Although Hegel’s thought is perhaps best known today through his emphasis on the dialectical relationship between thesis and antithesis, it is the view of Hegelianism that the struggle between them produces the truth of the whole. Each side contains elements of the other, and each must ultimately give way to the other to produce the final synthesis of totality.
In his book “Dialectic”, Georg Hegel identified three major moments in any philosophical system: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. He wrote about these in terms of a dialectic process: every notion contains within itself an opposing notion, and a resolution of those oppositions creates a new idea. Hegel believed that all progress comes from the conflict between opposite ideas and that the final product of dialectic is a higher level of thinking. For Hegel, the synthesis implied that the higher idea contains the lower idea within it. Thus, the concept of liberty contained within the concept of tyranny meant that liberty was superior to tyranny because liberty was a synthesis of them both. Hence, he concluded that the synthesis holds more depth its initial thesis implying a historical progression of events that allows the Spirit – our consciousness – a true understanding of itself.
