Abstract

Excerpted and available here are the Preface, explaining the central argument of _The Birth of Theory_. Chapter 2, demonstrating that the logical categories of "identity/difference," which are the central terms that govern the dialectic as the "unity of opposites," merge with the discipline, and thus name, of dialectic in the Middle Ages, thus constituting a "medieval dialectic" that Hegel himself borrows. Chapter 3, on Hegel's master/slave or lord/bondsman dialectic, here showing that Hegel uses this particular dialectic to describe late feudal agrarian conditions in contemporary Germany, i.e., this dialectic is not a reference to "slavery," or Haiti, nor is it only a transhistorical figure for struggles across time. No, it is deeply medieval in significance and feudal in its economic relationality, revealing to us that Hegel indeed launches a critique of the "material conditions" of his time, regardless of what Marx later says about him. Publisher's abstract: Modern theory needs a history lesson. Neither Marx nor Nietzsche first gave us theory—Hegel did. To support this contention, Andrew Cole’s _The Birth of Theory_ presents a refreshingly clear and lively account of the origins and legacy of Hegel’s dialectic as theory. Cole explains how Hegel boldly broke from modern philosophy when he adopted medieval dialectical habits of thought to fashion his own dialectic. While his contemporaries rejected premodern dialectic as outdated dogma, Hegel embraced both its emphasis on language as thought and its fascination with the categories of identity and difference, creating what we now recognize as theory, distinct from systematic philosophy. Not content merely to change philosophy, Hegel also used this dialectic to expose the persistent archaism of modern life itself, Cole shows, establishing a method of social analysis that has influenced everyone from Marx and the nineteenth-century Hegelians, to Nietzsche and Bakhtin, all the way to Deleuze and Jameson. By uncovering these theoretical filiations across time, _The Birth of Theory_ will not only change the way we read Hegel, but also the way we think about the histories of theory. With chapters that powerfully reanimate the overly familiar topics of ideology, commodity fetishism, and political economy, along with a groundbreaking reinterpretation of Hegel’s famous master/slave dialectic, _The Birth of Theory_ places the disciplines of philosophy, literature, and history in conversation with one another in an unprecedented way. Daring to reconcile the sworn enemies of Hegelianism and Deleuzianism, this timely book will revitalize dialectics for the twenty-first century