Hegel Dialectic Quotes & Sayings

At the first stage of his dialectic, Hegel affirms that in so far as death is the common ground of man and
animal, it is by accepting death and even by inviting it that the former differentiates himself from the
latter. At the heart of this primordial struggle for recognition, man is thus identified with violent death.
The mystic slogan "Die and become what you are" is taken up once more by Hegel. But "Become what
you are" gives place to "Become what you so far are not." This primitive and passionate desire for
recognition, which is confused with the will to exist, can be satisfied only by a recognition gradually
extended until it embraces everyone. In that everyone wants equally much to be recognized by everyone,
the fight for life will cease only with the recognition of all by all, which will mark the termination of
history. The existence that Hegelian consciousness seeks to obtain is born in the hard-won glory of
collective approval. — Albert Camus

Apparently the world today can no longer be anything other than a world of masters and
slaves because contemporary ideologies, those that are changing the face of the earth, have learned from
Hegel to conceive of history in terms of the dialectic of master and slave. If, on the first morning of the
world, under the empty sky, there is only a master and a slave; even if there is only the bond of master
and slave between a transcendent god and mankind, then there can be no other law in this world than the
law of force. Only a god, or a principle above the master and the slave, could intervene and make men's
history something more than a mere chronicle of their victories and defeats. — Albert Camus

Logic is the science not of external forms of thought, but of the laws of development "of all material, natural and spiritual things", i.e., of the development of the entire concrete content of the world and of its cognition, i.e., the sum-total, the conclusion of the History of knowledge of the world. — Vladimir Lenin

History is one long chain of reflections. Hegel also indicated certain rules that apply for this chain of reflections. Anyone studying history in depth will observe that a thought is usually proposed on the basis of other, previously proposed thoughts. But as soon as one thought is proposed, it will be contradicted by another. A tension arises between these two opposite ways of thinking. But the tension is resolved by the proposal of a third thought which accommodates the best of both points of view. Hegel calls this a dialectic process — Jostein Gaarder

At the foundation of Hegel's thought was his understanding of dialectic, according to which all things unfold in a continuing evolutionary process whereby every state of being inevitably brings forth its opposite. The interaction between these opposites then generates a third stage in which the opposites are integrated - they are at once overcome and fulfilled - in a richer and higher synthesis, which in turn becomes the basis for another dialectical process of opposition and synthesis... Hegel's overriding impulse was to comprehend all dimensions of existence as dialectically integrated in one unitary whole. In Hegel's view, all human thought and all reality is pervaded by contradiction, which alone makes possible the development of higher states of consciousness and higher states of being. — Richard Tarnas