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Alexandre Kojčve: What is Dialectic?
(From: Kojève, Alexandre: Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. Basic Books, New York, 1969. End)
Hegelian Dialectic is not a method of research or of philosophical exposition, but the adequate description of the structure of Being, and of the realization and appearance of Being as well.
To say that Being is dialectical is first to say (on the ontological level) that it is a totality that implies Identity and Negativity. Next, it is to say (on the metaphysical level) that Being realizes itself not only as natural World, but also as a historical (or human) World, these two Worlds exhausting the totality of the objective-real (there is no divine World). It is finally to say (on the phenomenological level) that the objective-real empirically exists and appears not only as inanimate thing, plant, and animal, but also as essentially temporal or mortal historical free individual (who fights and who works). Or, to put it otherwise, to say that there is Totality, or Mediation, or dialectical Overcoming, is to say that in addition to given-Being, there is also creative Action which ends in a Product.
