Debate:The Hegelian Dialectic, is it a Thing?

This is a Debate page. Feel free to add your own spin on the story. Please keep it civil! This debate was created by ikanreed.

Proposition

So, Marxism and the Marxist class dialectic is a really debatable point within the skeptic/rationalist/whatever-the-hell-we-are-here community. But that's a specific instance of Hegel's broader idea of a dialectic. Now the general definition of dialectic isn't what I want to debate here:

A discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned arguments. —ToW

But specifically hegel's idea of how it plays out in society. That every novel idea about how things are or should be or thesis will inevitably raise a core counter-argument towards the status quo called the antithesis and that all social progress is defined by the compromise between these forces through sublation into synthesis.

I think, after reflecting on the idea for a while, that I think it's kinda bullshit. That the diversity of ideas in culture is often more widespread and non-focused than Hegel's overall idea proposed. Beliefs persist well-past any "logical" conclusion to the arguments surrounding them, and, in fact, often form self-reinforcing ideologies that persist essentially indefinitely, and any attempt to reduce the complexity of those ideas and debates to a general form is going to be more misinformative than informative. ikanreed ^{You probably didn't deserve that} 20:21, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I absolutely agree with you that Hegel's trademark brand of convoluted mysticism is complete bullshit. What is terrifying is the degree to which Marxism — "orthodox" as well as Western Marxism — essentially relies on Hegel. It really does kick the crutch out from under it all.

Anyway, in your above definition, I'd like to point out that Hegel never actually used the words "thesis", "synthesis" or "antithesis" himself. Formulating his "logic" in these terms is admittedly convenient, and not wrong!

But, just to underscore how weird Hegel's dialectic is — for one, it wasn't meant to apply to the world in any real sense (it was a rumination on itself only, though that somehow encompasses the world), and second, while relying on the concept of "contradiction", it actually did this while at the same time openly operating in the face of the Law of identity (Hegel's fractal Geist can't be tied down by your puny mortal logic, see).

I mean, look at these freaking charts of the Hegelian dialectic (courtesy of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): what the hell's all this?

The realization that actual real-life violence has been perpetrated in the name of the above ideas (concepts which rival time cube theory in terms of ultimate coherency) literally sends a shudder through my core. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 20:57, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I know very little about philosophy as a whole so I can't really comment much about Hegel. From what I understand, Marxist economists use dialectics to describe how economic systems have contradictions; when the contradictions become too large to contain, a revolution occurs and a new economic system emerges. My explanation is probably an elementary oversimplification but that's all I got.--Owlman (talk) (mail) 21:39, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Since you are at the introductory stage regarding Hegel — if you have the time, please let the great Bertrand Russel provide you with a very short summary of Hegelianism here. A most worthwhile listen, I assure you. If you do give it a listen, and you find yourself thinking "I'm barely keeping up with this gobbledygook...", just keep in mind that said gobbledygook is the basis for Marxist conception of history, progress, dialectic, and so on. Yikes. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 21:49, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I'd hazard to say that Marx makes more concrete sense out of Hegel than Hegel ever did. Where Hegel saw vague ideas contradicting one another inside his own head, Marx saw modes of material production in conflict with social structures. Where Hegel saw a path upward through consciousness, Marx saw what he thought of as upward progress (read: progress moving in the direction of human freedom) in terms of the relationships between groups of people. It's definitely shudder-worthy that so many people killed each other in the name of all this, though. I'm not sure one can accurately say Hegel was the basis for Marx; others were quite significant as Marx formed his own views. Feuerbach, for instance, and Epicurus and Democritus early on, if to a lesser extent. But that's a minor point. I'm also not too well versed in philosophy beyond Marx and his influences; you've given me something to watch tonight, so thanks :D. Here's to hoping the gobbledygooks are informative. B) talk 03:49, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Marx at least attempted to address real world concerns. The business about controlling the means of production seems spot-on; control of access to material resources is the main business of political economy. On the other hand, building the whole foundation on Hegelianism sowed the seeds of its own destruction, because Hegelianism invites would-be revolutionaries to address themselves to more ghostly concerns than shoes and ships and sealing wax. The irrelevance of the Left in the United States began with its use of "race" and "gender" as proxy proletariats, substituting cultural for material issues, because class struggle didn't seem a big issue in the heyday of social democracy in America. And during those same years they also learned to talk impenetrable posturing bullshit, an art perfected by Hegel, as Schopenhauer pointed out:

“”Hegel was a flat, witless, disgusting-revolting, ignorant charlatan who, with unexampled impudence, kept scribbling insanity and nonsense that was trumpeted as immortal wisdom by his venal adherents and actually taken for that by dolts, which gave rise to such a complete chorus of admiration as had never been heard before.

In other words, "critical theory". - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 16:34, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

And if I call that unnecessarily reductionist hyperbole and an ad-hom argument, can I still maintain my original position that the dialectic is kinda dumb? ikanreed ^{You probably didn't deserve that} 17:38, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

An essay by Gewgtweg

The historic-philosophical thesis of a work I'll be posting about dialectics can be summarized as follows: Dialectic, made more widely known by Hegel, connecting it with his name, was originally developed on the basis of a monistic worldview or a unitarian philosophy which integrated within itself heavily monistic tendencies by the late German enlightenment and at the same time was forced to occupy itself closely with whatever epistemological issues were posed by Kant and Fichte. This unitarian philosophy, and indeed already in a comprehensive and systematic form, is the product of Hölderlin's independent intellectual endeavor in the years 1795-1799. Schelling, having been informed already by late 1795 on the details of his friend's new philosophic direction, partly adopts and partly discovers by himself through his own personal rivalry with Fichte this unitarian philosophy in the years 1801-1802, transforming it into a programmatic construct based on the triadic scheme. Hegel's contribution to the development of this initial but decisive form of dialectics must be seen as negligible if indeed we're to suppose it exists at all. Because his writings dating from the Frankfurt era are commentary and application of the principles of Hölderlin's unitarian philosophy while his first works in Jena are a manifestation of its meanwhile complete Schellingian version. Hegel's independent philosophical development which had momentous ramifications for the form of dialectics begins only after 1802 and it does so with the decision that the Absolute can be known or that Substance is a Subject - a decision which was opposed to the common view held by Hölderlin and Schelling and hitherto accepted by Hegel himself too, that the Absolute cannot be known and that knowledge and thought constitute per definitionem separations and abstractions.

The essential elements of this new position are new. First, I shall describe in my future work in great detail the internal unity and the consciously systematic character of Hölderlin's philosophy so that his influence on Schelling and Hegel won't just become obvious in some given aspects but instead appear transparent the entire way through. Secondly, in contrast to the prevailing view that Schelling's philosophy changes radically after 1803, the continuity of his intellectual progression is demonstrated which is still demonstrated to exist regardless of the more or less important shifts in emphasis. This progression is the result of the stunning structural analogy between Hölderlin's unitarian philosophy such as that was accepted or discovered by Schelling on his own account, and the latter's own late 'positive' philosophy: the great common denominator is the position regarding the inability to know the Absolute, or the inherent and inescapable negativity of thinking. And third, against the unanimously accepted notion, albeit differently explained by different scholars, that namely Hegel's thought bears a marked organic continuity, a deep fracture is instead evidenced in his intellectual development.

My new interpretation comes from a methodical approach that's novel in a double sense. First, all the texts of the three friends and co-philosophers are analyzed side by side, i.e. as an intellectual totality. This is done in both chronological as well as systematic respect at the same time. The thinkers who influenced positively or negatively our three protagonists, spanning Schiller, Rousseau, Jacobi up to Kant and Fichte will be dealt with in excursive chapters shedding light on deeper affinities of the history of ideas and philosophical Problematik itself. It is evident that in choosing this methodological option, we give priority to the analysis of the sources, although, mostly directly but also indirectly as well, we stand against all the important theses and antitheses of the older and recent interpretive literature. Secondly, the literary completeness which necessitated the relatively great extent of my study doesn't imply in any way that I was limited to the literary part or just pinpointed common ground between the thinkers using the help of like quotes. In stark contrast, the comparison of the texts happens in a mainly structural way, i.e. through the morphological elaboration of the noetic construct which inevitably is produced out of a certain given way of thought. This structural handling of the material will permit in my essay (de facto book) for the first time comprehensive comparisons of texts such as e.g. Hölderlin's Hyperion, Hegel's drafts during the Frankfurt era or Schelling's late texts from the period of Jena as well as Hegel's first publications during his stay in that same town. Previous endeavors at such comparisons didn't prove very fruitful because they sufficed in presenting some selected quotes without studying the totalities of the texts as totalities of thought i.e. in a structural manner.

The literary genre of the work which I will reserve exclusively for this fine website after I have posted 'the great synthesis' of rationalism and the enlightenment (check a sample in my sandbox) truly belongs, however hyperbolic or boastful it sounds, among the dinosaurs of scholarly expertise which usually appear in Hellenistic-like eras only to disappear shortly thereafter. Still, my not-so-humble ambition is, beyond the proofs that lie with the subject of the history of philosophy, to illuminate the inner workings of the genetic progress of a certain genre of philosophical products which is highly relevant to the hitherto philosophical tradition (mostly active in the latter half 20th century). It shows the crystallization of a systematic philosophic thought as a rationalization of a fundamental stance or personal decision and in fact precisely in and through its effort to disarm and defeat rival philosophical positions. It also describes how, simultaneously, the osmosis of Is and Ought inside the thought formation of the philosophizing actors is reflected in bestowing ontological, objective dimension to axioms of a normative-moral character which form the axis around which revolves the philosophical system that is under development. When we understand issues in this way it is evident that we will delve into the existential condition of the thinkers, uncovering psychological and sociological factors. This implied attendance of ours to the particulars of a given unique situation inside which the fundamental intellectual stances accrete and assemble themselves aims to combat the prevailing notion that supposedly the fundamental stance or the decision of a subject is something chaotic and immeasurable. Fundamental stances or decisions CAN be genetically explained, at least in part, using psychological-sociological methods and we can also follow their intellectual unfolding from a purely logical-structural perspective. For truly, immediately as it has come to exist, a fundamental stance has to have its own logic, which, structurally seen, is subject to the laws of logic in general. Hence, even under the methodological conditions I spoke about, what is usually called 'philosophical analysis' by those who believe in the higher logicality of philosophy, isn't neglected. Yet, the ultimate foundation and origin of the content of the fundamental stance or decision resides precisely beyond the capabilities of ('philosophical') logic - and that is precisely the critical point. As I will show, axioms like 'all is good' or 'everything is rational' were employed as founding blocks in the thought of the founding fathers of dialectics and it's hard for me to imagine how one could seriously label such assertions not as decisions but instead as 'discoveries'. The reader shall be the judge regarding to what extent such observations are confirmed by the analysis of the texts. At any rate however, the validity of our purely historic-philosophical results such as I framed them in the opening paragraph here, is independent of the issue whether these observations will be seen to be right and taken into account or not. Nevertheless, judging by the low level of discourse on such matters observed here, I doubt they will be seriously read at all.

The more narrow socio-theoretical aspect of the early works of Hölderlin, Schelling and Hegel will be dealt with in my work only circumstantially. I don't plan to do this only because of reasons of space but because of what is chiefly a belief resulting from my long occupation and firsthand experience with these texts: that the cradle of dialectics is not social theory but metaphysics. I can show that the socio-theoretical perceptions of our protagonists, structurally observed, are dependent on their metaphysical scheme and follow it in its given modifications. I will however NOT be able to attempt to show this with sufficient completeness within the context of my work, with the exception of a few details, because the full and mature understanding of the above perceptions presupposes clear and well-founded ideas derived from the direct experience attained only by closely and seriously partaking in the study of social history. It requires namely clear ideas regarding what conservatism, liberalism and democracy actually are in the first place. Now this is an issue that obviously warrants research entirely different to what I'll be doing with my 'synthesis of dialectics'. With a very small number of exceptions, the philosophical conversations of the decades leading up to the end of the cold war and which, as is well known, revolved almost entirely around Hegel, were marked by a great ambiguity regarding this pivotal issue and for that reason, despite some worthwhile contributions on the side, they cannot automatically form the basis for further research. At least those people who are not philosophers should know however that the lack of evidenced firsthand knowledge of social history is often the main inspiration source of philosophers attending to social theory.

The claim that inside the dialectic framework of thought the metaphysical element takes precedence doesn't contradict at all our stressing of the importance of socio-historical and psychological contributing factors in the course of its development. Above all the neomarxist interpretation conflates the (correct) view about the effect of socio-political factors on post-kantian thought with the (false) view that this thought was initially or mainly formed in the field of social history. Against that conflation we will have to stress that stimuli which in the final analysis have socio-political origins, are NOT, at least so far as the philosophical (or theological) level is concerned, somehow reflected, primarily or necessarily, in autonomous and self-standing socio-theoretical positions although their objective socio-political importance continues all the same to resound in socio-theoretical assertions. Our position that dialectics is a metaphysical construct doesn't therefore aspire to attempt a honorable and naive defense of the nobility of the philosophical spirit against its degradation by the demonstration of its many social dependencies - and yet indeed, the way in which we explain this position won't exactly gratify those that flirt with marxism when they believe that in its 'emancipatory message' they're tuning into the beats of their own heart but in some way try to override the ideo-critical aspect of Marx's work because they can sense in it a danger for 'philosophy' sui generis as an emancipatory theory with an overall claim to truth. As far as we know, we affirm that the individual and social constellation under which dialectics was formed initially led to the formulation of a metaphysical scheme and that the given position in respect to socio-theoretical and socio-political issues happened under the aegis of that scheme and was structurally in correspondence with it. Put otherwise: certain particular situations make the primacy of the metaphysical element extremely likely compared to the socio-political one within the greater context of ideas even as the space of the latter belongs in itself - at least as far as earthly eyes can see - to social and not to metaphysical measures. This is not a discovery of my own and no marxist would find difficulty in accepting that this is precisely what was happening in the case of the great theological or metaphysical systems of the pre-industrial past.

The need to frame dialectics as an exception to that rule flows from ideological needs. For the marxists the fact had always been theoretically scandalous how dialectics first saw the light in those deplorable conditions of German social 'misery', the ideological superstructure of which, at least according to the orthodox scheme, could not be some bright emanation of progressiveness and modernity. Did the 'algebra of revolution' indeed reek of the mildew of the theological school of Tübingen (paraphrasing Nietzsche) and was the leader of freedom perhaps nobody other than the priest of 'der absolute Geist' who was held 'upside-down' and hastily dressed up in a red coat? In the age when social democracy was theoretically dominant this painful question was avoided through Marxism's close approach to positivist-scientist positions but was posed anew and became pressing when in tandem with the existentialist movement, the re-disoscovery of the Hegelian roots of marxism came to the fore. Lukács perceived the theoretical dilemma and understood that the progressiveness of dialectics in the marxist sense could only be secured by showing it originated not only in a 'progressive' position but mainly by its suitability in answering the Problematik of the day. The pressure for this became especially intense after 1933 when Nazi and far-right tendencies threatened to 'usurp' crucial aspects of the Hegelian circle of ideas: Hegel's rescue operation by Marcuse, who worked together with Lukács though independently of him, attests to that. In conjunction to the general ideological utilization and ideological significance of picking dialectics out from 'the highest achievements of its era' it is easy to understand why, out of all the many intellectual contributions of an otherwise mocked or untrustworthy western neo-marxism, only that one managed to find its way into the Marxist orthodoxy of the Soviet camp after of course its existentialist dimension was mowed down.

I cannot investigate here the reasons why in the latter half of the 20th century the neomarxist interpretation became so widespread in its several variations and became, like an intellectual fashion, so disarmingly convincing. Also, we don't even need to try to explain it based on the sources since not even Lukács' dearest friends ever dared it to praise in public his literary conscientiousness. We have only to stress something of the essence - though not all recognize it is of the essence. When the young Hegel's insight into the contradictions of capitalist society and the fruitfulness of that insight for the development dialectics is stressed by those Marxists, it is overlooked that the philosopher's analyses on the subject (I mean the years critical for the birth of dialectics from 1798 to 1803 when Hegel propounds socio-theoretical perceptions that are entirely antithetical, as per their structure and their content, to his political beliefs in the Bern period; this shift is of course due to his thought's radical philosophic-metaphysical U-turn after 1797) are generally-speaking an adoption, modification and further development of several commonplaces of aristocratic-conservative critique on early capitalism. Accusations directed against industrial labor distribution and 'mechanical work' in view of its consequences for 'the nature of man'; warnings about the coming of a proletariat which will dangerously bring social unity to a breaking point and expressions of concern for its fate; resistance against general and unified law which not only casts away the hereditary differences between social groups but also the 'spirited diversity' because it is by necessity bound to an equally unified and impersonal bureaucratic framework: all the basic motifs of his critique on (capitalist) culture which continues to inspire some folks to this day in numerous variations exist already in Möser and in addition, Novalis, A. Müller and Fr. Baader (to mention only Germans) and are initially an ideological idealization of the patriarchal landlord's claims to social power who was watching his own existence being threatened as the modern state on one side, and modern industry on the other, are poised to eat away at the paternal agrarian societas civilis. This early organic conservatism degenerated even before the demise of hereditary aristocracy as a socially relevant group (and indeed died fovever; several cold-war era efforts to resurrect it as a programme came from a distinct intellectual smugness of apologists from the right wing of the liberal camp and must not be taken at face value). Its array of weapons became open for use during the restoration era and in some situations were appropriated by the radical democratic or socialist movement for its own anti-capitalist ends (suffice it to just recall the influence of Carlyle's critique on capitalism on the young Engels). This of course doesn't mean that its significance was decisive in the ultimate sense of the word; yet, on the other hand it is not hard to see which form they assumed inside the intellectual construct of marxism next to other partly completely unrelated elements, such things as the ideal of popular community, the idea of the all-around natural man and all the attendant historicist tendencies. The striking continuities regarding cultural critique between rousseauism and organistic conservatism in the 18th century are forerunners of this later occurrence - and the same combination can mutatis mutandis explain the 'understanding' that some cold-war era conservatives were willing to show for the cultural critique of the 'new left'. But those conservatives are too closely related with the industrialist urban class and are as such not in the position to bear the rusty and buried banner of the societas civilis. That's why the initial aristocratic-conservative critique on capitalist culture and the attendant plans of an 'organic community' were until recently ruminated by a politically homeless faction of intellectuals whose utopian dreams and whose particular ambitions had in neither of the two camps any prospects of becoming reality. So paradoxical and so instructive can sometimes the historical fate of ideas be.

The recalling of the origins of Hegel's critique on capitalism in early conservatism does NOT mean that Hegel (especially after 1803) was or remained a conservative in the sense of A. Müller or Fr. Baader. It only meant that his anti-capitalist positions in themselves are not at all sufficient to prove the 'progressiveness' of dialetics within the marxist framework of upward historical movement. This optical illusion arises only because aristocratic-conservative and socialist anti-capitalism are conflated given that they share a few certain basic motifs. And conversely: the historical legitimization of the newly arriving urban society by Hegel isn't enough at all to explain the birth and the structure of dialectics. Neomarxist researchers who highlight the central importance of social economy for Hegel's thought have seriously got to explain how it is possible that no dialectical tendencies whatsoever exist among the first classics of that science. But they would have to exist if really political economy and dialectics were structurally related. Dialectics was first inserted into political economy by the young hegelian Marx while Hegel made use of intellectual loans from political economy inside a context created in spite of the same. One could counter-claim that only Hegel's occupation with political economy opened his eyes to new developments and thus provided a boost to his thought. But in that way the reasons cannot be explained why Hegel (at least after 1803) sees these developments positively (under certain important conditions) or while other individuals who possessed as good an acquaintance with Adam Smith before Hegel, in part continue to reject the coming urban society and in part turn from friends to enemies of the same. So the ultimate conclusion is that occupation with social economy in itself is not enough to explain the position taken about its object, i.e. the urban society and let's by the way also seize the opportunity to note that this occupation was not some revolutionary thing that Hegel did; A. Müller writing exactly at that time, talking about the great spread of A. Smith's work to the reading public, remarked that "Smith had in Germany the same fate as Kant of whom the poets of the Xenien had writ: Setzt doch ein einziger Reicher ſo viele Arme in Nahrung!" (One wealthy man feeding so many poor ones!). In Hegel, the legitimacy of the new urban society happens on the basis of a preexisting radical theodicy with direct consequences for the history of philosophy. The legitimization of that bourgeois world remained ambivalent because it was attempted with means which had their origins in the pre-bourgeois intellectual world. Gewgtweg (talk) 23:34, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

A pretty thorough lesson on the history and context of Hagel, but... what's tour thesis? This feels more like an introduction for a philosophy textbook intentionally trying to avoid taking a strong position than an essay. ikanreed ^{You probably didn't deserve that} 15:41, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

This is exactly what it is: an introductory text for a philosophy textbook. More precisely: it is a historical and technical textbook whose subject is philosophy i.e. the history of ideas in general and the specifics of dialectics in particular. I'm going to be posting such a work here. Check my comments on RBP's talk page for more info.

I don't understand what you mean by alleging that I'm not taking a clear position on the discussion. Please specify. It's clear that Hegelian dialectics IS a thing and it's also clear that it originated as a metaphysical construct rather than as a meaningful socio-political theory. It is also clear that many of the participants to the 'debate' here do not have clear knowledge on the history of Marxism and instead tend to conflate Marx's thought and even worse Marxism itself with Hegelianism in crude and unexamined ways. Things are far, far more complex. Hegelianism is just one of the wombs of Marxism but the thought of the mature Marx developed on the basis of a conflict with Hegel's philosophy. Gewgtweg (talk) 01:34, 28 December 2016 (UTC)