Dialectic and Difference is the first systematic exploration of Roy Bhaskar's dialectical philosophy and its implications for ethics and justice.
That philosophy has three aims: a dialecticisation of original critical realism, a critical realisation' of dialectic, and a metacritique of western philosophy. In the first, real absence or negativity links structured being to dialectical becoming in a dynamic world. The second draws on Marx to locate the critical impulse in Hegel's dialectic in a material, open and changing totality. The third identifies a central problem in western philosophy from the Greeks on, the failure to think real negativity as the essence of change (ontological monovalence').
Bhaskar's ethics connect basic human ontology with universal principles of freedom and solidarity. He marries (constellates') these with a grasp of how principles are historically shaped. His account of freedom moves from the infant's primal scream' to t
Dialectic and Difference is the first systematic exploration of Roy Bhaskar’s dialectical philosophy and its implications for ethics and justice. This text is essential reading for all serious students of social theory, philosophy, and legal theory.