Contradiction in Logic and in the Philosophy of History

Abstract

The article seeks to reconstruct the Hegelian notion of contradiction and its role in the development of universal history. The concept runs through the heart of the Hegelian Logic Science, especially in the passage from the Logic of Essence to the Logic of the concept. Contradiction does not characterize a category alongside other categories and is not part of a categorical structure, but appears as a transversal movement that crosses the Science of Logic and articulates the movement of self-construction of the own philosophical system. At first, the article is centered on the concept of contradiction in the Science of Logic, precisely in the passage from the Logic of the essence in the Logic of the concept, from categorial contradictions such as substantiality and accidentality, absolute and relative, and universality and particularity that integrate dialectically. In a second moment, this exposition unfolds in the notion of contradiction in the Philosophy of the universal history while mobile of the reality. In this field of the Philosophy of the real, the universal Spirit is expressed in multiple cultural, political, civilizational and social manifestations. The method consists in the work of reading and interpreting Hegelian texts extracted from the works in question, aided by texts of commentators of the Hegelian work. Because of argumentative questions, we will not follow the Hegelian triad of Logic, Nature and Spirit, but of the Universal Idea as intrinsic to History, articulated in the movement of the rationality of History.