To the extent that these concepts disregard the fatal contradictions which make up reality, they abstract from the very process of reality. Common sense and science purge themselves from this contradiction but philosophical thought begins with the recognition that the facts do not correspond to the concepts imposed by common sense and scientific reason-in short, with the refusal to accept them. As Hegel defines it: вЂњThinking is, indeed, essentially the negation of that which is immediately before us.вЂќ What does he mean by вЂњnegation,вЂќ the central category of the dialectic?Д®ven HegelвЂ™s most abstract and metaphysical concepts are saturated with experience-experience of a world in whihc the unreasonable becomes reasonable and, as such, determines the facts in which unfreedom is the condition of freedom, and war the guarantor of peace. was written in the hope that it would make a small contribution to the revival, not of Hegel, but of a mental faculty which is in danger of being obliterated: the power of negative thinking.

All genuine progress, he insists, requires the recognition of the negative as a social force and reality. In 1941 Herbert Marcuse published Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory.В In 1960, he added this new preface, which briefly explains the underlying basis of HegelвЂ™s philosophy, and why Marcuse considers dialectics such a powerful approach to theory and politics.

Dialectic thought