The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: McTaggart - The Changes of Method in Hegel's Dialectic, Part 1
The method by which Hegel proceeds from one category to another changes as we pass from the earlier categories to the later. These changes can be reduced to a law from which important deductions can be made regarding the nature and validity of the dialectic, (1) The further the dialectic goes from its starting-point, the less self-centred and independent do the categories appear; and the more permanent becomes the process, until, finally, it is seen to be the only real meaning of the categories. (2) In the categories of Being the thesis and antithesis are neither of them superior to the other. An advance is first made by both being included in the synthesis. In the categories of Essence and the Notion there is no longer an opposition produced by two terms, and mediated by a third; but each term is a direct advance on the one before it. (3) Instead of sudden variations of method as we pass from one great division of the dialectic to another, these seem rather to be evidences of continuous development. (4) This change in method has not destroyed the validity of the process. (5) From this follows the subordinate place of negation in the process. Hegel's logic does not rest on the violation of the law of contradiction, but rather on the necessity of finding for every contradiction a reconciliation in which it vanishes. (6) The finite categories are all contained as elements in the absolute, and the question arises in what relation they stand to each other as thus constituting its moments. It does not seem that this relation is the same in which they stood as finite categories in the process. For the truth which is at the bottom of the whole dialectic is the unreality of any finite category against its synthesis. The procession of the categories, with its advance through oppositions and reconciliations, does not present absolute truth, as Hegel supposed. For in the true process of thought, each category develops from the preceding by rendering explicit what was before implicit, and this is an ideal which from the very nature of dialectic can never be quite realized.