This book traces the development of Dialectical Logic within the history of modern western philosophy, culminating in Marx s materialist dialectics. It brings out the essential contours of Logic through a detailed exposition of the ontological and epistem

"The task, bequeathed to us by Lenin, of creating a Logic (with a capital OLO), i.e. of a systematically developed exposition of dialectics understood as the logic and theory of knowledge of modern materialism, has become particularly acute today. The clearly marked dialectical character of the problems arising in every sphere of social life and scientific knowledge is making it more and more clear that only Marxist-Leninist dialectics has the capacity to be the method of scientific understanding and practical activity, and of actively helping scientists in their theoretical comprehension of experimental and factual data and in solving the problems they meet in the course of research."

Clark Butler presents an innovative analysis of Hegel's most challenging work in Hegel's Logic—the first major English-language treatment of Hegel's Science of Logic to appear in nearly fifteen years. Although earlier commentators on the Logic have considered standard analytical philosophy-and with it modern logic-in opposition to Hegel. Butler views it as a legitimate approach in terms of which Hegel needs to be understood. This interpretation allows him to address the rigor of Hegel's thought on several levels as at once an exercise in purely conceptual redefinition and a full-bodied work in metaphysical ontology and even theology. The result is an account of the Logic intelligible to analytical philosophers as well as non-specialists.

The book presents an integral Marxist conception of the dialectics and methodology of scientific theoretical cognition, of the dialectical interrelation between the abstract and the concrete, of the unity of the historical and the logical, of the correlat

This book, covering all aspects of Hegel's logic, raises fundamental issues as well as particular problems of interpretation. It discusses whether a speculative logic is possible at all and whether Hegelian logic requires a metalogic or whether it can and ought to make an absolute beginning. It examines, conceptually and historically, the being-nothing dialectic, the relation of essence to show (Schein), and Hegel's treatment of the modal categories. It proposes radically different views of the role of the 'understanding' in Hegelian logic and a radically different view of the necessity underlying it. The book concludes with the argument that Hegel's dialectical logic can cope with a problem that Aristotle's could not. Essays on Hegel's Logic provides a welcome introduction to those interested in this central piece of Hegel's system, and it poses the question of whether, and how, the logic provides a closure to the system. In different ways, and with different degrees of explicitness, the book deals precisely with this issue.