Hegel's Science of Logic

This weekly line-by-line reading and discussion is open to all, including especially beginners with lots of questions and a desire to delve into Science of Logic by G. W. F. Hegel (on its 200th anniversary).

Nearly every left Marxist as well as most academic philosophers trace their roots back to Hegel's dialectic, either by agreeing with parts of it or by denying it. Hegel was working it out in his summary of 2500 years of history in 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit. If the Phenomenology was his first work on the dialectic as a new language of freedom, he meant it as no more than an introduction to his 1812 Science of Logic, which can be called a full immersion in that language.

Lenin personified a divide in the attitude toward Hegel within Marxism when he declared: "It is impossible fully to grasp Marx's Capital, and especially its first chapter, if you have not studied through and understood the whole of Hegel's Logic."

This week we will start Book I, Doctrine of Being.