Hegel's Absolute Method after 200 Years

2012 was the 200th anniversary of Hegel's absolute method. First laid out in his Science of Logic, it has served as both a pole of attraction and repulsion for generations of philosophers and revolutionary theorists. It was also the 50th anniversary of Thomas Kuhn's ground breaking Structure of Scientific Revolutions in which absolute method can be seen reflected in today's philosophies of science. Marx had many critiques of Hegel and in each absolute method was both transcended and preserved, beginning from his 1841 doctoral dissertation on Epicurus. Epicurus' philosophy has gained new attention from Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve about the birth of the modern world reflected in the 15th century rediscovery of Epicurus by Renaissance humanists. What is even more relevant to today is the way Marx re-created absolute method by drawing on Epicurus to work out the concept of freely associated labor as the opposite of the fetishism of commodities and capitalism's cultish myth of the isolated individual.

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