Abstract

For Professor Wahl, the va-et-vient of speculative concepts reveals a restless dialectic whereby the emphasis of the theorist passes periodically from one contrary to another. Thus such notions as subject, object, the one, the many, have each in turn a recurring moment of dominion. But this movement, although it animates the development of ideas, cannot reach a stable equilibrium; and the notion, that may perhaps be attributed to Hegel, of a rational dialectic that has achieved a final resolution, is for Wahl, as for Kierkegaard, a false ideal. This does not mean, however, that we are thereby finally condemned to a relativism or historicism. We can escape the vacillating one-sidedness of a "rational" dialectic. Indeed, the dialectic process seems to invite us to transcend it, or we might say, the very purpose of argument is to transcend itself since vision and not a discursive strategy is the goal of the philosopher.