This paper explores the contemporary relevance of dialectical thought in the context of a number of common contemporary critiques of the practice. Against the common claim made against dialectical thought that it somehow lacks rigor or disciplinary seriousness I argue for a conception of dialectics as scholarship without a scholar. Against the argument that dialectics is hobbled by an ostensibly mono-causal Marxism I posit an understanding of dialectical thinking as research at the edge of an objectively unfolding mystery called capitalism. At the same time I argue that dialectics should openly embrace its skeptical and anti-ethical dimensions but without falling into the temptation of outright skepticism or an exhausted post-political irony.