Hegel's Dialectics as a Semantic Theory: An Analytic Reading

International audienceWhat is Hegel's dialectics? In 1964, Werner Flach claimed that the research onHegel had not provided an adequate reply to this question (see Flach 1964:55-64). More pessimistically, some years later Hans-Friedrich Fulda admittedthat, despite the considerable efforts of scholars, our Auseinandersetzung with thefamous Hegelian method 'has not led, so far, to any satisfactory result' (Fulda1973: 231). In order to address such a tricky question, in this paper I expand someaspects of the current Anglo-American revitalization of Hegelian philosophy. 1 My reading is based on a very simple idea: the inferential intuition that anessential part of what it is to grasp a conceptual content, and to be able to apply itcorrectly to an object, consists in mastering its connections with the conceptsit entails, and with the concepts that entail it. 2 These connections can beexpressed by meaning postulates . The suggestion that Hegel's dialectics operateson meaning postulates, as far as I know, has been largely ignored by traditional-minded scholars. Nevertheless, it provides a promising path towards a newHegel--towards a better understanding of his philosophy, and in particular of itscore, the dialectical metho