“this here”) as its content. In the speculative moment, Finite Purpose is determined by the whole process of development from the moment of understanding—when it is defined by particularizing into a pre-given object with a content that it ignores—to its dialectical moment—when it is also defined by the previously ignored content. We can picture the speculative moment of Finite Purpose this way:

Finite Purpose’s speculative moment leads to Realized Purpose. As soon as Finite Purpose presents all the content, there is a return process (a series of return arrows) that establishes each layer and redefines Finite Purpose as Realized Purpose. The presence of “this lettuce here” establishes the actuality of “lettuce” as a type of thing (an Actuality is a concept that captures a mutually-defining relationship between an Inner and an Outer [EL §142]), which establishes the “salad”, which establishes “dinner” as the Realized Purpose over the whole process. We can picture Realized Purpose this way:

If Hegel’s account of dialectics is a general description of the life of each concept or form, then any section can include as many or as few stages as the development requires. Instead of trying to squeeze the stages into a triadic form (cf. Solomon 1983: 22)—a technique Hegel himself rejects (PhG §50; cf. section 3 )—we can see the process as driven by each determination on its own account: what it succeeds in grasping (which allows it to be stable, for a moment of understanding), what it fails to grasp or capture (in its dialectical moment), and how it leads (in its speculative moment) to a new concept or form that tries to correct for the one-sidedness of the moment of understanding. This sort of process might reveal a kind of argument that, as Hegel had promised, might produce a comprehensive and exhaustive exploration of every concept, form or determination in each subject matter, as well as raise dialectics above a haphazard analysis of various philosophical views to the level of a genuine science.

We can begin to see why Hegel was motivated to use a dialectical method by examining the project he set for himself, particularly in relation to the work of David Hume and Immanuel Kant (see entries on Hume and Kant ). Hume had argued against what we can think of as the naïve view of how we come to have scientific knowledge. According to the naïve view, we gain knowledge of the world by using our senses to pull the world into our heads, so to speak. Although we may have to use careful observations and do experiments, our knowledge of the world is basically a mirror or copy of what the world is like. Hume argued, however, that naïve science’s claim that our knowledge corresponds to or copies what the world is like does not work. Take the scientific concept of cause, for instance. According to that concept of cause, to say that one event causes another is to say that there is a necessary connection between the first event (the cause) and the second event (the effect), such that, when the first event happens, the second event must also happen. According to naïve science, when we claim (or know) that some event causes some other event, our claim mirrors or copies what the world is like. It follows that the necessary, causal connection between the two events must itself be out there in the world. However, Hume argued, we never observe any such necessary causal connection in our experience of the world, nor can we infer that one exists based on our reasoning (see Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature , Book I, Part III, Section II; Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding , Section VII, Part I). There is nothing in the world itself that our idea of cause mirrors or copies.

Kant thought Hume’s argument led to an unacceptable, skeptical conclusion, and he rejected Hume’s own solution to the skepticism (see Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason , B5, B19–20). Hume suggested that our idea of causal necessity is grounded merely in custom or habit, since it is generated by our own imaginations after repeated observations of one sort of event following another sort of event (see Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature , Book I, Section VI; Hegel also rejected Hume’s solution, see EL §39). For Kant, science and knowledge should be grounded in reason, and he proposed a solution that aimed to reestablish the connection between reason and knowledge that was broken by Hume’s skeptical argument. Kant’s solution involved proposing a Copernican revolution in philosophy ( Critique of Pure Reason , Bxvi). Nicholas Copernicus was the Polish astronomer who said that the earth revolves around the sun, rather than the other way around. Kant proposed a similar solution to Hume’s skepticism. Naïve science assumes that our knowledge revolves around what the world is like, but, Hume’s criticism argued, this view entails that we cannot then have knowledge of scientific causes through reason. We can reestablish a connection between reason and knowledge, however, Kant suggested, if we say—not that knowledge revolves around what the world is like—but that knowledge revolves around what we are like . For the purposes of our knowledge, Kant said, we do not revolve around the world—the world revolves around us. Because we are rational creatures, we share a cognitive structure with one another that regularizes our experiences of the world. This intersubjectively shared structure of rationality—and not the world itself—grounds our knowledge.

However, Kant’s solution to Hume’s skepticism led to a skeptical conclusion of its own that Hegel rejected. While the intersubjectively shared structure of our reason might allow us to have knowledge of the world from our perspective, so to speak, we cannot get outside of our mental, rational structures to see what the world might be like in itself. As Kant had to admit, according to his theory, there is still a world in itself or “Thing-in-itself” ( Ding an sich ) about which we can know nothing (see, e.g., Critique of Pure Reason , Bxxv–xxvi). Hegel rejected Kant’s skeptical conclusion that we can know nothing about the world- or Thing-in-itself, and he intended his own philosophy to be a response to this view (see, e.g., EL §44 and the Remark to §44).

How did Hegel respond to Kant’s skepticism—especially since Hegel accepted Kant’s Copernican revolution, or Kant’s claim that we have knowledge of the world because of what we are like, because of our reason? How, for Hegel, can we get out of our heads to see the world as it is in itself? Hegel’s answer is very close to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle’s response to Plato. Plato argued that we have knowledge of the world only through the Forms. The Forms are perfectly universal, rational concepts or ideas. Because the world is imperfect, however, Plato exiled the Forms to their own realm. Although things in the world get their definitions by participating in the Forms, those things are, at best, imperfect copies of the universal Forms (see, e.g., Parmenides 131–135a). The Forms are therefore not in this world, but in a separate realm of their own. Aristotle argued, however, that the world is knowable not because things in the world are imperfect copies of the Forms, but because the Forms are in things themselves as the defining essences of those things (see, e.g., De Anima [ On the Soul ], Book I, Chapter 1 [403a26–403b18]; Metaphysics , Book VII, Chapter 6 [1031b6–1032a5] and Chapter 8 [1033b20–1034a8]).

In a similar way, Hegel’s answer to Kant is that we can get out of our heads to see what the world is like in itself—and hence can have knowledge of the world in itself—because the very same rationality or reason that is in our heads is in the world itself . As Hegel apparently put it in a lecture, the opposition or antithesis between the subjective and objective disappears by saying, as the Ancients did,

that nous governs the world, or by our own saying that there is reason in the world, by which we mean that reason is the soul of the world, inhabits it, and is immanent in it, as it own, innermost nature, its universal. (EL-GSH Addition 1 to §24)

Hegel used an example familiar from Aristotle’s work to illustrate this view:

“to be an animal”, the kind considered as the universal, pertains to the determinate animal and constitutes its determinate essentiality. If we were to deprive a dog of its animality we could not say what it is. (EL-GSH Addition 1 to §24; cf. SL-dG 16–17, SL-M 36-37)

Kant’s mistake, then, was that he regarded reason or rationality as only in our heads, Hegel suggests (EL §§43–44), rather than in both us and the world itself (see also below in this section and section 4 ). We can use our reason to have knowledge of the world because the very same reason that is in us, is in the world itself as it own defining principle. The rationality or reason in the world makes reality understandable, and that is why we can have knowledge of, or can understand, reality with our rationality. Dialectics—which is Hegel’s account of reason—characterizes not only logic, but also “everything true in general” (EL Remark to §79).

But why does Hegel come to define reason in terms of dialectics, and hence adopt a dialectical method? We can begin to see what drove Hegel to adopt a dialectical method by returning once again to Plato’s philosophy. Plato argued that we can have knowledge of the world only by grasping the Forms, which are perfectly universal, rational concepts or ideas. Because things in the world are so imperfect, however, Plato concluded that the Forms are not in this world, but in a realm of their own. After all, if a human being were perfectly beautiful, for instance, then he or she would never become not-beautiful. But human beings change, get old, and die, and so can be, at best, imperfect copies of the Form of beauty—though they get whatever beauty they have by participating in that Form. Moreover, for Plato, things in the world are such imperfect copies that we cannot gain knowledge of the Forms by studying things in the world, but only through reason, that is, only by using our rationality to access the separate realm of the Forms (as Plato argued in the well-known parable of the cave; Republic , Book 7, 514–516b).

Notice, however, that Plato’s conclusion that the Forms cannot be in this world and so must be exiled to a separate realm rests on two claims. First, it rests on the claim that the world is an imperfect and messy place—a claim that is hard to deny. But it also rests on the assumption that the Forms—the universal, rational concepts or ideas of reason itself—are static and fixed, and so cannot grasp the messiness within the imperfect world. Hegel is able to link reason back to our messy world by changing the definition of reason. Instead of saying that reason consists of static universals, concepts or ideas, Hegel says that the universal concepts or forms are themselves messy . Against Plato, Hegel’s dialectical method allows him to argue that universal concepts can “overgrasp” (from the German verb übergreifen ) the messy, dialectical nature of the world because they, themselves, are dialectical . Moreover, because later concepts build on or sublate (cancel, but also preserve) earlier concepts, the later, more universal concepts grasp the dialectical processes of earlier concepts. As a result, higher-level concepts can grasp not only the dialectical nature of earlier concepts or forms, but also the dialectical processes that make the world itself a messy place. The highest definition of the concept of beauty, for instance, would not take beauty to be fixed and static, but would include within it the dialectical nature or finiteness of beauty, the idea that beauty becomes, on its own account, not-beauty. This dialectical understanding of the concept of beauty can then overgrasp the dialectical and finite nature of beauty in the world, and hence the truth that, in the world, beautiful things themselves become not-beautiful, or might be beautiful in one respect and not another. Similarly, the highest determination of the concept of “tree” will include within its definition the dialectical process of development and change from seed to sapling to tree. As Hegel says, dialectics is “the principle of all natural and spiritual life” (SL-M 56; SL-dG 35), or “the moving soul of scientific progression” (EL §81). Dialectics is what drives the development of both reason as well as of things in the world. A dialectical reason can overgrasp a dialectical world.

Two further journeys into the history of philosophy will help to show why Hegel chose dialectics as his method of argument. As we saw, Hegel argues against Kant’s skepticism by suggesting that reason is not only in our heads, but in the world itself. To show that reason is in the world itself, however, Hegel has to show that reason can be what it is without us human beings to help it. He has to show that reason can develop on its own, and does not need us to do the developing for it (at least for those things in the world that are not human-created). As we saw (cf. section 1 ), central to Hegel’s dialectics is the idea that concepts or forms develop on their own because they “self-sublate”, or sublate (cancel and preserve) themselves , and so pass into subsequent concepts or forms on their own accounts, because of their own, dialectical natures. Thus reason, as it were, drives itself, and hence does not need our heads to develop it. Hegel needs an account of self-driving reason to get beyond Kant’s skepticism.

Ironically, Hegel derives the basic outlines of his account of self-driving reason from Kant. Kant divided human rationality into two faculties: the faculty of the understanding and the faculty of reason. The understanding uses concepts to organize and regularize our experiences of the world. Reason’s job is to coordinate the concepts and categories of the understanding by developing a completely unified, conceptual system, and it does this work, Kant thought, on its own, independently of how those concepts might apply to the world. Reason coordinates the concepts of the understanding by following out necessary chains of syllogisms to produce concepts that achieve higher and higher levels of conceptual unity. Indeed, this process will lead reason to produce its own transcendental ideas, or concepts that go beyond the world of experience. Kant calls this necessary, concept-creating reason “speculative” reason (cf. Critique of Pure Reason , Bxx–xxi, A327/B384). Reason creates its own concepts or ideas—it “speculates”—by generating new and increasingly comprehensive concepts of its own, independently of the understanding. In the end, Kant thought, reason will follow out such chains of syllogisms until it develops completely comprehensive or unconditioned universals—universals that contain all of the conditions or all of the less-comprehensive concepts that help to define them. As we saw (cf. section 1 ), Hegel’s dialectics adopts Kant’s notion of a self-driving and concept-creating “speculative” reason, as well as Kant’s idea that reason aims toward unconditioned universality or absolute concepts.

Ultimately, Kant thought, reasons’ necessary, self-driving activity will lead it to produce contradictions—what he called the “antinomies”, which consist of a thesis and antithesis. Once reason has generated the unconditioned concept of the whole world, for instance, Kant argued, it can look at the world in two, contradictory ways. In the first antinomy, reason can see the world (1) as the whole totality or as the unconditioned, or (2) as the series of syllogisms that led up to that totality. If reason sees the world as the unconditioned or as a complete whole that is not conditioned by anything else, then it will see the world as having a beginning and end in terms of space and time, and so will conclude (the thesis) that the world has a beginning and end or limit. But if reason sees the world as the series, in which each member of the series is conditioned by the previous member, then the world will appear to be without a beginning and infinite, and reason will conclude (the antithesis) that the world does not have a limit in terms of space and time (cf. Critique of Pure Reason , A417–18/B445–6). Reason thus leads to a contradiction: it holds both that the world has a limit and that it does not have a limit at the same time. Because reason’s own process of self-development will lead it to develop contradictions or to be dialectical in this way, Kant thought that reason must be kept in check by the understanding. Any conclusions that reason draws that do not fall within the purview of the understanding cannot be applied to the world of experience, Kant said, and so cannot be considered genuine knowledge ( Critique of Pure Reason , A506/B534).

Hegel adopts Kant’s dialectical conception of reason, but he liberates reason for knowledge from the tyranny of the understanding. Kant was right that reason speculatively generates concepts on its own, and that this speculative process is driven by necessity and leads to concepts of increasing universality or comprehensiveness. Kant was even right to suggest—as he had shown in the discussion of the antinomies—that reason is dialectical, or necessarily produces contradictions on its own. Again, Kant’s mistake was that he fell short of saying that these contradictions are in the world itself. He failed to apply the insights of his discussion of the antinomies to “ things in themselves ” (SL-M 56; SL-dG 35; see also section 4 ). Indeed, Kant’s own argument proves that the dialectical nature of reason can be applied to things themselves. The fact that reason develops those contradictions on its own, without our heads to help it , shows that those contradictions are not just in our heads, but are objective, or in the world itself. Kant, however, failed to draw this conclusion, and continued to regard reason’s conclusions as illusions. Still, Kant’s philosophy vindicated the general idea that the contradictions he took to be illusions are both objective—or out there in the world—and necessary. As Hegel puts it, Kant vindicates the general idea of “the objectivity of the illusion and the necessity of the contradiction which belongs to the nature of thought determinations” (SL-M 56; cf. SL-dG 35), or to the nature of concepts themselves.

The work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (see entry on Fichte ) showed Hegel how dialectics can get beyond Kant—beyond the contradictions that, as Kant had shown, reason (necessarily) develops on its own, beyond the reductio ad absurdum argument (which, as we saw above, holds that a contradiction leads to nothingness), and beyond Kant’s skepticism, or Kant’s claim that reason’s contradictions must be reined in by the understanding and cannot count as knowledge. Fichte argued that the task of discovering the foundation of all human knowledge leads to a contradiction or opposition between the self and the not-self (it is not important, for our purposes, why Fichte held this view). The kind of reasoning that leads to this contradiction, Fichte said, is the analytical or antithetical method of reasoning, which involves drawing out an opposition between elements (in this case, the self and not-self) that are being compared to, or equated with, one another. While the traditional reductio ad absurdum argument would lead us to reject both sides of the contradiction and start from scratch, Fichte argued that the contradiction or opposition between the self and not-self can be resolved. In particular, the contradiction is resolved by positing a third concept—the concept of divisibility—which unites the two sides ( The Science of Knowledge , I: 110–11; Fichte 1982: 108–110). The concept of divisibility is produced by a synthetic procedure of reasoning, which involves “discovering in opposites the respect in which they are alike ” ( The Science of Knowledge , I: 112–13; Fichte 1982: 111). Indeed, Fichte argued, not only is the move to resolve contradictions with synthetic concepts or judgments possible, it is necessary . As he says of the move from the contradiction between self and not-self to the synthetic concept of divisibility,

there can be no further question as to the possibility of this [synthesis], nor can any ground for it be given; it is absolutely possible, and we are entitled to it without further grounds of any kind. ( The Science of Knowledge , I: 114; Fichte 1982: 112)

Since the analytical method leads to oppositions or contradictions, he argued, if we use only analytic judgments, “we not only do not get very far, as Kant says; we do not get anywhere at all” ( The Science of Knowledge , I: 113; Fichte 1982: 112). Without the synthetic concepts or judgments, we are left, as the classic reductio ad absurdum argument suggests, with nothing at all. The synthetic concepts or judgments are thus necessary to get beyond contradiction without leaving us with nothing.

Fichte’s account of the synthetic method provides Hegel with the key to moving beyond Kant. Fichte suggested that a synthetic concept that unifies the results of a dialectically-generated contradiction does not completely cancel the contradictory sides, but only limits them. As he said, in general, “[t]o limit something is to abolish its reality, not wholly , but in part only” ( The Science of Knowledge , I: 108; Fichte 1982: 108). Instead of concluding, as a reductio ad absurdum requires, that the two sides of a contradiction must be dismissed altogether, the synthetic concept or judgment retroactively justifies the opposing sides by demonstrating their limit, by showing which part of reality they attach to and which they do not ( The Science of Knowledge , I: 108–10; Fichte 1982: 108–9), or by determining in what respect and to what degree they are each true. For Hegel, as we saw (cf. section 1 ), later concepts and forms sublate—both cancel and preserve —earlier concepts and forms in the sense that they include earlier concepts and forms in their own definitions. From the point of view of the later concepts or forms, the earlier ones still have some validity, that is, they have a limited validity or truth defined by the higher-level concept or form.

Dialectically generated contradictions are therefore not a defect to be reigned in by the understanding, as Kant had said, but invitations for reason to “speculate”, that is, for reason to generate precisely the sort of increasingly comprehensive and universal concepts and forms that Kant had said reason aims to develop. Ultimately, Hegel thought, as we saw (cf. section 1 ), the dialectical process leads to a completely unconditioned concept or form for each subject matter—the Absolute Idea (logic), Absolute Spirit (phenomenology), Absolute Idea of right and law ( Philosophy of Right ), and so on—which, taken together, form the “circle of circles” (EL §15) that constitutes the whole philosophical system or “Idea” (EL §15) that both overgrasps the world and makes it understandable (for us).

Note that, while Hegel was clearly influenced by Fichte’s work, he never adopted Fichte’s triadic “thesis—antithesis—synthesis” language in his descriptions of his own philosophy (Mueller 1958: 411–2; Solomon 1983: 23), though he did apparently use it in his lectures to describe Kant’s philosophy (LHP III: 477). Indeed, Hegel criticized formalistic uses of the method of “ triplicity [Triplizität]” (PhG-P §50) inspired by Kant—a criticism that could well have been aimed at Fichte. Hegel argued that Kantian-inspired uses of triadic form had been reduced to “a lifeless schema” and “an actual semblance [ eigentlichen Scheinen ]” (PhG §50; alternative translation) that, like a formula in mathematics, was simply imposed on top of subject matters. Instead, a properly scientific use of Kant’s “triplicity” should flow—as he said his own dialectical method did (see section 1 )—out of “the inner life and self-movement” (PhG §51) of the content.

Scholars have often questioned whether Hegel’s dialectical method is logical. Some of their skepticism grows out of the role that contradiction plays in his thought and argument. While many of the oppositions embedded in the dialectical development and the definitions of concepts or forms are not contradictions in the strict sense, as we saw ( section 2 , above), scholars such as Graham Priest have suggested that some of them arguably are (Priest 1989: 391). Hegel even holds, against Kant (cf. section 3 above), that there are contradictions, not only in thought, but also in the world. Motion, for instance, Hegel says, is an “ existent contradiction”. As he describes it:

Something moves, not because now it is here and there at another now, but because in one and the same now it is here and not here, because in this here, it is and is not at the same time. (SL-dG 382; cf. SL-M 440)

Kant’s sorts of antinomies (cf. section 3 above) or contradictions more generally are therefore, as Hegel puts it in one place, “in all objects of all kinds, in all representations, concepts and ideas” (EL-GSH Remark to §48). Hegel thus seems to reject, as he himself explicitly claims (SL-M 439–40; SL-dG 381–82), the law of non-contradiction, which is a fundamental principle of formal logic—the classical, Aristotelian logic (see entries on Aristotle’s Logic and Contradiction ) that dominated during Hegel’s lifetime as well as the dominant systems of symbolic logic today (cf. Priest 1989: 391; Düsing 2010: 97–103). According to the law of non-contradiction, something cannot be both true and false at the same time or, put another way, “x” and “not-x” cannot both be true at the same time.

Hegel’s apparent rejection of the law of non-contradiction has led some interpreters to regard his dialectics as illogical, even “absurd” (Popper 1940: 420; 1962: 330; 2002: 443). Karl R. Popper, for instance, argued that accepting Hegel’s and other dialecticians’ rejection of the law of non-contradiction as part of both a logical theory and a general theory of the world “would mean a complete breakdown of science” (Popper 1940: 408; 1962: 317; 2002: 426). Since, according to today’s systems of symbolic logic, he suggested, the truth of a contradiction leads logically to any claim (any claim can logically be inferred from two contradictory claims), if we allow contradictory claims to be valid or true together, then we would have no reason to rule out any claim whatsoever (Popper 1940: 408–410; 1962: 317–319; 2002: 426–429).

Popper was notoriously hostile toward Hegel’s work (cf. Popper 2013: 242–289; for a scathing criticism of Popper’s analysis see Kaufmann 1976 [1972]), but, as Priest has noted (Priest 1989: 389–91), even some sympathetic interpreters have been inspired by today’s dominant systems of symbolic logic to hold that the kind of contradiction that is embedded in Hegel’s dialectics cannot be genuine contradiction in the strict sense. While Dieter Wandschneider, for instance, grants that his sympathetic theory of dialectic “is not presented as a faithful interpretation of the Hegelian text” (Wandschneider 2010: 32), he uses the same logical argument that Popper offered in defense of the claim that “dialectical contradiction is not a ‘normal’ contradiction, but one that is actually only an apparent contradiction” (Wandschneider 2010: 37). The suggestion (by the traditional, triadic account of Hegel’s dialectics, cf. section 2 , above) that Being and Nothing (or non-being) is a contradiction, for instance, he says, rests on an ambiguity. Being is an undefined content, taken to mean being or presence, while Nothing is an undefined content, taken to mean nothing or absence ( section 2 , above; cf. Wandschneider 2010: 34–35). Being is Nothing (or non-being) with respect to the property they have as concepts, namely, that they both have an undefined content. But Being is not Nothing (or non-being) with respect to their meaning (Wandschneider 2010: 34–38). The supposed contradiction between them, then, Wandschneider suggests, takes place “in different respects ”. It is therefore only an apparent contradiction. “Rightly understood”, he concludes, “there can be no talk of contradiction ” (Wandschneider 2010: 38).

Inoue Kazumi also argues that dialectical contradiction in the Hegelian sense does not violate the law of non-contradiction (Inoue 2014: 121–123), and he rejects Popper’s claim that Hegel’s dialectical method is incompatible with good science. A dialectical contradiction, Inoue says, is a contradiction that arises when the same topic is considered from different vantage points, but each vantage point by itself does not violate the law of non-contradiction (Inoue 2014: 120). The understanding leads to contradictions, as Hegel said (cf. section 3 above), because it examines a topic from a fixed point of view; reason embraces contradictions because it examines a topic from multiple points of view (Inoue 2014: 121). The geocentric theory that the sun revolves around the Earth and the heliocentric theory that the Earth revolves around the sun, for instance, Inoue suggests, are both correct from certain points of view. We live our everyday lives from a vantage point in which the sun makes a periodic rotation around the Earth roughly every 24 hours. Astronomers make their observations from a geocentric point of view and then translate those observations into a heliocentric one. From these points of view, the geocentric account is not incorrect. But physics, particularly in its concepts of mass and force, requires the heliocentric account. For science—which takes all these points of view into consideration—both theories are valid: they are dialectically contradictory, though neither theory, by itself, violates the law of non-contradiction (Inoue 2014: 126–127). To insist that the Earth really revolves around the sun is merely an irrational, reductive prejudice, theoretically and practically (Inoue 2014: 126). Dialectical contradictions, Inoue says, are, as Hegel said, constructive: they lead to concepts or points of view that grasp the world from ever wider and more encompassing perspectives, culminating ultimately in the “Absolute” (Inoue 2014: 121; cf. section 1 , above). Hegel’s claim that motion violates the law of non-contradiction, Inoue suggests, is an expression of the idea that contradictory claims can be true when motion is described from more than one point of view (Inoue 2014: 123). (For a similar reading of Hegel’s conception of dialectical contradiction, which influenced Inoue’s account [Inoue 2014: 121], see Düsing 2010: 102–103.)

Other interpreters, however, have been inspired by Hegel’s dialectics to develop alternative systems of logic that do not subscribe to the law of non-contradiction. Priest, for instance, has defended Hegel’s rejection of the law of non-contradiction (cf. Priest 1989; 1997 [2006: 4]). The acceptance of some contradictions, he has suggested, does not require the acceptance of all contradictions (Priest 1989: 392). Popper’s logical argument is also unconvincing. Contradictions lead logically to any claim whatsoever, as Popper said, only if we presuppose that nothing can be both true and false at the same time (i.e. only if we presuppose that the law of non-contradiction is correct), which is just what Hegel denies. Popper’s logical argument thus assumes what it is supposed to prove or begs the question (Priest 1989: 392; 1997 [2006: 5–6]), and so is not convincing. Moreover, consistency (not allowing contradictions), Priest suggests, is actually “a very weak constraint” (Priest 1997 [2006: 104]) on what counts as a rational inference. Other principles or criteria—such as being strongly disproved (or supported) by the data—are more important for determining whether a claim or inference is rational (Priest 1997 [2006: 105]). And, as Hegel pointed out, Priest says, the data—namely, “the world as it appears ” (as Hegel puts it in EL) or “ordinary experience itself” (as Hegel puts it in SL)—suggest that there are indeed contradictions (EL Remark to §48; SL-dG 382; cf. SL-M 440; Priest 1989: 389, 399–400). Hegel is right, for instance, Priest argues, that change, and motion in particular, are examples of real or existing contradictions (Priest 1985; 1989: 396–97; 1997 [2006: 172–181, 213–15]). What distinguishes motion, as a process, from a situation in which something is simply here at one time and then some other place at some other time is the embodiment of contradiction: that, in a process of motion, there is one (span of) time in which something is both here and not here at the same time (in that span of time) (Priest 1985: 340–341; 1997 [2006: 172–175, 213–214]). A system of logic, Priest suggests, is always just a theory about what good reasoning should be like (Priest 1989: 392). A dialectical logic that admits that there are “dialetheia” or true contradictions (Priest 1989: 388), he says, is a broader theory or version of logic than traditional, formal logics that subscribe to the law of non-contradiction. Those traditional logics apply only to topics or domains that are consistent, primarily domains that are “static and changeless” (Priest 1989: 391; cf. 395); dialectical/dialetheic logic handles consistent domains, but also applies to domains in which there are dialetheia. Thus Priest, extending Hegel’s own concept of aufheben (“to sublate”; cf. section 1 , above), suggests that traditional “formal logic is perfectly valid in its domain, but dialectical (dialetheic) logic is more general” (Priest 1989: 395). (For an earlier example of a logical system that allows contradiction and was inspired in part by Hegel [and Marx], see Jaśkowski 1999: 36 [1969: 143] [cf. Inoue 2014: 128–129]. For more on dialetheic logic generally, see the entry on Dialetheism .)

Worries that Hegel’s arguments fail to fit his account of dialectics (see section 2 , above) have led some interpreters to conclude that his method is arbitrary or that his works have no single dialectical method at all (Findlay 1962: 93; Solomon 1983: 21). These interpreters reject the idea that there is any logical necessity to the moves from stage to stage. “[T]he important point to make here, and again and again”, Robert C. Solomon writes, for instance,

is that the transition from the first form to the second, or the transition from the first form of the Phenomenology all the way to the last, is not in any way a deductive necessity. The connections are anything but entailments, and the Phenomenology could always take another route and other starting points. (Solomon 1983: 230)

In a footnote to this passage, Solomon adds “that a formalization of Hegel’s logic, however ingenious, is impossible” (Solomon 1983: 230).

Some scholars have argued that Hegel’s necessity is not intended to be logical necessity. Walter Kaufmann suggested, for instance, that the necessity at work in Hegel’s dialectic is a kind of organic necessity. The moves in the Phenomenology , he said, follow one another “in the way in which, to use a Hegelian image from the preface, bud, blossom and fruit succeed each other” (Kaufmann 1965: 148; 1966: 132). Findlay argued that later stages provide what he called a “ higher-order comment ” on earlier stages, even if later stages do not follow from earlier ones in a trivial way (Findlay 1966: 367). Solomon suggested that the necessity that Hegel wants is not “‘necessity’ in the modern sense of ‘logical necessity,’” (Solomon 1983: 209), but a kind of progression (Solomon 1983: 207), or a “necessity within a context for some purpose ” (Solomon 1983: 209). John Burbidge defines Hegel’s necessity in terms of three senses of the relationship between actuality and possibility, only the last of which is logical necessity (Burbidge 1981: 195–6).

Other scholars have defined the necessity of Hegel’s dialectics in terms of a transcendental argument. A transcendental argument begins with uncontroversial facts of experience and tries to show that other conditions must be present—or are necessary—for those facts to be possible. Jon Stewart argues, for instance, that “Hegel’s dialectic in the Phenomenology is a transcendental account” in this sense, and thus has the necessity of that form of argument (Stewart 2000: 23; cf. Taylor 1975: 97, 226–7; for a critique of this view, see Pinkard 1988: 7, 15).

Some scholars have avoided these debates by interpreting Hegel’s dialectics in a literary way. In his examination of the epistemological theory of the Phenomenology , for instance, Kenneth R. Westphal offers “a literary model” of Hegel’s dialectics based on the story of Sophocles’ play Antigone (Westphal 2003: 14, 16). Ermanno Bencivenga offers an interpretation that combines a narrative approach with a concept of necessity. For him, the necessity of Hegel’s dialectical logic can be captured by the notion of telling a good story—where “good” implies that the story is both creative and correct at the same time (Bencivenga 2000: 43–65).

Debate over whether Hegel’s dialectical logic is logical may also be fueled in part by discomfort with his particular brand of logic. Unlike today’s symbolic logics, Hegel’s logic is not only syntactic, but also semantic (cf. Berto 2007; Maybee 2009: xx–xxv; Margolis 2010: 193–94). Hegel’s interest in semantics appears, for instance, in the very first stages of his logic, where the difference between Being and Nothing is “something merely meant ” (EL-GSH Remark to §87; cf. section 2 above). While some of the moves from stage to stage are driven by syntactic necessity, other moves are driven by the meanings of the concepts in play. Indeed, Hegel rejected what he regarded as the overly formalistic logics that dominated the field during his day (EL Remark to §162; SL-M 43–44; SL-dG 24). A logic that deals only with the forms of logical arguments and not the meanings of the concepts used in those argument forms will do no better in terms of preserving truth than the old joke about computer programs suggests: garbage in, garbage out. In those logics, if we (using today’s versions of formal, symbolic logic) plug in something for the P or Q (in the proposition “if P then Q ” or “ P → Q ”, for instance) or for the “ F ”, “ G ”, or “ x ” (in the proposition “if F is x , then G is x ” or “ F x → G x ”, for instance) that means something true, then the syntax of formal logics will preserve that truth. But if we plug in something for those terms that is untrue or meaningless (garbage in), then the syntax of formal logic will lead to an untrue or meaningless conclusion (garbage out). Today’s versions of prepositional logic also assume that we know what the meaning of “is” is. Against these sorts of logics, Hegel wanted to develop a logic that not only preserved truth, but also determined how to construct truthful claims in the first place. A logic that defines concepts (semantics) as well as their relationships with one another (syntax) will show, Hegel thought, how concepts can be combined into meaningful forms. Because interpreters are familiar with modern logics focused on syntax, however, they may regard Hegel’s syntactic and semantic logic as not really logical (cf. Maybee 2009: xvii–xxv).

In Hegel’s other works, the moves from stage to stage are often driven, not only by syntax and semantics—that is, by logic (given his account of logic)—but also by considerations that grow out of the relevant subject matter. In the Phenomenology , for instance, the moves are driven by syntax, semantics, and by phenomenological factors. Sometimes a move from one stage to the next is driven by a syntactic need—the need to stop an endless, back-and-forth process, for instance, or to take a new path after all the current options have been exhausted (cf. section 5 ). Sometimes, a move is driven by the meaning of a concept, such as the concept of a “This” or “Thing”. And sometimes a move is driven by a phenomenological need or necessity—by requirements of consciousness , or by the fact that the Phenomenology is about a consciousness that claims to be aware of (or to know) something. The logic of the Phenomenology is thus a phenomeno -logic, or a logic driven by logic—syntax and semantics—and by phenomenological considerations. Still, interpreters such as Quentin Lauer have suggested that, for Hegel,

phenomeno-logy is a logic of appearing, a logic of implication, like any other logic, even though not of the formal entailment with which logicians and mathematicians are familiar. (Lauer 1976: 3)

Lauer warns us against dismissing the idea that there is any implication or necessity in Hegel’s method at all (Lauer 1976: 3). (Other scholars who also believe there is a logical necessity to the dialectics of the Phenomenology include Hyppolite 1974: 78–9 and H.S. Harris 1997: xii.)

We should also be careful not to exaggerate the “necessity” of formal, symbolic logics. Even in these logics, there can often be more than one path from some premises to the same conclusion, logical operators can be dealt with in different orders, and different sets of operations can be used to reach the same conclusions. There is therefore often no strict, necessary “entailment” from one step to the next, even though the conclusion might be entailed by the whole series of steps, taken together. As in today’s logics, then, whether Hegel’s dialectics counts as logical depends on the degree to which he shows that we are forced—necessarily—from earlier stages or series of stages to later stages (see also section 5 ).

Although Hegel’s dialectics is driven by syntax, semantics and considerations specific to the different subject matters ( section 4 above), several important syntactic patterns appear repeatedly throughout his works. In many places, the dialectical process is driven by a syntactic necessity that is really a kind of exhaustion: when the current strategy has been exhausted, the process is forced, necessarily, to employ a new strategy. As we saw ( section 2 ), once the strategy of treating Being and Nothing as separate concepts is exhausted, the dialectical process must, necessarily, adopt a different strategy, namely, one that takes the two concepts together. The concept of Becoming captures the first way in which Being and Nothing are taken together. In the stages of Quantum through Number, the concepts of One and Many take turns defining the whole quantity as well as the quantitative bits inside that make it up: first, the One is the whole, while the Many are the bits; then the whole and the bits are all Ones; then the Many is the whole, while the bits are each a One; and finally the whole and the bits are all a Many. We can picture the development like this (cf. Maybee 2009, xviii–xix):

Since One and Many have been exhausted, the next stage, Ratio, must, necessarily, employ a different strategy to grasp the elements in play. Just as Being-for-itself is a concept of universality for Quality and captures the character of a set of something-others in its content (see section 1 ), so Ratio (the whole rectangle with rounded corners) is a concept of universality for Quantity and captures the character of a set of quantities in its content (EL §105–6; cf. Maybee 2009, xviii–xix, 95–7). In another version of syntactic necessity driven by exhaustion, the dialectical development will take account of every aspect or layer, so to speak, of a concept or form—as we saw in the stages of Purpose outlined above, for instance ( section 2 ). Once all the aspects or layers of a concept or form have been taken account of and so exhausted, the dialectical development must also, necessarily, employ a different strategy in the next stage to grasp the elements in play.

In a second, common syntactic pattern, the dialectical development leads to an endless, back-and-forth process—a “bad” (EL-BD §94) or “spurious” (EL-GSH §94) infinity—between two concepts or forms. Hegel’s dialectics cannot rest with spurious infinities. So long as the dialectical process is passing endlessly back and forth between two elements, it is never finished, and the concept or form in play cannot be determined. Spurious infinities must therefore be resolved or stopped, and they are always resolved by a higher-level, more universal concept. In some cases, a new, higher-level concept is introduced that stops the spurious infinity by grasping the whole, back-and-forth process. Being-for-itself (cf. section 1 ), for instance, is introduced as a new, more universal concept that embraces—and hence stops—the whole, back-and-forth process between “something-others”. However, if the back-and-forth process takes place between a concept and its own content—in which case the concept already embraces the content—then that embracing concept is redefined in a new way that grasps the whole, back-and-forth process. The new definition raises the embracing concept to a higher level of universality—as a totality (an “all”) or as a complete and completed concept. Examples from logic include the redefinition of Appearance as the whole World of Appearance (EL §132; cf. SL-M 505–7, SL-dG 443–4), the move in which the endless, back-and-forth process of Real Possibility redefines the Condition as a totality (EL §147; cf. SL-M 547, SL-dG 483), and the move in which a back-and-forth process created by finite Cognition and finite Willing redefines the Subjective Idea as Absolute Idea (EL §§234–5; cf. SL-M 822–3, SL-dG 733–4).

Some of the most famous terms in Hegel’s works—“in itself [ an sich ]”, “for itself [ für sich ]” and “in and for itself [ an und für sich ]”—capture other, common, syntactic patterns. A concept or form is “in itself” when it has a determination that it gets by being defined against its “other” (cf. Being-in-itself, EL §91). A concept or form is “for itself” when it is defined only in relation to its own content, so that, while it is technically defined in relation to an “other”, the “other” is not really an “other” for it. As a result, it is really defined only in relation to itself. Unlike an “in itself” concept or form, then, a “for itself” concept or form seems to have its definition on its own, or does not need a genuine “other” to be defined (like other concepts or forms, however, “for itself” concepts or forms turn out to be dialectical too, and hence push on to new concepts or forms). In the logic, Being-for-itself (cf. section 1 ), which is defined by embracing the “something others” in its content, is the first, “for itself” concept or form.

A concept or form is “in and for itself” when it is doubly “for itself”, or “for itself” not only in terms of content —insofar as it embraces its content—but also in terms of form or presentation, insofar as it also has the activity of presenting its content. It is “for itself” (embraces its content) for itself (through its own activity), or not only embraces its content (the “for itself” of content) but also presents its content through its own activity (the “for itself” of form). The second “for itself” of form provides the concept with a logical activity (i.e., presenting its content) and hence a definition that goes beyond—and so is separate from—the definition that its content has. Since it has a definition of its own that is separate from the definition of its content, it comes to be defined—in the “in itself” sense— against its content, which has become its “other”. Because this “other” is still its own content, however, the concept or form is both “in itself” but also still “for itself” at the same time, or is “in and for itself” (EL §§148–9; cf. Maybee 2009: 244–6). The “in and for itself” relationship is the hallmark of a genuine Concept (EL §160), and captures the idea that a genuine concept is defined not only from the bottom up by its content, but also from the top down through its own activity of presenting its content. The genuine concept of animal, for instance, is not only defined by embracing its content (namely, all animals) from the bottom up, but also has a definition of its own, separate from that content, that leads it to determine (and so present), from the top down, what counts as an animal.

Other technical, syntactic terms include aufheben (“to sublate”), which we already saw ( section 1 ), and “abstract”. To say that a concept or form is “abstract” is to say that it is only a partial definition. Hegel describes the moment of understanding, for instance, as abstract (EL §§79, 80) because it is a one-sided or restricted definition or determination ( section 1 ). Conversely, a concept or form is “concrete” in the most basic sense when it has a content or definition that it gets from being built out of other concepts or forms. As we saw ( section 2 ), Hegel regarded Becoming as the first concrete concept in the logic.

Although Hegel’s writing and his use of technical terms can make his philosophy notoriously difficult, his work can also be very rewarding. In spite of—or perhaps because of—the difficulty, there are a surprising number of fresh ideas in his work that have not yet been fully explored in philosophy.

• [EL], The Encyclopedia Logic [Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften I] . Because the translations of EL listed below use the same section numbers as well as sub-paragraphs (“Remarks”) and sub-sub-paragraphs (“Additions”), citations simply to “EL” refer to either translation. If the phrasing in English is unique to a specific translation, the translators’ initials are added.
• [EL-BD], Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline Part I: Science of Logic [Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften I] , translated by Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
• [EL-GSH], The Encyclopedia Logic: Part 1 of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences [Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften I] , translated by T.F. Geraets, W.A. Suchting, and H.S. Harris, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991.
• [LHP], Lectures on the History of Philosophy [Geschichte der Philosophie] , in three volumes, translated by E.S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1974.
• [PhG], Phenomenology of Spirit [Phänomenologie des Geistes] . Because the translations of PhG listed below use the same section numbers, citations simply to “PhG” refer to either translation. If the phrasing in English is unique to a specific translation, the translator’s initial is added.
• [PhG-M], Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit [Phänomenologie des Geistes] , translated by A.V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
• [PhG-P], Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit [Phänomenologie des Geistes] , translated and edited by Terry Pinkard, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
• [PR], Elements of the Philosophy of Right [Philosophie des Rechts] , edited by Allen W. Wood and translated by H.B. Nisbet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
• [SL-dG], Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Science of Logic [Wissenschaft der Logik] , translated by George di Giovanni, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
• [SL-M], Hegel’s Science of Logic [Wissenschaft der Logik] , translated by A.V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
• Aristotle, 1954, The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation (in two volumes), edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Citations to Aristotle’s text use the Bekker numbers, which appear in the margins of many translations of Aristotle’s works.)
• Fichte, J.G., 1982 [1794/95], The Science of Knowledge , translated by Peter Heath and John Lachs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Citations to Fichte’s work include references to the volume and page number in the German edition of Fichte’s collected works edited by I.H Fichte, which are used in the margins of many translations of Fichte’s works.)
• Kant, Immanuel, 1999 [1781], Critique of Pure Reason , translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Citations to Kant’s text use the “Ak.” numbers, which appear in the margins of many translations of Kant’s works.)
• Plato, 1961, The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including the Letters , edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Citations to Plato’s text use the Stephanus numbers, which appear in the margins of many translations of Plato’s works.)
• Bencivenga, Ermanno, 2000, Hegel’s Dialectical Logic , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Berto, Francesco, 2007, “Hegel’s Dialectics as a Semantic Theory: An Analytic Reading”, European Journal of Philosophy , 15(1): 19–39.
• Burbidge, John, 1981, On Hegel’s Logic: Fragments of a Commentary , Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
• Düsing, Klaus, 2010, “Ontology and Dialectic in Hegel’s Thought”, translated by Andrés Colapinto, in The Dimensions of Hegel’s Dialectic , Nectarios G. Limmnatis (ed.), London: Continuum, pp. 97–122.
• Findlay, J.N., 1962, Hegel: A Re-Examination , New York: Collier Books.
• –––, 1966, Review of Hegel: Reinterpretation, Texts, and Commentary , by Walter Kaufmann. The Philosophical Quarterly , 16(65): 366–68.
• Forster, Michael, 1993, “Hegel’s Dialectical Method”, in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel , Frederick C. Beiser (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 130–170.
• Fritzman, J.M., 2014, Hegel , Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Harris, Errol E., 1983, An Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel , Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
• Harris, H.S. (Henry Silton), 1997, Hegel’s Ladder (in two volumes: vol. I, The Pilgrimage of Reason , and vol. II, The Odyssey of Spirit ), Indianapolis, IN: Hackett).
• Hyppolite, Jean, 1974, Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit ”, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
• Inoue, Kazumi, 2014, “Dialectical Contradictions and Classical Formal Logic”, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science , 28(2), 113–132.
• Jaśkowski, Stanislaw, 1999 [1969], “A Propositional Calculus for Inconsistent Deductive Systems”, translated by Olgierd Wojtasiewicz and A. Pietruszczak, Logic and Logical Philosophy (7)7: 35–56. (This article is a republication, with some changes, of a 1969 translation by Wojtasiewicz entitled “Propositional Calculus for Contradictory Deductive Systems (Communicated at the Meeting of March 19, 1948)”, published in Studia Logica , 24, 143–160.)
• Kaufmann, Walter Arnold, 1965, Hegel: Reinterpretation, Texts, and Commentary , Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company Inc.
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• –––, 1976 [1972], “The Hegel Myth and its Method”, in Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays , Alasdair MacIntyre (ed.), Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press: 21–60. (This is a republication of the 1972 Anchor Books/Doubleday edition.)
• Kosok, Michael, 1972, “The Formalization of Hegel’s Dialectical Logic: Its Formal Structure, Logical Interpretation and Intuitive Foundation”, in Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays , Alisdair MacIntyre (ed.), Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press: 237–87.
• Lauer, Quentin, 1976, A Reading of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” , New York: Fordham University Press.
• Margolis, Joseph, 2010, “The Greening of Hegel’s Dialectical Logic”, in The Dimensions of Hegel’s Dialectic , Nectarios G. Limmnatis (ed.), London: Continuum, pp. 193–215.
• Maybee, Julie E., 2009, Picturing Hegel: An Illustrated Guide to Hegel’s “Encyclopaedia Logic” , Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
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• –––, 1997 [2006], In Contradiction: A Study of the Transconsistent , expanded edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press; first edition, Martinus Nijhoff, 1997.
• Popper, Karl R., 1940, “What is Dialectic?”, Mind , 49(196): 403–426. (This article was reprinted, with some changes, in two different editions of Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge , listed below.)
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• –––, 2002, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge , second edition, London: Routledge Classics.
• –––, 2013, The Open Society and its Enemies , Princeton: Princeton University Press. (This is a one-volume republication of the original, two-volume edition first published by Princeton University Press in 1945.)
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• Stewart, Jon, 1996, “Hegel’s Doctrine of Determinate Negation: An Example from ‘Sense-certainty’ and ‘Perception’”, Idealistic Studies , 26(1): 57–78.
• –––, 2000, The Unity of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit”: A Systematic Interpretation , Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
• Taylor, Charles, 1975, Hegel , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Wandschneider, Dieter, 2010, “Dialectic as the ‘Self-Fulfillment’ of Logic”, translated by Anthony Jensen, in The Dimensions of Hegel’s Dialectic , Nectarios G. Limmnatis (ed.), London: Continuum, pp. 31–54.
• Westphal, Kenneth R., 2003, Hegel’s Epistemology: A Philosophical Introduction to the “Phenomenology of Spirit” , Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company.
• Winfield, Richard Dien, 1990, “The Method of Hegel’s Science of Logic ”, in Essays on Hegel’s Logic , George di Giovanni (ed.), Albany, NY: State University of New York, pp. 45–57.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

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Thesis, antithesis, synthesis

The classic pattern of academic arguments is:

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

An Idea (Thesis) is proposed, an opposing Idea (Antithesis) is proposed, and a revised Idea incorporating (Synthesis) the opposing Idea is arrived at. This revised idea sometimes sparks another opposing idea, another synthesis, and so on…

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In philosophy, the triad of thesis, antithesis, synthesis (German: These, Antithese, Synthese; originally: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis) is a progression of three ideas or propositions. The first idea, the thesis, is a formal statement illustrating a point; it is followed by the second idea, the antithesis, that contradicts or negates the first; and lastly, the third idea, the synthesis, resolves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis. It is often used to explain the dialectical method of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, but Hegel never used the terms himself; instead his triad was concrete, abstract, absolute. The thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad actually originated with Johann Fichte.

1. History of the Idea

Thomas McFarland (2002), in his Prolegomena to Coleridge's Opus Maximum , [ 1 ] identifies Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) as the genesis of the thesis/antithesis dyad. Kant concretises his ideas into:

• Thesis: "The world has a beginning in time, and is limited with regard to space."
• Antithesis: "The world has no beginning and no limits in space, but is infinite, in respect to both time and space."

Inasmuch as conjectures like these can be said to be resolvable, Fichte's Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre ( Foundations of the Science of Knowledge , 1794) resolved Kant's dyad by synthesis, posing the question thus: [ 1 ]

• No synthesis is possible without a preceding antithesis. As little as antithesis without synthesis, or synthesis without antithesis, is possible; just as little possible are both without thesis.

Fichte employed the triadic idea "thesis–antithesis–synthesis" as a formula for the explanation of change. [ 2 ] Fichte was the first to use the trilogy of words together, [ 3 ] in his Grundriss des Eigentümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre, in Rücksicht auf das theoretische Vermögen (1795, Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with respect to the Theoretical Faculty ): "Die jetzt aufgezeigte Handlung ist thetisch, antithetisch und synthetisch zugleich." ["The action here described is simultaneously thetic, antithetic, and synthetic." [ 4 ] ]

Still according to McFarland, Schelling then, in his Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie (1795), arranged the terms schematically in pyramidal form.

According to Walter Kaufmann (1966), although the triad is often thought to form part of an analysis of historical and philosophical progress called the Hegelian dialectic, the assumption is erroneous: [ 5 ]

Whoever looks for the stereotype of the allegedly Hegelian dialectic in Hegel's Phenomenology will not find it. What one does find on looking 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.

Gustav E. Mueller (1958) concurs that Hegel was not a proponent of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and clarifies what the concept of dialectic might have meant in Hegel's thought. [ 6 ]

"Dialectic" does not for Hegel mean "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis." Dialectic means that any "ism" – which has a polar opposite, or is a special viewpoint leaving "the rest" to itself – must be criticized by the logic of philosophical thought, whose problem is reality as such, the "World-itself".

According to Mueller, the attribution of this tripartite dialectic to Hegel is the result of "inept reading" and simplistic translations which do not take into account the genesis of Hegel's terms:

Hegel's greatness is as indisputable as his obscurity. The matter is due to his peculiar terminology and style; they are undoubtedly involved and complicated, and seem excessively abstract. These linguistic troubles, in turn, have given rise to legends which are like perverse and magic spectacles – once you wear them, the text simply vanishes. Theodor Haering's monumental and standard work has for the first time cleared up the linguistic problem. By carefully analyzing every sentence from his early writings, which were published only in this century, he has shown how Hegel's terminology evolved – though it was complete when he began to publish. Hegel's contemporaries were immediately baffled, because what was clear to him was not clear to his readers, who were not initiated into the genesis of his terms. An example of how a legend can grow on inept reading is this: Translate "Begriff" by "concept," "Vernunft" by "reason" and "Wissenschaft" by "science" – and they are all good dictionary translations – and you have transformed the great critic of rationalism and irrationalism into a ridiculous champion of an absurd pan-logistic rationalism and scientism. The most vexing and devastating Hegel legend is that everything is thought in "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis." [ 7 ]

Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) adopted and extended the triad, especially in Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy (1847). Here, in Chapter 2, Marx is obsessed by the word "thesis"; [ 8 ] it forms an important part of the basis for the Marxist theory of history. [ 9 ]

2. Writing Pedagogy

In modern times, the dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis has been implemented across the world as a strategy for organizing expositional writing. For example, this technique is taught as a basic organizing principle in French schools: [ 10 ]

The French learn to value and practice eloquence from a young age. Almost from day one, students are taught to produce plans for their compositions, and are graded on them. The structures change with fashions. Youngsters were once taught to express a progression of ideas. Now they follow a dialectic model of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. If you listen carefully to the French arguing about any topic they all follow this model closely: they present an idea, explain possible objections to it, and then sum up their conclusions. ... This analytical mode of reasoning is integrated into the entire school corpus.

Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis has also been used as a basic scheme to organize writing in the English language. For example, the website WikiPreMed.com advocates the use of this scheme in writing timed essays for the MCAT standardized test: [ 11 ]

For the purposes of writing MCAT essays, the dialectic describes the progression of ideas in a critical thought process that is the force driving your argument. A good dialectical progression propels your arguments in a way that is satisfying to the reader. The thesis is an intellectual proposition. The antithesis is a critical perspective on the thesis. The synthesis solves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis by reconciling their common truths, and forming a new proposition.

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Opus Maximum. Princeton University Press, 2002, p. 89.
• Harry Ritter, Dictionary of Concepts in History. Greenwood Publishing Group (1986), p.114
• Williams, Robert R. (1992). Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other. SUNY Press. p. 46, note 37. 
• Fichte, Johann Gottlieb; Breazeale, Daniel (1993). Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings. Cornell University Press. p. 249. 
• Walter Kaufmann (1966). "§ 37". Hegel: A Reinterpretation. Anchor Books. ISBN 978-0-268-01068-3. OCLC 3168016. https://archive.org/details/hegelreinterpret00kauf. 
• Mueller, Gustav (1958). "The Hegel Legend of "Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis"". Journal of the History of Ideas 19 (4): 411–414. doi:10.2307/2708045.  https://dx.doi.org/10.2307%2F2708045
• Mueller 1958, p. 411.
• marxists.org: Chapter 2 of "The Poverty of Philosophy", by Karl Marx https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm
• Shrimp, Kaleb (2009). "The Validity of Karl Marx's Theory of Historical Materialism". Major Themes in Economics 11 (1): 35–56. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/mtie/vol11/iss1/5/. Retrieved 13 September 2018. 
• Nadeau, Jean-Benoit; Barlow, Julie (2003). Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France But Not The French. Sourcebooks, Inc.. p. 62. https://archive.org/details/sixtymillionfren00nade_041. 
• "The MCAT writing assignment.". Wisebridge Learning Systems, LLC. http://www.wikipremed.com/mcat_essay.php. Retrieved 1 November 2015. 

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's dialectic is one of the most influential philosophical theories of the modern era. It has been studied and debated for centuries, and its influence can be seen in many aspects of modern thought. Hegel's dialectic has been used to explain a wide range of topics from politics to art, from science to religion. In this comprehensive overview, we will explore the major tenets of Hegel's dialectic and its implications for our understanding of the world. Hegel's dialectic is based on the premise that all things have an inherent contradiction between their opposites.

It follows that any idea or concept can be understood through a synthesis of the two opposing forces. This synthesis creates a new and higher understanding, which then leads to further progress and development. Hegel's dialectic has been used in many different fields, from philosophy to economics, and it provides an important framework for understanding how our world works. In this article, we will explore the historical origins and development of Hegel's dialectic. We will also examine its application in various fields, from politics to art, from science to religion.

Finally, we will consider the implications of Hegel's dialectic for our understanding of the world today. Hegel's dialectic is a philosophical theory developed by German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the early 19th century. It is based on the concept of thesis, antithesis and synthesis , which are steps in the process of progress. The thesis is an idea or statement that is the starting point of an argument. The antithesis is a statement that contradicts or negates the thesis.

The synthesis is a combination of the two opposing ideas, which produces a new idea or statement. This process can be repeated multiple times, leading to an evolution of ideas. Hegel's dialectic has been used in many fields, such as politics and economics . It has been used to explain how ideas progress through debate and discussion.

In politics, it has been used to explain how different points of view can lead to compromise or resolution. In economics, it has been used to explain how different economic theories can lead to new solutions and strategies. Hegel's dialectic can also be applied to everyday life. For example, it can be used to resolve conflicts between people or groups.

Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis

Thesis and antithesis are two conflicting ideas, while synthesis is the result of their interaction. The dialectic process is a way of understanding how the world works, as it helps to explain the constant flux of ideas and events. It also helps to explain how change and progress are possible. Thesis and antithesis can be thought of as two sides of a coin. One side represents an idea or opinion, while the other side represents its opposite.

When the two sides come together, they create a synthesis that incorporates both sides. This synthesis can then be used to create new ideas or opinions. The dialectic process can be applied in various contexts, such as politics and economics. In politics, it can be used to explain how different factions come together to create policies that are beneficial to all parties. In economics, it can be used to explain how supply and demand interact to create a stable market. Hegel's dialectic can also be used in everyday life.

Applications of Hegel's Dialectic

For example, in the political sphere, it can be used to explore how different ideologies can be reconciled or how compromises can be reached. In economics, Hegel's dialectic has been used to explain the process of economic growth and development. It can be seen as a way of understanding how different economic systems interact with each other and how different economic actors are affected by changes in the marketplace. For example, it can help to explain how different economic policies can lead to different outcomes. Hegel's dialectic has also been applied to other social sciences, such as sociology and anthropology. In particular, it has been used to explore how different social systems interact with each other and how different social groups are affected by changes in their environment.

Using Hegel's Dialectic in Everyday Life

This process can be used to explain how various aspects of life, such as career or relationships, evolve over time. Thesis represents an idea or concept, while antithesis represents the opposite of that idea or concept. Synthesis is the resolution between the two opposing forces. This process is repeated until a conclusion is reached.

For example, in a career conflict between two people, one might present an idea while the other presents the opposite idea. Through discussion and negotiation, the two parties can come to a synthesis that meets both their needs. Hegel's dialectic can also be used to resolve conflicts between groups of people. It involves each party presenting their ideas and opinions, then engaging in dialogue to reach a compromise or agreement.

This process can be applied to any area of life, from politics and economics to relationships and personal growth. It helps to create understanding and respect between different perspectives, allowing everyone to come together in a meaningful way. By understanding and applying Hegel's dialectic in everyday life, we can better navigate our relationships and interactions with others. Through dialogue, negotiation, and compromise we can work towards resolutions that benefit all parties involved.

In economics, it has been used to explain how market forces interact with each other and how different economic theories can be used to explain the same phenomenon. The dialectic has also been used in other fields such as philosophy, science, and psychology. In philosophy, it has been used to explain the relationship between theory and practice and how theories evolve over time. In science, it has been used to explain the relationship between empirical evidence and logical reasoning.

This theory can be applied to any area of life, from career to relationships. The core of Hegel's dialectic involves the concept of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, which is a way of understanding how ideas evolve over time. In this way, the dialectic helps to identify contradictions in a situation and find a resolution through synthesis. In terms of its application to everyday life, the dialectic can be used to find common ground between two opposing sides. For example, if two people are in disagreement, the dialectic can help them identify the underlying issues and then work to resolve them.

Additionally, it can help individuals and groups identify areas where they have common interests, which can lead to more productive conversations and outcomes. The dialectic is also useful in understanding how different perspectives can lead to different solutions. By recognizing different points of view, individuals and groups can gain insight into why certain solutions may not work for everyone involved. This can help to create a more productive environment for collaboration. Finally, the dialectic can be used as a tool for self-reflection. By understanding how different ideas evolve over time and how different perspectives interact, individuals can gain insight into their own views and values.

For example, it can be used to explain the development of a new policy proposal or a new form of government. In economics, Hegel's dialectic can be used to explain the dynamics of supply and demand, or the emergence of a new economic system. In addition, Hegel's dialectic has been applied in other areas, such as education and religion. In education, this theory can be used to explain the process of learning and understanding new concepts. In religion, it can be used to explain the evolution of religious beliefs and practices over time.

This is followed by a synthesis of the two, which creates a new, higher form of understanding. This new understanding then forms the basis for further analysis, which can lead to further synthesis and resolution. Hegel's dialectic can be applied to any area of life, such as career or relationships. For example, if two people have different approaches to a problem, they can use the dialectic to work together to find a solution that works for both of them.

This could involve identifying their respective points of view and then looking for common ground where they can agree. As the synthesis forms, it can provide a basis for further discussion, which may eventually lead to a resolution. The same process can be used to resolve conflicts between groups, such as political parties or countries. By recognizing each side's point of view and then looking for common ground, it is possible to find ways to bridge the divide between them.

This can help create an atmosphere of mutual understanding and respect, which can lead to constructive dialogue and positive outcomes. Hegel's dialectic is a valuable tool for helping people and groups come to agreement and harmony despite their differences. By recognizing both sides' points of view and then looking for common ground, it is possible to create a synthesis that can provide a basis for further discussion and resolution. Hegel's dialectic is a powerful philosophical tool that helps to explain how ideas evolve over time. Through the concept of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, it provides a framework for understanding how opposing forces interact and ultimately create new ideas and solutions.

This theory has been applied to many areas, such as politics and economics, and can be used in everyday life. The article has provided a comprehensive overview of Hegel's dialectic and its various applications.

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher and educator in the nineteenth century. Among his most famous theories is the Hegelian dialectic, which describes an ongoing process of evolution encompassing man, nature, and spirit into a holistic understanding of the universe. Humankind, as an embodied, subjective self, strives for the Absolute, or truth and growth. This self-realization can occur only if embedded within a community that values and grants freedom, and the historical and cultural context of the community serves as a foundation and launching point for continued evolution. Bildung is prominent within Hegel’s work, a term used to describe the education of the individual and collective toward a more ethical, socially responsive state. This chapter examines Hegel’s life, his social and historical context, and the central tenants of the Hegelian dialectic and Bildung to consider what this might mean for institutionalized education in a postmodern world. Through Bildung , it is possible to envision an educational system that promotes the learning of ethics in everyday life, value systems, and freedom of others.

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Baur, M. (Ed.). (2014). G.W.F. Hegel: Key concepts . Routledge.

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Gisewhite, R.A., Eller, E.M. (2023). Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In: Geier, B.A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Thinkers . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81037-5_46-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81037-5_46-1

Received : 26 October 2022

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