Epistemologically speaking, I would classify myself as a 'dialectic-rational-empiricist'. Part of my brand of epistemology is grounded in Hegel's dialectic philosophy, and more particularly, Hegel's dialectic logic. The other part of my brand of epistemology is grounded in the 'rational-empirical' work of philosophers like Epictetus, Aristotle (being careful of his 'binary, either/or, classification' problems), Bacon, Locke, Hume, Nietzsche, Russell, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Derrida, Ayn Rand, Alfred Adler, Korzybski, S.I. Hayakawa, Aaron Beck, Albert Ellis, George Kelley, Maxwell Maltz, Nathaniel Branden, and more...
One of the things that Hegel assumed falsely is that the dialectic would 'subsume' and 'incorporate' in its process and evolving cycle -- i.e., the dialectic process of thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis -- everything in its dialectic path and history. This is not true. Things get 'abstracted or screened out of the dialectic process' -- and left behind. Sometimes these 'things' or 'ideas' or 'concepts' or 'theories' deserve to be screened out and left behind. Other times they don't. Man remains 'The Ultimate Abstracter -- For Both Right and Wrong, Good and Bad -- in this whole human aspect of the dialectic process.
