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-
