Dialectical materialism
I’m interested in learning more about this subject and the different interpretations people have of it. Is it pure sophistry or does it contain some truth? I understand that this is probably a controversial subject. I’m not really an expert when it comes to materialist dialectics so I won’t try to offer a defense of any political doctrine or function as some sort of apologist for different historical figures. What exactly are the alternatives to viewing the world through the lens of dialectical materialism? I’ve heard of Hegelian idealism but I’d be lying if I said that I’d made an effort to read the phenomenology of spirit. Also from what I understand dialectical materialism is not the same thing as historical materialism. I’ve heard that historical materialism is the theoretical extension of dialectical materialism into the study of human history. Anthropology and philosophy seem like separate subjects. As I’ve already stated I don’t know a lot about this topic but I’d like to learn more and I will make an effort to keep an open mind towards different perspectives.
Comments (153)
From Engels:
"Is it a misfortune that magnificent California was seized from the lazy Mexicans who did not know what to do with it?"
From Marx:
"It is now completely clear to me that he, as is proved by his cranial formation and his hair, descends from the Negroes who had joined Moses’ exodus from Egypt, assuming that his mother or grandmother on the paternal side had not interbred with a n****r. Now this union of Judaism and Germanism with a basic Negro substance must produce a peculiar product. The obtrusiveness of the fellow is also n****r-like."
From Engels:
"Being in his quality as a n****r, a degree nearer to the rest of the animal kingdom than therest of us, he is undoubtedly the most appropriate representative of that district."
From Marx:
"What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. ... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man — and turns them into commodities. ... The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. ... The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general."
It is clear that when ignorant racists such as Marx and Engels say things like, ""Without violence nothing is ever accomplished in history." They really are just talking about the same gratuitous violence that they described the world to have been materialized by, that they hope to foist upon the world themselves. So you see, the concept "Historical Materialism," is little more than the seething, racist, hatred within them both bubbling up to the surface to justify starting a movement that would hopefully destroy everyone they dubbed "oppressors," which was a term applied to everyone that wasn't them, and was really just a projection of their own poor self-esteem. More ignorant, racism from these two here: https://www.d11.org/cms/lib/CO02201641/Centricity/Domain/3824/Karl%20Marx%20writings%20reveal%20a%20racist%20philosophy.pdf
On the other hand, there is an actual, non-racist explanation of this kind of concept, one that is much more intellectual and scientific. You can find that here, called "Distributed Cognition.": https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00490/full
As for what it is - it's roughly the idea that the world has a materialist basis (i.e. we don't need to invoke God, or immaterial souls, or transcendental ideas, to explain it), but this materialist basis itself changes under it's own interactions with itself. In contrast, non-dialectical materialism takes it that the material basis is unchanging, and simply changes in shape and arrangement. I've got no idea whether it's true or not, or whether it's an integral part of Marxism or not - the economics of which I'm very sympathetic to.
Simplifying. Hegel often referred to his method as dialectical history. That ideas which are commonly believed eventually are discovered to contradict themselves.
Marx wrongly thought Hegel was an idealist, but nonetheless used his concept of necessary contradictions in history. Thus, capitalism had contradictions that would lead to socialism.
I read a great book which had alot of Hegel in it (surprisingly) recently - it was In The Long Run, We're All Dead:Keynesianism, Political Economy and Revolution, by Geoff Mann. Also good on Keynes, Robespierre, and the guy also knows his Marx well.
Thank you for providing such a succinct definition!
I can't help but wonder what a "contradiction" is exactly. I've tried to rap my head around the Maoist concept of "contradiction" but admittedly I haven't made much progress. Even discussing the term in it's purely logical sense is still something I find difficult. My conception of "contradiction" is probably confined to my reading of Plato's Euthyphro.
What are you referring to when you mention "Greek and Hegelian Dialectics"? I've heard the word "Dialectics" before but I won't pretend to understand ancient Greek or German philosophy.
Thank you for this information. I'm quite fond of rhetoric as a subject.
For Aristotle dialectic was the pursuit of truth and rhetoric is the art of persuasion. They are opposites.
To persuade you must know to speak the local dialect in your rhetoric.
Which is different from dialectic.
Quoting Average
Hegel was an idealist in the sense that Hegel's though essentially deals with the conceptual and the conceptual apparatus we have of the world essentially determines what happens to it. It is complicated though because in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the idea moves because of the subject an his worldly praxis. However Hegel is at least widely perceived to put the ideational before the practical. Anyway, He does give a lot of credit to our theoretical determination of the world.
The idea moves in a certain way, it moves dialectically, meaning that a certain theory or worldview runs into contradictions and will engender opposition, leading to a new theory which manages to make sense of this earlier contradiction.
Marx puts Hegel on his head or radicalizes Hegel, depending one the way you look at it. In any case Marx is adamant in saying that economic relations of power determine our worldview. He does keep the dialectical movement though in the sense that he thinks economic power relations tend to engender opposition as well, just like Hegel assumed with ideas and theory. A certain distribution will be 'negated', by this opposition who will fight for a different division of economic power. whereas in Hegel the clash is ideal, one concept being contested by another, in Marx it is practical, so, revolutionary.
It is therefore incorrect to say dia-mat is a political doctrine, it is more of a view of the world. It is a theory, actually, a certain model of the way the world could work.
Hegel never denied the reality of physical life and did not think reality was the ideal or conceptual. Marx wrongly defined Hegel as a idealist.
Hegel was not a political activist. Most political philosophers do not want to be activists. Marx was different.
which is why, I think, 20th Century communism was more than simply a political movement, it was akin to a kind of religion or secular religion or at the very least an ideologically-constructed view of the world.
'Marx’s theory of ideology is presented in The German Ideology (Marx and Engels [1845-49] 1970). Marx uses the term “ideology” to refer to a system of ideas through which people understand their world. A central theoretical assertion in Marx’s writings is the view that “ideology” and thought are dependent on the material circumstances in which the person lives. Material circumstances determine consciousness, rather than consciousness determining material reality: “The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist” (Marx 1971). A system of ideology plays the role of supporting the class advantage of the dominant class, according to Marxist theory. The concept of commodity fetishism is discussed in Capital (Marx 1977). Marx uses this concept to refer to the pervasive and defining illusion that exists in a commodity society. A commodity is perceived solely in terms of its money equivalent (its price), rather than being understood as standing within a set of social relations of production. The labor of the operator of the shoe-sewing machine disappears and we see only the money value of the shoes. Marx believes that this is a socially important form of mystification; the market society erases the relations of domination and exploitation on which it depends.'
This in turn is linked to the later development in Marxist theory of 'false consciousness' which (I think) becomes central in (for example) critical theory.
Quoting Jackson
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_idealism
Wiki is for beginners. I am no beginner.
If you have to say so ... :lol:
Well, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) ain't for beginners, Mr. "No Beginner" ...
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/ :fire:
If you have an argument make it.
Where does Hegel call himself an idealist in the Phenomenology?
So, you have nothing. Good day.
Quoting Tobias
So Hegel took mind as fundamental, Marx took mater as fundamental. Hence the term "dialectic materialism" serves to differentiate Marx's dialectic notions from those of Hegel. It's indicative of the rejection by Marx of Hegelian idealism.
See also SEP on Hegel's dialectics. The article on Marx seeks to display the multifarious ways in which he has been understood.
[quote=GWF Hegel, Science of Logic, §316]The proposition that the finite is ideal constitutes Idealism. The idealism of philosophy consists in nothing else than in recognising that the finite has no veritable being. Every philosophy is essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the question then is only how far this principle is actually carried out. ... A philosophy which ascribed veritable, ultimate, absolute being to finite existence as such, would not deserve the name of philosophy; the principles of ancient or modern philosophies, water, or matter, or atoms are thoughts, universals, ideal entities, not things as they immediately present themselves to us, ... in fact what is, is only the one concrete whole from which the moments are inseparable.” [/quote]
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/mean08.htm
We are done.
:up:
which consciousness goes through; the substance and its movement are viewed as the object of consciousness. [b]Consciousness
knows and comprehends only what falls within its experience;[/b]
for what is contained in this is nothing but spiritual substance,
and -this, too, as object of the self. (Phenomenology of Spirit, #36)
The dialectical method is the logic of experience, not ideal forms.
"86. Inasmuch as the new true object issues from it, this dialectical
movement which consciousness exercises on itself and which
affects both its knowledge and its object, is precisely what is
called experience [Eifahrung]. "
Proof is right I think Jackson, ultimately Hegel holds that what we can consider as 'world' is ideal. You are right in a way too though (in true dialectical form :wink: ) because of the caricature that is often made of idealism, as if it would mean that things are somehow unreal. That is not what it means in Hegel's quote above though.. What it means is that our metaphysical beliefs, the core of what we hold to be our world, is inescapably a thought construction, dependent on the concepts we have of it, the manifold of relationships to which we stand towards it. If there is anything real, he says, anything that is infinite, it is that we perceive the world in a mediated way, mediated by the elaborate theories, constructions, normative determinations, we have of it. So philosophy has to be idealist because it examines the concepts by which we think of the world, not the world as it is in its materiality, that will be the domain of physics or other sciences.
What he does here is play Kant, but making Kan historical, showing that the mediating concepts do not come out of nowhere but are historically constructed. The process of its construction can be discerned, that is the dialectic. So Hegel is an idealist, just not one taken in the everyday hack interpretation of idealism, as if the world is not real. That is something entirely different.
The Pheno serves as a pre-study to the logic. what appears in the Phenomenology? Spirit. What is spirit, I think it is rationality perceiving (or experiencing) itself. What it perceives is the way it relates to the world, namely in a dialectical fashion. When we know that, we can begin to examine the concepts proper. That is done in the 'Logik'. In the Pheno he shows that we cannot make sense of experience other than dialectically. That is a necessary beginning for metaphysics which is the object in the Logik.
At least that is how I conceive of it.
In this conception, Hegel as the progenitor of the mediating concept, grasped in its historicity, makes him a forerunner of social constructivism, discourse theory and those branches of thought that feel that instead of the real, we need to study they way it comes to be perceived as real.
I've studied a lot of his work and see that nowhere. Please cite something by Hegel.
What is a "Contradiction"? In other words what is it's nature or essence? When does a "Contradiction" occur? Maybe it would help if you defined it in terms of an if then statement. In other words if X then "Contradiction" or if X occurs then a "Contradiction" is the result. An example might be if I was trying to define a square and said "if a shape has 4 sides of equal length and 4 right angles then it is a square" in other words "When a shape has 4 sides of equal length and 4 right angles it is a square" or if I was to put it in the form of a standard definition "A square is a shape that has 4 sides of equal length and 4 right angles". Maybe this method is only useful in geometry or maybe it is completely useless but I think I need some sort of definition in order to understand what is being referred to. I'll reiterate the fact that my understanding of "Contradiction" is probably confined to my reading of Plato's dialogue Euthyphro.
Well I found the section Proof quoted quite convincing. Funny thing is I thought about just that section when I read the discussion, though I would have no idea anymore where to find it I am grateful to 180 for locating it.
If you read what I wrote you also see that I do not think Hegel holds the world to be ideal in any Berkeleyan sense. So maybe what you refer to as realism and I as idealism are not far off. I find this quibbling over words quite uninteresting. In the section quoted I think Hegel states so too. He finds the question whether he is an idealist rather trite it seems to me. If you follow his train of thought in that section he says that every possible philosophy is idealist in the sense that it concerns our idea of the world, whether we have an idea of the world as material or as ideal. I think it makes eminent sense and is by no means a very far fetched claim so I wonder why you would find it so discomforting.
My Hegel interpretation by the way is formed by Wather Jaeschke, a German scholar and Robert Pippin's book... Hegel's Idealism ;)
edit: Quoting Jackson
Actually I think you just cited something rather idealist. There is only experience, but experience results from the dialectical movement of consciousness. It is not the experience with the world, i.e. the real impinging on our idea of it, that causes an experience, experience happens when the mind shifts and starts considering things differently. Of course that shift is caused perhaps by sense data about the world, but experience only happens when it is mentally processed. That is what I mean when I said in my first post that Hegel seems to prioritize the mental. (It is dialectical so again, I think such prioiritzations are not what it is about, but even so, from the very section you cited you may argue that Hegel prioritzes the mental over the material).
Well, it is Hegel's idea that every definition runs into problems as it engenders its own opposition when taken to the extreme, so any definition will immediately incur an objection. Quite Wittgensteinian come to think of it... :gasp: So I cannot give a definition, best i to show how it works. The beginning of the Science of Logic by Hegel gives an apt account. When we consider the concept of 'being' (Sein) and claim for instance that that is the object of first philosophy, and we try to define it, than it shows that in fact the concept is empty. It is as empty as its conceptual opposite, nothing (Nichts). So thinking in terms of being is immediately faced with nothing, because conceptually they are the same thing and not the same thing. We need the concept of 'becoming' to resolve this contradiction (or maybe 'antonomy' is a better word). Now becoming, if considered in the extreme also engenders its opposite because if there is only 'becoming' there is not really anything that 'becomes', to consider becoming you need some sense of a fixed point right, something that becomes something else. We find the concept of 'something' and so on and so on, three volumes of the Logik long...
I'm not sure if the English words you used are adequate translations of the German words Hegel used. "Being" is a word we rarely use in common parlance and it is difficult for me to see how it could possibly be the opposite of "Nothing".
What exactly is meant by "it's own opposition"? How can a definition oppose itself? It's all very alien to me. I wish you would provide an example or some description of a purely hypothetical scenario in which this occurs.
Join the club, fellow forum member! :snicker:
Dialectical Materialism
1. Dialectical. There are two opposing sides. What are they?
2. Materialism. What's that?
Muchas gracias in advance!
:smile:
I am sorry but I wish you would do the mental jogging yourself. I am not a free philosophy teacher. Read up on it and try to understand what I write if you feel like it of course. I think you are just trolling actually.
1. (yin) Has too much stuff at the moment & (yang) Doesn't have enough stuff at the moment.
2. Stuff (i.e. enabling facts).
:smirk: De nada ...
I can assure you that I'm not interested in trolling. It's interesting that you selected the figurative or metaphorical imagery of jogging because some people are crippled in the real world and not everyone is capable of the same cognitive feats. I wish I knew what mental gymnastics lead you to conclude that I was seeking a free philosophy teacher because I doubt that you have anything to teach me.
What makes you doubt that? You are basically asking questions all the time, so you seek answers, no? I guess you are thinking of yourself as some sort of modern day Socrates, but dream on. You are basically just being lazy. I can see that in the wording of your post. The argument you presented in unsound. You might still need a philosophy teacher even though you doubt that I have anything to teach you. The 'because' you use does not lead to a valid inference. You are not being average, you performing below par.
The sentence you presented is nonsensical.
How about this one:
"Third Subdivision: The Notion
C. The Idea
§ 213
The Idea is truth in itself and for itself — the absolute unity of the notion and objectivity. Its ‘ideal’ content is nothing but the notion in its detailed terms: its ‘real’ content is only the exhibition which the notion gives itself in the form of external existence, while yet, by enclosing this shape in its ideality, it keeps it in its power, and so keeps itself in it. The definition, which declares the Absolute to be the Idea, is itself absolute. All former definitions come back to this. The Idea is the Truth: for Truth is the correspondence of objectivity with the notion — not of course the correspondence of external things with my conceptions, for these are only correct conceptions held by me, the individual person. In the idea we have nothing to do with the individual, nor with figurate conceptions, nor with external things.And yet, again, everything actual, in so far as it is true, is the Idea, and has its truth by and in virtue of the Idea alone. Every individual being is some one aspect of the Idea: for which, therefore, yet other actualities are needed, which in their turn appear to have a self-subsistence of their own. It is only in them altogether and in their relation that the notion is realised. The individual by itself does not correspond to its notion. It is this limitation of its existence which constitutes the finitude and the ruin of the individual. "
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slidea.htm
:snicker: Philosophers, going by the standard set by none other than Socrates (Athenian [s]gadfly[/s] troll), are supposed to be trolls of the highest caliber!
Figures, you no troll!
:smile:
Positive dialectics (Hegel / Marx) —> sublating equilibrium (e.g. totality / communism)
Negative dialectics (Adorno / Bakunin) —> ablating disequilibrium (e.g. non-totality / anarchism)
NB: Run down the various terms at your leisure, amigo. ¡Hasta!
Communism OR Anarchism
Choose! :snicker:
Nice!
Never mentioned realism. I think many bad readers of Hegel use the very categories of idealism/realism he is actually critical of.
Quoting waarala
Hegel is not saying the materiality of the world is fake. Like Aristotle he is say the form of objects is what we conceive and therefore the intelligibility of the world. Not separate from its material.
Yes, quite familiar with Pippin. I do not agree with his reading at all. He is just a Kantian giving a non-metaphysical interpretation of Hegel. So, there's the problem. Some scholars dispute Pippin and point out that metaphysics is not the same as transcendence.
Consciousness is always consciousness of real objects and events. Your reading of this passage is not accurate.
Just so you know, anyone who writes personal attacks is off my list.
In his Philosophy of Art and Philosophy of Right, Hegel gives specific analyses of art and politics. He describes actual paintings in great detail and says their physicality gives the idea (thought) in sensuous form. Hegel gives detailed explanations of historical changes in actual governments and how that change takes place. He criticizes abstract, universal morality and says morality is the customs and practices of a people (very similar to Hume).
Hardly the work of an idealist.
I do not understand... was that a personal attack on my part? I did think Proof was right, and the section he quoted is apt, but that is not a personal attack no? It was in any case not intended as one.
That person is who I mean. Just saying, using him is not a good way to have a discussion with me.
In the passage he states that the consciousness of that real object (no disagreement there) is making the experience, not the material quality of the object itself. At least that is how I read it. I have no reason to think it is not an accurate reading.
Quoting Jackson
Exactly, the thought in sensuous form, that is what the physical is. So it relates the material to something in thought.
Quoting Jackson
Yes of course, politics and law are part of objective spirit... What lies below these changes are ideological changes. For instance the emergence of Roman law in order to objectify relations between people (if I remember correctly these sections in the Pheno).
I am not saying that for Hegel objects, or governments, or people, are not real, not at all. That is not what Hegel's idealism is about. You, like many others on this forum actually, use a sloganified form of Berkeleyan idealism as 'idealism'. Hegel's version is far more sophisticated than that and avoids some of its pitfalls.
Quoting Jackson
I did not use him, I just said I concurred. I am not going to refer to 'he who may not be mentioned', just because you got annoyed with him....
So, Hegel is not saying its materiality is meaningless.
Fine.
I find the term "idealism" to be virtually meaningless.
You should start reading Hegel and quit pontificating.
Materiality is true only via spirit or mediation or idea (acc. to Hegel).
I am not bashing him.... as many on this forum know I am a keen admirer of his thought. Indeed the analytical school lacks a historic eye. Not my problem.
Quoting Jackson
No he is not.
Quoting Jackson
Well I at least do you the curtesy of trying to explain my point of view without using one liners. I really wonder what your problem with me is here. You complain of personal attacks, but you yourself seem rather uncouth as well. I read Hegel by the way.
What other way would it be real?
We're done. Another time maybe.
If you are interested in that topic then a good place to begin would be a historiography textbook which would explain one way of taking his works as a means for writing history, which would probably be more direct to your topic.
Or, if you're feeling brave, Karl Marx is the guy. The Legend. THE PROGENITOR! lol
The Communist Manifesto's Chapter 1 actually isn't that hard I don't think. And it gets at the notion. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
Do you see how chapter 1 is basically a demonstration of dialectical materialism, or naw?
It's been a while since I've read the manifesto but chapter 1 seems more like a demonstration of historical materialism. Maybe it would help if you referred me to a specific section of the chapter.
Such demonstrations require things like documents, interpretations of documents, stories, and so on -- hence why I said starting with a historiography text book is a good place just to start getting at dialectical materialism specifically. I learned on Ernt Briesach if that helps.
No, it is based on internal conflict in capitalism.
What Hegel means by dialectic is that one idea is in conflict with itself.
What Hegel means by dialectic is that every idea also contains (the dynamic basis of) its own complement (like e.g. yinyang).
Which would be more what Hegel means.
Dialectic is the systematic process of affirmation and negation.
Personally, I don't see anything said here as in conflict with what I said.
I do not know what you are referring to. It helps to use the quote function if you are referring to something someone said.
I think you are right. The usual formulation: thesis—antithesis—synthesis was not explicitly enunciated by Hegel, but scholars generally seem to think it is a good model for what he was doing.
In English we have various words which suggest negation or antithesis, but which may differ more or less in meaning from negation in subtle ways, for example: contrary, complement, contradiction.
As I understand it, Hegel thinks of the dialectical development of thought and spirit in terms of moments in the development of consciousness. The classic as presented in POS is "sense certainty". I understand this as equating to naive realism. But this idea contains the seeds of its negation(s): anti-realism, idealism, indirect realism, which arise by taking what is observed to be the case about the human perceptual organs and their processes as simply true; i.e. that they "filter" or "distort" the "real" objects we encounter so that we "see through a glass darkly".
But then Hegel argues that this is itself a distorted picture, and that the things we encounter are the end process of perception, not its inception; the appearances are the reality and the "ding an sich" is a meaningless phantom, This is the synthesis of the apparent contradiction between the thesis: we see things just as they really are and the antithesis: we see things distorted through the filters of the senses,the synthesis being: we see things just as they are as they and our senses enable us to see them. ( So it is simplistic to say that we inevitably see things "as they really are" or "through a glass darkly")
So, as clumsily as I have hastily put all that, and given my own limited understanding of a difficult philosophy, you are right because in the synthesis the apparent negation is shown to be just that, only apparent. I think this synthesis is referred to as "sublation", but I won't attempt to go further into that, because it is a complex subject that I don't know enough about.
The idea of negation is important though, even though it is superceded, because that is what drives the dialectical development of reason, according to Hegel, as far as I understand it anyway.
I agree with what I said and with what everyone else said to me.
This is exactly wrong and trivializes Hegel's work. Dialectic is that one idea is in conflict with itself. Not that two ideas are in conflict. This reduces dialectic to legal arbitration.
For example, the concept of faith in religion is based on doubt. There is no synthesis, the very concept is wrong.
The German is Aufhebung. This means affirmation/negation.
I think you misunderstand if you think that according to Hegel ideas, as such, simpliciter or in the very first instance, are in conflict with themselves. The claim is that an idea may give rise to a conflicting idea, but an idea simpliciter cannot be in conflict with itself. As 180 Proof said, it makes sense to say that ideas contain or depend on their complementaries in that, for example, the idea of goodness makes no sense unless contrasted with badness.
I don't know what you mean by saying that what I said "trivializes" Hegel and I have no idea what you mean with your "faith in religion" example; more explanation is required.
Quoting Jackson
Yes, I know the German is Aufhebung. Affirmation/ negation is one definition; but let's not oversimplify:
[i]The meaning of “sublation” as translation of “Aufhebung”
One central term of Hegel, the German word “Aufhebung,” is usually translated as “sublation” into English.
In fact, the word “sublation” appeared in the 19th century English literature , only after Hegel and the Hegel School began using “Aufhebung” and translators needed an equivalent. “Aufhebung,” depending on context, was being used to mean simple negation, affirmation, or a simultaneous affirmation/negation. English translators looked to Latin (many English scientific words have Latin roots) and found the word “sublatus” (to take or carry away or lift up); the Latin “sublatus” then became “sublation” in English.
Why did the translators associate “lifting” or “taking away” with the abstract ideas of negation and affirmation?
The entire flow of meaning from the original German word “Aufhebung” arises from its basic associative picture, which in German involves simply lifting something from a lower place to a higher place, such as from the floor or ground into your hand.
However, thinking about this process can bring to mind certain associations and inferences when the word is used:
A. Something lifted from its ground has been thereby taken away. A legal ban may be “lifted” and thus may in effect be done away with (negated).
B. On the other hand, something lifted up may in fact be preserved (saved) for later use. Physically or even spiritually someone may “lift up” a person who has fallen and save him from impending destruction. Here we have affirmation.
C. The picture of something being raised to a higher level can be abstracted and then applied to intellectual constructs. Someone might say, “Let’s take this thesis to a higher level.” This actually happens. For instance, it is now commonly said among physicists that classical (Newtonian) physics has been “sublated” by or within relativistic (Einsteinian) physics. In other words, it has simultaneously been negated (superseded or supplanted) and affirmed (confirmed to be valid, but only within a wider, relativistic context that was not suspected by Newton).
Thus, an older thesis may be done away with (negated) but preserved in part, namely that part that has been shown to be reasonable. A new or wider understanding has emerged from a critique of the old. The “sublation” of a concept or thesis in its broadest conception has reformed its implicit assumptions (and even its antitheses) by both preserving and negating them in a higher thought that includes the truth of subsidiary or partial aspects.
The aspects A and B are explicit mentioned by Hegel himself, while his pupil and Hegelian Professor of Philosophy J.E. Erdmann was the first one to explicit mention all three aspects in his comment of 1841.
Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.) states that “sublation” means to “negate … but preserve as a partial element in a synthesis.” This is as close to the philosophical meaning as should be expected from a common dictionary. Dictionaries, after all, merely report what most writers appear to mean when they use a word.
In order to express the three aspects (A,B,C) mentioned above all together, Hegelians prefer to speak of “Aufhebung” instead of “expansion,” “inclusion,” “synthesis,” “sublimation,” “transfiguration,” “transfiguration,” which all more focus on some aspects or else involve unhelpful additional (and unnecessary) connotations.
BTW, Hegel himself never used the term “synthesis” for the concept of “Aufhebung” discussed here.[/i]
From here
Back at you. Not engaging with personal attacks.
Quoting Jackson
So, you see the latter as personal attack and not the former? If so, could you point out what you see as the difference? (Just so you know, I don't see either as a personal attack, but if pressed I would say the former comes closer).
Goodnight.
If every idea is in conflict with itself, perhaps you meant "badnight"? :wink:
Yes. Negative knowledge. Interesting how Hegel incorporates it as a necessary part of human experience. Definitely one of the greatest philosophical contributions.
That is precisely the correct time to engage your interlocutor.
It is exhaustinglay complex. As far as summaries go, you've done a fine job with the final couple paragraphs.
The sublation you refer to is the negation of being. It is superseded in its becoming something "new". For Hegel, this synthesis is the evolution of being, and the basis for a contingent dialectal cycle.
On a side note, I enjoy some of the existentialists that emphasize the importance of becoming for people in pointing out the relevence of the dialectical negative. it is accurate to identify them as the earliest modern psychlogists.
Actually the opposite of doubt is belief. The opposite of faith (especially in a religious sense) is sin or transgression. It is interesting how doubt is nearly as bold a movement as faith. It implies the folly of reason, possibly.
Quoting Janus
This goes back as far as taoism.
What I said, yes.
@180 Proof :smile: Thanks!
@180 Proof @Jackson@Moliere@Janus and at every other reader interested...
On the notion of ideas being complimentary or in conflict and on there being one idea containing inner tensions, I always read it as follows: I tend to use the term negation over complementarity. The reason is that Hegel uses negation himself. He also approvingly cites Spinoza: "Omnes determinatio est negatio". He also quite some conflict laden language and emphasizes conflict. The idea seems at a higher stage to be able to accommodate this conflict, and is even enriched by it, but nonetheless the conflict is real. I think it is important because when the ideas are applied for instance in Marx, you see the emphasis on conflict as well. I think it is also one of his most insightful contribution and opened the 'avenue of thought' into conflict theory. The idea of a body politic not as a homogenous 'one' (Leviathan) but as a unity within which fault lines criss cross each other has been very fruitful. When he applies his thought himself and makes the turn from consciousness perceiving the world by itself to consciousness dealing with others, he comes to the master / slave dialectic, also a conflict ridden approach.
edit: Maybe in my enthusiasm I gloss over the notion of complimentarity too soon. Clearly, the idea, broken within itself, also needs that break. The master slave ddialectic for instance cannot arise without the notion of master and slave and these notions are not only in conflict. The relationship between master and slave is one of subjugation and conflict but at the same time they are complimentary, because to be master the master needs to slave. This instability in the institution of slavery could only be (temporarily) resolved with the notion of law and contract, transforming (sublating) subjugation in reciprocity (temporarily!).
As far as the movement itself goes, I also shun the idea of thesis antithesis synthesis, as it gives the feeling of there being two ideas, the second idea arising out of nowhere, or just 'called upon' in some sense. I do think Hegel sticks to the image of there being one idea that is internally strained, but that strain only comes to the forefront when the idea is being absolutized and presented as a final answer. For instance being is not opposed by nothingness because of some sort of intervention somewhere, it arises because one considers being. When being is considered, the question arises from this consideration, what about nothing. Hegel in this regard speaks of 'the movement of the concept', not concepts being opposed to each other. So here I would side with Jackson.
I do not know whether Jackson and Janus are far off though, because here Janus gives this great example:
Quoting Janus
The seeds of the negation can be found in the original naive realism. If naive realism is considered a final answer, questions arise about the distortions our perceptual organs cause, leading to a 'break' or dualism in our view, between thins as they are perceived and things in themselves. The duality then is resolved in some higher idea, but not totally resolved the break is still there, just not efficacious anymore, it does not 'work' anymore. It is no longer 'wirklich' as they say in German. Wirklich has the connotation of being both 'real' (Wirklichkeit means reality) and active, working.
I do not like the word synthesis much either because it gives the impression of a state in which all conflicts and internal breaks are resolved. Rather we get a conceptual framework that is itself inherently unstable, only held up by this continuous movement. The movement from 'negation' to 'negation of the negation' keeps it from breaking down in my view. (This is all my view by the way and I have been criticized for having a too ironic and de-absolutist reading). I think that is why Hegel calls himself a Heracleitian, movement is the only thing remaining. It ends there, that is the absolute insight Hegel offers, but nothing more... It is akin to Wittgenstein's ladder, when you are through with it, you think 'what now'? Well now history is just beginning... it is not the end of history ;)
Nope. You said:
Quoting Jackson
Faith (religiously speaking) and belief are qualitatively different but commonly confused. Doubt relates to belief, not faith (in the religious sense).
With respect to understanding Marx, I don't think anyone is far off. It's important to understand Marx's relationship to Hegel, and it's important to understand that Hegel is interpreted in a lot of ways (as is Marx, for that matter) -- these are fair and in depth readings of Hegel, and one could attempt a clarification of material dialectic with these readings. For myself I was satisfied with a sentence to bounce off of into the communist manifesto to show the pattern from Hegel to Marx.
I referred back to some books because I think dialectical materialism isn't the sort of idea one just defines, clarifies, and now, having read the words, knows. It's more like a calculus -- it makes sense when you read the basic rules, but you don't know it until you solve the problems. And it's the sort of idea that is only productive to talk about if one reads something and tries to work with the idea themselves a bit. (the way it's not like calculus, of course, is that it's not a deductive logic)
I was referring to Hegel in the Phenomenology.
First off,, a noob question, how do you get this ? ? I have to use @ if I want to point to someone, but this is far more elegant...
Anyway, yeah the Master slave dialectic is a key passage, also in its own right. I was always struck with the fact that later continental philosophy such as phenomenology or existentialism had so little concern with 'togetherness'. I am sure I will incur the wrath of a host of Hedeggerians, but his 'Dasein' seems very lonely as does 'l'etre' in Sartre. Nietzsche's overman is a lonely figure too. What I like a lot in Hegel is the idea of 'being the same in difference', one remains a true individual but always within a conceptual network of indviduals, genus, society and history. Not 'thrown into it' as Heidegger would have it, but 'growing up' in it, with all the pain, conflict, scepticism and heartache that entails. For me that is something very modern in Hegel actually, so modern that current thinking completely seems to negate it and only focusses on difference. .
What struck me as well is how similar Hegel and Marx seemed to be appreciating the nature of 'work'. In Hegel working and working together are key as well in order to form a society that is wat once guided by law and held together by a certain moral substance.
No worries. At the bottom of people's posts near where the timestamp is you just hover your mouse pointer to the right of the timestamp. A little arrow pointing towards the timestamp appears, and if you hover over that a box appears which labels it as "Reply" -- click on that, and you're good to go.
Quoting Tobias
I agree that this is a striking difference! In Marx work is central -- our species-being is almost defined by work, in my understanding of Marx. How we go about managing our material needs and wants is the mechanism by which history goes.
I think that Levinas begins to scratch the surface of togetherness, to give at least a 20th century example of a continental that begins to look at togetherness... but I agree that these philosophers were more interested in individuality and a picture of a lonely individual. Perhaps the influence of capital and liberalism on their views?
Naturally, I think being-with is important, but I do read Hegel as a conservative for the most part though I recognize his legacy is to influence both right and left political thinkers.
What makes him a conservative?
IDK, just a vibe really. He's a wiggly dude to interpret. It's only my love of Marx that has carried me through his texts lol :D
I don't know if it is love, but Hegel does seem to praise Napolean.
But it is because of his idea of a World Historical Figure that moves history.
Hegel's Philosophy of Right gives his political views in detail, which I would not describe as conservative.
Interesting! I wonder which existentialists you refer to. Relatedly, @180 Proof recently somewhere (I couldn't find the post) presented the idea that Hegel's is a positive dialectic in contrast to the negative dialectic of Adorno; I'm not much familiar with Adorno, but this intrigued me so I consulted Wiki:
[i]Adorno sought to update the philosophical process known as the dialectic, freeing it from traits previously attributed to it that he believed to be fictive. For Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the dialectic was a process of realization that things contain their own negation and through this realization the parts are sublated into something greater. Adorno's dialectics rejected this positive element wherein the result was something greater than the parts that preceded and argued for a dialectics which produced something essentially negative. Adorno wrote that "Negative Dialectics is a phrase that flouts tradition. As early as Plato, dialectics meant to achieve something positive by means of negation; the thought figure of the 'negation of the negation' later became the succinct term. This book seeks to free dialectics from such affirmative traits without reducing its determinacy."[1]
Adorno's purpose was to overcome the formal logical limits of the previous definitions of dialectics by putting into light that new knowledge arises less from a Hegelian unification of opposite categories as defined following Aristotelian logic than by the revelation of the limits of knowledge.[2] Such revelation of the limits of knowledge reaches out to its experienced object, whose entirety always escapes the simplifying categories of purely theoretical thinking.[3] Adorno raises the possibility that philosophy and its essential link to reality may be essentially epistemological in nature.[4] His reflection moves a step higher by applying the concept of dialectics not only to exterior objects of knowledge, but to the process of thought itself.[5]
To summarize, "...this Negative Dialectics in which all esthetic topics are shunned might be called an “anti-system.” It attempts by means of logical consistency to substitute for the unity principle, and for the paramountcy of the superordinate concept, the idea of what would be outside the sway of such unity. To use the strength of the subject to break through the fallacy of constitutive subjectivity—this is what the author felt to be his task [...]. Stringently to transcend the official separation of pure philosophy and the substantive or formally scientific realm was one of his determining motives."[6][/i]
( I don't know how accurate this portrayal is, but it seems relevant enough to be of interest).
I recently had a disagreement with a friend, a teacher at university, who not long ago ran a course on Hegel, when I said I don't see Hegel as a "progressivist" thinker meaning I don't see the idea that the sublation or synthesis is somehow "better" than the idea it grows out of as being inherent to his thinking, and she thinks I am simply wrong about that and have a "quirky" reading of Hegel. Anyway, in light of that I liked your invocation of Heraclitus' "flux".
Quoting Tobias
Nice extrapolation!
That teacher is correct.
I always wonder though, but that is maybe because I cannot wrap my head around it, if it does not come down to the same thing. An inclusion can never be complete, there is always an exclusion. I hold that to be an insight of dialectical thinking. Hegel's absolute knowledge in my view comes down to the realisation that only continuous moveent is real, that there is never rest so always 'otherness'. I have been criticized for that view though as taking too much liberty with Hegel.
There, however, I felt he wasn't a radical critique of Kant so much as attempting to deny Kant -- well, at least I don't find it convicing. I mean, that doesn't invalidate his project, I don't think, because he's not drawing from as much as criticizing Kant -- but I see a lot more value in Kant's epistemology than Hegel's (though that could just be a preference from understanding, of course) when addressing the questions about his three metaphysical questions on God, Freedom, and Immortality.
Though I think his idea about self and other co-constituting one another and becoming a lot more convincing when approaching the humanities. There's a lot of really interesting things in Hegel. But I ultimately feel like you just gaze at the process of ideas and let it all happen as it ascends to the absolute? There's something about it that just feels like you should obey the state.
Thanks Janus! Well, I do think that, even though the insight is minimal in this reading of Hegel, there is an insight nonetheless. In Hegel the new view does seem to accommodate the previous 'simpler' views into something richer. In the end we learn it is movement, but not movement willy nilly. It is movement towards subjectivity, (substance becomes subject) which is truly realized in freedom. So I would have to side with her in that respect, it becomes richer, more transparent to itself...
Movement willy nilly, just a from somewhere to somewhere seems to lead to what Hegel calls the 'bad infinite' just something leading further and further but to nothing concrete. I think that would be more Nietzsche's eternal recurrence. I do find it difficult to reconcile with his otherwise Hercleitian leanings though. I read an article which claimed that this 'end point' is nothing other than this moment in time and place now. The realization that it did not come about irrationally, but can after all be logically explained. Anyway, still struggling.
I do envy you... why do I not find a woman to discuss Hegel with...? That is a sidenote, and a silly lamentation, maybe she is just behind a dialectical corner somewhere...
No. The state is just people and customs.
Because?
I like the problems that it solves -- giving a straightforward reason for why it is one can know things about the world but not necessarily some kind of ultimate reality dreamed up by philosophers. I prefer the denial of metaphysics as a knowledge, and Hegel at least seems like the sort of ur-philosopher on that front -- a giant system that explains it all, somehow, but leaves you kind of wondering what it really explained in the first place.
I never read Hegel that way. And I never understood what denial of metaphysics meant. Hegel never argues that there are metaphysical objects.
I've read liberals, fascists and anti-colonial communists claim him in various capacities -- and I honest to goodness couldn't tell you which way it should be read -- it just seems like fair game, a creative grist mill which people read themselves into more often than not. And while I could come up with allusions to history and piece together bits, I'll admit I wasn't at all confident that this was somehow the way to read Hegel. And everything I've come across has always admitted that Hegel reads many ways too.
For me my interest in him derives from my interest in Marx, so this is my main interest in interpreting Hegel. Though I'll admit parts of it felt inspiring at times, at the end of the day I just decided I only had one life to live.
No. Not that there is one way, but any reading must be justified with reasons.
Hegel is rather straight forward in texts like Philosophy of History, History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Right, Lectures on the Philosophy of Art.
But, you are saying you don't really want to read Hegel and that is fine.
Right, I agree that it becomes more elaborate, more complex, but I balk at "richer", and "more transparent to itself" since to assert that would entail asserting that our lives are richer and more transparent to themselves now than the lives of the ancients, or for that matter, hunter/gatherers. It is obviously true that they are conceptually richer, if quantity and complexity is the standard. But in the end, leaving aside aesthetics, the emotional life, religious feeling and experience and so on, it is all, from beginning to end, following the inherent logic of Hegel's thought, if not his own beliefs, just ideas and elaborations of ideas, no?
To put it another way because no idea, according to Hegel, is stable and immune to being subject to its negation, then all ideas are in that sense, so to speak, "on the same level". The greater richness then, on that view, does not consist as a greater richness of an idea compared to the idea it grew out of, but in the amplification that consists in the whole process.
I take this to entail that no point in the (necessarily) endless dialectical process is any better than any other, but I am not claiming that Hegel would agree with this, just that this is the logic inherent in his conception of the dialectic. No doubt I could be wrong about that given that I am no Hegel scholar, but I would need good relevant argument to convince me of that.
The Philosophy of Right is amazingly current. I was surprised how relevant it was to contemporary politics.
You mean like e.g. "the Absolute" (re: Introduction, Phenomenology of Mind) or "Thought", "Being", "Nothingness", "Becoming", "Essence", etc (re: Science of Logic), they are not "metaphysical objects" – really? :roll:
go read wiki
Wiki Tiki Toki.
I think 'concept' is a more apt definition than 'metaphysical object'. Metaphysical object has connotations with 'objective' things like a soul, angels, God, etc. The concepts referred to in this post are, if I understood correctly, what Hegel calls "Gedankending", "thought-things", or maybe thought constructions. These 'thought things' are the tools with which we determine our world, or, and I think therein lies Hegel's idealist moment, they determine our world, as all thought is conceptual and what cannot be articulated cannot be an object for thought, and no object (Gegenstand in German) altogether. At least, indeed Jackson, in the way I would read Hegel. Of this idea you also find an echo in Marx when he says we are the products and producers of history.
Yes, I agree with this. The important thing to understand is that there is a "becoming" which contains both being and not being. The reality of becoming is what allows for the violation of the law of non-contradiction.
In relation to the Aristotelian format, "matter" (as the potential for what may or may not be), for Aristotle is what allows for the reality of "becoming". Marx places matter as the basic element of the idea, the foundational content, the kernel.
Where does Aristotle say this? Aristotle defines matter as just the physical stuff.
An example: Nietzsche says we must strive to be übermenschen. We should be supermen and the desire to do that makes us plain, garden-variety, run-of-the-mill menschen! :snicker: