What Is the Dialectic

Abstract

This essay will review various theories of the dialectic,both Hegelian and Marxist:these tend to sort themselves out into subjective ones(reflexivity and the like)and objective ones(antagonism and contradiction).It will then turn to issues of the narrative(via Ricoeur and Aristotle)and attempt to translate the Aristotelian plot or narrative categories which Ricoeur tried to apply to history into more properly dialectical ones.