Harris's book is an extended argument against formal thinking which is intended to prove both the necessity and truth of dialectic. The first chapters of the book demonstrate that the "scientific outlook" has "run itself into a cul-de-sac, from which it can find no outlet", and the last chapters demonstrate that it is dialectical thinking alone that can provide an escape route.

Seyla Benhabib has presented us with the first English translation of a work of Marcuse which was published originally in 1932 as Hegels Ontologie und die Grundlegung einer Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit, and was reissued in 1968 by Klostermann in an unrevised edition under the abbreviated title, Hegels Ontologie und die Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit. Benhabib’s fluent and readable translation begins with a thoughtful and informative introduction and ends with a glossary which explains not only key terms, but also the relations between (...) them upon which Marcuse draws. For example, sich verhalten receives the following explanation on p. 342. (shrink)