“Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are among those who bring to philosophy a new means of expression. In relation to them we speak readily of an overcoming of philosophy. Furthermore, in all their work, movement is at issue. Their objection to Hegel is that he does not go beyond false movement –in other words, the abstract logical movement of ‘mediation’.” –from Gille Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition
Clearly, I’m going to have to actually read Hegel because I’m getting a lot of mixed messages about what he actually meant by the dialectic. I mean I’m fully sympathetic when Deleuze goes on to point out about Kierkegaard and Nietzsche:
“They want to put metaphysics in motion, in action. They want to make it act, and make it carry out immediate acts. It is not enough, therefore, to propose a new representation of movement; representation is already mediation. Rather, it is a question of producing within the work a movement capable of affecting the mind outside of all representation; it is a question of making movement itself a work. without interposition; of substituting direct signs for mediate representations; of inventing vibrations, rotations, whirlings, gravitations, dances or leaps which directly touch the mind.”
Let me emphasize: Deleuze’s agenda (via Kierkegaard and Nietzsche (pretty much parallels mine. It’s why I’m always drawn back to him. At the same time, I can’t help but feel his interpretation of Hegel’s dialectic centers around the philosophy 101 interpretation of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis: something I am told through secondary sources on Hegel was never really brought out in his writings. The understanding I got was that it was a process of taking a general understanding, breaking it down to its individual components (atomizing it in Russell’s terms, fixing those components, then putting it all back together in a new and improved way.
I am also told, through secondary sources, that Deleuze’s understanding of Hegel was primarily through Jean Hyppolite. But Hyppolite worked well ahead in the future of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. But then this could have been the result of Deleuze imposing his understanding (via Hyppolite (of Hegel onto them. The other problem for me is that the philosophy 101 interpretation of Hegel’s dialectic also seemed to be at work in Marx’s Material Dialecticism. But this, once again, could have been a kind of overcoding as concerns Marx, especially given that it was Engel’s that actually inserted the notion into Marx’s thought.
So I am allowed one of those rare moments when I can actually follow the board protocol of question and answer. I ask a question:
What exactly is going on with Hegel’s dialectic? Is the philosophy 101 interpretation wrong or right? And if it is, how did people like Deleuze, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Engels get so caught up in it? Or am I just interpreting Deleuze wrong? And if it is a misinterpretation, who started it?
Actually, that was a few questions. But hopefully some of you more formally trained cybernauts will be able to help me untangle this.
Hegel's Dialectic:
-
Scott Mayers
- Posts: 2485
- Joined: Wed Jul 08, 2015 1:53 am
Re: Hegel's Dialectic:
I had a hard time even trying to read Hegel in the past. And so I learned much of his value through the works of others. What I followed is what I've re-introduced in my own theory regarding logic and believe this was the intent:
It surrounds the concept in logic of "contradiction". Normally, when we use logic, we assume that contradiction is itself the end or closure of any further dialect. Yet, as we all know, in reality, when we are confronted by a contradiction in the form of what we call a "paradox" (a necessary contradiction in reality), we are forced to find some real resolution to overcome it.
Think of this as beginning with some goal to go from point A to point B. Your 'goal' is to get to point B. When or where point B is at least perceived essential, if you come across some barrier that prevents you from going further, this acts as a local "contradiction" with respect to you achieving your goal. Now when this occurs in logic, we simply treat this as a dead-end that lacks any more information to help us. And just as many of us do, we often evade contradiction by simply walking away from it.
However, when we find a contradiction that is a paradox (meaning a contradiction in nature that MUST be resolved for some goal), then we must recognize the utility of contradiction as a means to discover. Still, most would agree that this can tell us something useful. Yet often, the default is to only infer that such a direction only informs us that it is a dead end.
What Hegel, I believe was intending to argue, as I do to here, is that in such cases, we CAN formulate a logic using that contradiction as a means to solve the problem in a dynamic way. By "dynamic", I mean that we have to find a formula that uses the contradiction itself to discover a positive way to go forward, especially where we perceive it as necessary to get to that goal AND there is no other apparent options but through that barrier (the paradox).
To me, the solution involves using DeMorgan's Laws to initially restate the problem in a different form. Then we negate this but grant it a 'place' to which it CAN be true, even if we cannot experience this 'place' necessarily. This 'place' is what we normally refer to as "another dimension". It could be a parallel dimension, or it could be a perpendicular one. The parallel one would be hard to reconcile as there are no points in it which seem to meet in the same 'place' we are. However, if considered perpendicular, we can formulate a model that describes how this place could exist if it should in our own world. And if we can find a means for this to make sense, we resolve the contradiction by including this dimension as a logical "contrary" instead.
If you doubt this, this is how we actually derive the dimensions we use in geometry as models to make sense of our reality. The y-axis in a Cartesian plane is the contradiction of the x-axis at each point on the x-axis. For instance, assume we only 'know' of an x-axis reality. If we initially come across something in our reality that appears paradoxical, like that something, for instance, is AT point 3 and also NOT AT point 3 on a number line, this leads us to a contradiction. The solution is to 'imagine' some point not on our 'x-axis' world such that if it exists, it would have to mean something to each and every point away from this contradicting point in both directions that have symmetrical properties.
From Point 3, let's assume the points 1 unit distance from this Point, namely 3-1 = Point 2 and 3 + 1 = Point 4. Wherever this 'new' point could be beyond this x-axis, from Point 2 and Point 4, they must have some NEW unit measure in common. They also have to be described in opposing symmetries that are also equivalent but opposite. So, from Point 2, we might describe the 'unit' to this imagined point, +1UP1. From Point 4, we might describe this as -1UP1. Each of these would have some "absolute value" measure in common. Recognizing that "UP" opposes "DOWN", we might also recognize by symmetry that another such point in this New 'place' would be +1DOWN1 from Point 2 and -1DOWN1 from Point 4.
We already 'know' that we define these points as having an absolute value of "the square root of 2" via Euclid or through Analytic Geometry.
Without going through all the details, my point here is that there is a formulaic process to which we can resolve contradiction by finding where, if such a place exists, can be realized for functioning purposes. If this seems too complicated, let's use a normal everyday type of example.
Imagine you read of someone who appears to be contradicting themselves from some interpretation we make upon reading them. For instance, let us say that in some translation of some past reference, we get some person claiming that "Some particular person was alive and dead during Easter". Without further context, we'd either have to conclude that this person was either delusional or something else is 'wrong' here. For some, we'd chalk this up to delusion and conclude that we should simply ignore anything from this source altogether.
However, if we grant charity to the possibility that the original author had some fair meaning, we might fix this contradiction by recognizing that the original author may have written something like this but had different meanings of the words. For instance, while to us today, Easter is one particular day, it might be that to the original author, "Easter" may have been a celebration that lasted a weeks time. So given this extended 'dimension', the contradiction is removed because reasonably, someone who may have been alive during the beginning of this interpretation of "Easter" being a week-long celebration, this same person could have also died by the end of this week. Thus, this re-interprets the contradiction into a contrary or contrast by re-examination.
I like this example: Notice in the Old Testament that many people seemed to have lived extraordinary long lives? However, if you reinterpret what has come down to us in context to the way ancient peoples may have counted their ages, they likely used a system based NOT on years, but on moon-cycles (months) or even partial ones (weeks). Then an age of 144 would turn out to be a young lad of only 12 [because 144/12 months = 12].
Do you see the logic of this?
It surrounds the concept in logic of "contradiction". Normally, when we use logic, we assume that contradiction is itself the end or closure of any further dialect. Yet, as we all know, in reality, when we are confronted by a contradiction in the form of what we call a "paradox" (a necessary contradiction in reality), we are forced to find some real resolution to overcome it.
Think of this as beginning with some goal to go from point A to point B. Your 'goal' is to get to point B. When or where point B is at least perceived essential, if you come across some barrier that prevents you from going further, this acts as a local "contradiction" with respect to you achieving your goal. Now when this occurs in logic, we simply treat this as a dead-end that lacks any more information to help us. And just as many of us do, we often evade contradiction by simply walking away from it.
However, when we find a contradiction that is a paradox (meaning a contradiction in nature that MUST be resolved for some goal), then we must recognize the utility of contradiction as a means to discover. Still, most would agree that this can tell us something useful. Yet often, the default is to only infer that such a direction only informs us that it is a dead end.
What Hegel, I believe was intending to argue, as I do to here, is that in such cases, we CAN formulate a logic using that contradiction as a means to solve the problem in a dynamic way. By "dynamic", I mean that we have to find a formula that uses the contradiction itself to discover a positive way to go forward, especially where we perceive it as necessary to get to that goal AND there is no other apparent options but through that barrier (the paradox).
To me, the solution involves using DeMorgan's Laws to initially restate the problem in a different form. Then we negate this but grant it a 'place' to which it CAN be true, even if we cannot experience this 'place' necessarily. This 'place' is what we normally refer to as "another dimension". It could be a parallel dimension, or it could be a perpendicular one. The parallel one would be hard to reconcile as there are no points in it which seem to meet in the same 'place' we are. However, if considered perpendicular, we can formulate a model that describes how this place could exist if it should in our own world. And if we can find a means for this to make sense, we resolve the contradiction by including this dimension as a logical "contrary" instead.
If you doubt this, this is how we actually derive the dimensions we use in geometry as models to make sense of our reality. The y-axis in a Cartesian plane is the contradiction of the x-axis at each point on the x-axis. For instance, assume we only 'know' of an x-axis reality. If we initially come across something in our reality that appears paradoxical, like that something, for instance, is AT point 3 and also NOT AT point 3 on a number line, this leads us to a contradiction. The solution is to 'imagine' some point not on our 'x-axis' world such that if it exists, it would have to mean something to each and every point away from this contradicting point in both directions that have symmetrical properties.
From Point 3, let's assume the points 1 unit distance from this Point, namely 3-1 = Point 2 and 3 + 1 = Point 4. Wherever this 'new' point could be beyond this x-axis, from Point 2 and Point 4, they must have some NEW unit measure in common. They also have to be described in opposing symmetries that are also equivalent but opposite. So, from Point 2, we might describe the 'unit' to this imagined point, +1UP1. From Point 4, we might describe this as -1UP1. Each of these would have some "absolute value" measure in common. Recognizing that "UP" opposes "DOWN", we might also recognize by symmetry that another such point in this New 'place' would be +1DOWN1 from Point 2 and -1DOWN1 from Point 4.
We already 'know' that we define these points as having an absolute value of "the square root of 2" via Euclid or through Analytic Geometry.
Without going through all the details, my point here is that there is a formulaic process to which we can resolve contradiction by finding where, if such a place exists, can be realized for functioning purposes. If this seems too complicated, let's use a normal everyday type of example.
Imagine you read of someone who appears to be contradicting themselves from some interpretation we make upon reading them. For instance, let us say that in some translation of some past reference, we get some person claiming that "Some particular person was alive and dead during Easter". Without further context, we'd either have to conclude that this person was either delusional or something else is 'wrong' here. For some, we'd chalk this up to delusion and conclude that we should simply ignore anything from this source altogether.
However, if we grant charity to the possibility that the original author had some fair meaning, we might fix this contradiction by recognizing that the original author may have written something like this but had different meanings of the words. For instance, while to us today, Easter is one particular day, it might be that to the original author, "Easter" may have been a celebration that lasted a weeks time. So given this extended 'dimension', the contradiction is removed because reasonably, someone who may have been alive during the beginning of this interpretation of "Easter" being a week-long celebration, this same person could have also died by the end of this week. Thus, this re-interprets the contradiction into a contrary or contrast by re-examination.
I like this example: Notice in the Old Testament that many people seemed to have lived extraordinary long lives? However, if you reinterpret what has come down to us in context to the way ancient peoples may have counted their ages, they likely used a system based NOT on years, but on moon-cycles (months) or even partial ones (weeks). Then an age of 144 would turn out to be a young lad of only 12 [because 144/12 months = 12].
Do you see the logic of this?
Re: Hegel's Dialectic:
Scott, I will try to get to your response tomorrow. But today's rhizome first:
Re: Hegel's Dialectic:
“What exactly is going on with Hegel’s dialectic? Is the philosophy 101 interpretation [that which involves the triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis] wrong or right? And if it is, how did people like Deleuze, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Engels get so caught up in it? Or am I just interpreting Deleuze wrong? And if it is a misinterpretation, who started it?”
Since asking this question (a bounce off of Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition (I have come to feel like I’m on some wandering journey (almost Wonderland-like (grabbing advice from some clearly wise and knowledgeable authorities. At the same time, it has felt a little like Kafka trying to gain access to the law in that most of responses I am getting are bounces off the initial post that, while interesting and informative, do not actually answer the question in any direct way. Still they were interesting responses that warrant dissemination or what I call crosspollination in terms of the boards. And it is what we tend to do (for good reason (on the boards in the spirit of the acceleration of discourse embraced by Deleuze and Rorty for the sake of our cultural evolution as a species.
And in that spirit, I am inspired to spend today’s window (or rhizome (disseminating that discourse in what can be described as a kind of bricolage or collage –depending on the dynamic of the board I’m spreading the word on.
Since asking this question (a bounce off of Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition (I have come to feel like I’m on some wandering journey (almost Wonderland-like (grabbing advice from some clearly wise and knowledgeable authorities. At the same time, it has felt a little like Kafka trying to gain access to the law in that most of responses I am getting are bounces off the initial post that, while interesting and informative, do not actually answer the question in any direct way. Still they were interesting responses that warrant dissemination or what I call crosspollination in terms of the boards. And it is what we tend to do (for good reason (on the boards in the spirit of the acceleration of discourse embraced by Deleuze and Rorty for the sake of our cultural evolution as a species.
And in that spirit, I am inspired to spend today’s window (or rhizome (disseminating that discourse in what can be described as a kind of bricolage or collage –depending on the dynamic of the board I’m spreading the word on.
Re: Hegel's Dialectic:
“Marx labels the dialectical as anti-Hegelian --as an inexact, representative/transitory/liquid way to explain economics for example. By the nature of the dialectical explanation, Marx feels justified as more accurate due to the dialectical nature of anything. His work was criticized because of that. It was not measurable like chemistry or physics. Sounds like Deleuze had it right in interpreting Hegel as did the others you mentioned..Deleuze also has them pinned down to their own 'way' (Nz, K).” –Benjamin Myers from Facebook
“ Deleuzes problem with Hegel is that Hegel(due to Deleuze) never gets beyond "the law". There is always a law to describe reality; but Deleuze is more interested in the being of 'Desire' as something which is close to movement, becoming, and the rhizome and far far away from morality(the law).” -Jacob Kvist also from Facebook
“Walter Kaufman wrote an interesting book which is kinda hard to find about
Hegel. I have it and read it years ago, so I don't remember all the specific facts
about the book but Kaufman is really good and I trust him. I have virtually everything
he wrote including his Nietzsche. He is a good place to start and then work around
others. See what others say and then read Hegel. Use the others as a road map to what
Hegel is saying because Hegel is tough to read, really tough.” -Peter Kropotkin from ILP
And Zoot Allures as well from ILP:
“I have forgotten half of what I've ever read of or on Hegel. I don't know if that is a bad thing. I can tell you Kierkegaard rejected Hegel's notion of the rationality of existence.. that a complete system of philosophy could capture the essence of everything and explain process and evolution in teleological terms. He called Hegel's philosophy Lemonade Twaddle. Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer would have at least that much in common; an invested interest against Hegel's philosophy.
The breaking from academic metaphysics and ontology at the time was characteristic of the oncoming period of existentialism.. Kierkegaard leading the way. You know all this, but continental philosophy was at its highest moment Hegelian during that period, so Kierkegaard's attack on Hegel was unorthodox and unconventional.
Check out Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscripts if you get a chance.
I don't recall Nietzsche ever saying much about Hegel other than in defending him from Schopenhauer... or a few brief comments about him here and there. What did you have in mind?
Engels use of Hegel was to make of historical materialism something philosophically scientific, so he needed the Hegelian dialectic of history. He wanted to be able to explain economic and therefore social evolution in terms of logical laws, something Hegel's three dialectical laws could be used for. Those three principles could be said to be what motivates process and change, rationally... according to Hegelians anyway. Now Engels had a way to justify socialism as a dialectic development coming out of a conflict between a thesis (working class) and a antithesis (bourgeois) and resolving in a synthesis (socialism). Marx liked the idea but cut a lot of the Hegel hocus-pocus out. With Marx, the owl of Minerva had flown in the night in which all cows are black, my good man.
Here is an entire body of work devoted to the complete annihilation of a one George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. This site belongs to a Marxist/Trotskyist/Wittgensteinean who holds a fifth degree black belt in logical jiu-jitsu and pulls no punches, d-six tre.
Haven't read much Deleuze. I've only glanced at his stuff with Guattari here and there. I know he is Spinozean.”
And my response on ILP:
“First of all, thanks guys. That was some useful information.
Peter, I’ll definitely have to check into that Kaufman book, especially having benefitted from him myself in writings on Nietzsche (which I really need to get back to) as well as his writings on existentialism in general. You even remind me that there is another book of his I need to check out. I believe it was called Irrational Man or something like that.
Zoot, your points went a ways towards clarification. But since you are clearly a little more comfortable with Hegel and his influence on others, I’m hoping you can give me some insight on the main problem I am having. As I understand, according those a little more sympathetic to him, Hegel never really described the dialectic in terms of the triad: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This, as they suggested, is a misinterpretation. The actual dialectic, as was related to me through a secondary source (the audio book Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: the Giants of Philosophy), was a process of breaking a given phenomenon down to it most fundamental elements (the atomistic approach of Russell), working on those, then putting them back together in a new and approved way. The problem I’m having is that if the triad version is merely an oversimplified philosophy 101 version, it sure seems to go back a long ways and is shared by a lot of competent philosophers. I mean if it is a misinterpretation, you have to ask where it started.
As far as Deleuze, having gone as far as I have with him (I have a pretty full library of his (w/ and w/out Guatarri ) and secondary text on him (I would advise you that he is something you can take or leave. For me, because of the obscurity of his prose, he has been pretty much a love/hate relationship that can become a kind of carrot on a stick. For every book you attempt of his, find yourself having to turn to several other books in order to hope to begin to understand him. It takes a little more commitment than most people might want to give –like a marriage. This is why I often find myself referring to him as “that goddamn Frenchman”.
And I mean it: damn the French and their weird, obscure philosophies anyway!!!!
Anyway, thanks again, guys.
PS: Kierkegaard is definitely on my reading wish list -that is whenever I manage to get away from that goddamn Frenchman.”
Finally, I got an interesting response from Scott Meyers from the Philosophy Now Forum:
“I had a hard time even trying to read Hegel in the past. And so I learned much of his value through the works of others. What I followed is what I've re-introduced in my own theory regarding logic and believe this was the intent:
It surrounds the concept in logic of "contradiction". Normally, when we use logic, we assume that contradiction is itself the end or closure of any further dialect. Yet, as we all know, in reality, when we are confronted by a contradiction in the form of what we call a "paradox" (a necessary contradiction in reality), we are forced to find some real resolution to overcome it.
Think of this as beginning with some goal to go from point A to point B. Your 'goal' is to get to point B. When or where point B is at least perceived essential, if you come across some barrier that prevents you from going further, this acts as a local "contradiction" with respect to you achieving your goal. Now when this occurs in logic, we simply treat this as a dead-end that lacks any more information to help us. And just as many of us do, we often evade contradiction by simply walking away from it.
However, when we find a contradiction that is a paradox (meaning a contradiction in nature that MUST be resolved for some goal), then we must recognize the utility of contradiction as a means to discover. Still, most would agree that this can tell us something useful. Yet often, the default is to only infer that such a direction only informs us that it is a dead end.
What Hegel, I believe was intending to argue, as I do to here, is that in such cases, we CAN formulate a logic using that contradiction as a means to solve the problem in a dynamic way. By "dynamic", I mean that we have to find a formula that uses the contradiction itself to discover a positive way to go forward, especially where we perceive it as necessary to get to that goal AND there is no other apparent options but through that barrier (the paradox).
To me, the solution involves using DeMorgan's Laws to initially restate the problem in a different form. Then we negate this but grant it a 'place' to which it CAN be true, even if we cannot experience this 'place' necessarily. This 'place' is what we normally refer to as "another dimension". It could be a parallel dimension, or it could be a perpendicular one. The parallel one would be hard to reconcile as there are no points in it which seem to meet in the same 'place' we are. However, if considered perpendicular, we can formulate a model that describes how this place could exist if it should in our own world. And if we can find a means for this to make sense, we resolve the contradiction by including this dimension as a logical "contrary" instead.
If you doubt this, this is how we actually derive the dimensions we use in geometry as models to make sense of our reality. The y-axis in a Cartesian plane is the contradiction of the x-axis at each point on the x-axis. For instance, assume we only 'know' of an x-axis reality. If we initially come across something in our reality that appears paradoxical, like that something, for instance, is AT point 3 and also NOT AT point 3 on a number line, this leads us to a contradiction. The solution is to 'imagine' some point not on our 'x-axis' world such that if it exists, it would have to mean something to each and every point away from this contradicting point in both directions that have symmetrical properties.
From Point 3, let's assume the points 1 unit distance from this Point, namely 3-1 = Point 2 and 3 + 1 = Point 4. Wherever this 'new' point could be beyond this x-axis, from Point 2 and Point 4, they must have some NEW unit measure in common. They also have to be described in opposing symmetries that are also equivalent but opposite. So, from Point 2, we might describe the 'unit' to this imagined point, +1UP1. From Point 4, we might describe this as -1UP1. Each of these would have some "absolute value" measure in common. Recognizing that "UP" opposes "DOWN", we might also recognize by symmetry that another such point in this New 'place' would be +1DOWN1 from Point 2 and -1DOWN1 from Point 4.
We already 'know' that we define these points as having an absolute value of "the square root of 2" via Euclid or through Analytic Geometry.
Without going through all the details, my point here is that there is a formulaic process to which we can resolve contradiction by finding where, if such a place exists, can be realized for functioning purposes. If this seems too complicated, let's use a normal everyday type of example.
Imagine you read of someone who appears to be contradicting themselves from some interpretation we make upon reading them. For instance, let us say that in some translation of some past reference, we get some person claiming that "Some particular person was alive and dead during Easter". Without further context, we'd either have to conclude that this person was either delusional or something else is 'wrong' here. For some, we'd chalk this up to delusion and conclude that we should simply ignore anything from this source altogether.
However, if we grant charity to the possibility that the original author had some fair meaning, we might fix this contradiction by recognizing that the original author may have written something like this but had different meanings of the words. For instance, while to us today, Easter is one particular day, it might be that to the original author, "Easter" may have been a celebration that lasted a weeks time. So given this extended 'dimension', the contradiction is removed because reasonably, someone who may have been alive during the beginning of this interpretation of "Easter" being a week-long celebration, this same person could have also died by the end of this week. Thus, this re-interprets the contradiction into a contrary or contrast by re-examination.
I like this example: Notice in the Old Testament that many people seemed to have lived extraordinary long lives? However, if you reinterpret what has come down to us in context to the way ancient peoples may have counted their ages, they likely used a system based NOT on years, but on moon-cycles (months) or even partial ones (weeks). Then an age of 144 would turn out to be a young lad of only 12 [because 144/12 months = 12].
Do you see the logic of this?”
“ Deleuzes problem with Hegel is that Hegel(due to Deleuze) never gets beyond "the law". There is always a law to describe reality; but Deleuze is more interested in the being of 'Desire' as something which is close to movement, becoming, and the rhizome and far far away from morality(the law).” -Jacob Kvist also from Facebook
“Walter Kaufman wrote an interesting book which is kinda hard to find about
Hegel. I have it and read it years ago, so I don't remember all the specific facts
about the book but Kaufman is really good and I trust him. I have virtually everything
he wrote including his Nietzsche. He is a good place to start and then work around
others. See what others say and then read Hegel. Use the others as a road map to what
Hegel is saying because Hegel is tough to read, really tough.” -Peter Kropotkin from ILP
And Zoot Allures as well from ILP:
“I have forgotten half of what I've ever read of or on Hegel. I don't know if that is a bad thing. I can tell you Kierkegaard rejected Hegel's notion of the rationality of existence.. that a complete system of philosophy could capture the essence of everything and explain process and evolution in teleological terms. He called Hegel's philosophy Lemonade Twaddle. Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer would have at least that much in common; an invested interest against Hegel's philosophy.
The breaking from academic metaphysics and ontology at the time was characteristic of the oncoming period of existentialism.. Kierkegaard leading the way. You know all this, but continental philosophy was at its highest moment Hegelian during that period, so Kierkegaard's attack on Hegel was unorthodox and unconventional.
Check out Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscripts if you get a chance.
I don't recall Nietzsche ever saying much about Hegel other than in defending him from Schopenhauer... or a few brief comments about him here and there. What did you have in mind?
Engels use of Hegel was to make of historical materialism something philosophically scientific, so he needed the Hegelian dialectic of history. He wanted to be able to explain economic and therefore social evolution in terms of logical laws, something Hegel's three dialectical laws could be used for. Those three principles could be said to be what motivates process and change, rationally... according to Hegelians anyway. Now Engels had a way to justify socialism as a dialectic development coming out of a conflict between a thesis (working class) and a antithesis (bourgeois) and resolving in a synthesis (socialism). Marx liked the idea but cut a lot of the Hegel hocus-pocus out. With Marx, the owl of Minerva had flown in the night in which all cows are black, my good man.
Here is an entire body of work devoted to the complete annihilation of a one George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. This site belongs to a Marxist/Trotskyist/Wittgensteinean who holds a fifth degree black belt in logical jiu-jitsu and pulls no punches, d-six tre.
Haven't read much Deleuze. I've only glanced at his stuff with Guattari here and there. I know he is Spinozean.”
And my response on ILP:
“First of all, thanks guys. That was some useful information.
Peter, I’ll definitely have to check into that Kaufman book, especially having benefitted from him myself in writings on Nietzsche (which I really need to get back to) as well as his writings on existentialism in general. You even remind me that there is another book of his I need to check out. I believe it was called Irrational Man or something like that.
Zoot, your points went a ways towards clarification. But since you are clearly a little more comfortable with Hegel and his influence on others, I’m hoping you can give me some insight on the main problem I am having. As I understand, according those a little more sympathetic to him, Hegel never really described the dialectic in terms of the triad: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This, as they suggested, is a misinterpretation. The actual dialectic, as was related to me through a secondary source (the audio book Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: the Giants of Philosophy), was a process of breaking a given phenomenon down to it most fundamental elements (the atomistic approach of Russell), working on those, then putting them back together in a new and approved way. The problem I’m having is that if the triad version is merely an oversimplified philosophy 101 version, it sure seems to go back a long ways and is shared by a lot of competent philosophers. I mean if it is a misinterpretation, you have to ask where it started.
As far as Deleuze, having gone as far as I have with him (I have a pretty full library of his (w/ and w/out Guatarri ) and secondary text on him (I would advise you that he is something you can take or leave. For me, because of the obscurity of his prose, he has been pretty much a love/hate relationship that can become a kind of carrot on a stick. For every book you attempt of his, find yourself having to turn to several other books in order to hope to begin to understand him. It takes a little more commitment than most people might want to give –like a marriage. This is why I often find myself referring to him as “that goddamn Frenchman”.
And I mean it: damn the French and their weird, obscure philosophies anyway!!!!
Anyway, thanks again, guys.
PS: Kierkegaard is definitely on my reading wish list -that is whenever I manage to get away from that goddamn Frenchman.”
Finally, I got an interesting response from Scott Meyers from the Philosophy Now Forum:
“I had a hard time even trying to read Hegel in the past. And so I learned much of his value through the works of others. What I followed is what I've re-introduced in my own theory regarding logic and believe this was the intent:
It surrounds the concept in logic of "contradiction". Normally, when we use logic, we assume that contradiction is itself the end or closure of any further dialect. Yet, as we all know, in reality, when we are confronted by a contradiction in the form of what we call a "paradox" (a necessary contradiction in reality), we are forced to find some real resolution to overcome it.
Think of this as beginning with some goal to go from point A to point B. Your 'goal' is to get to point B. When or where point B is at least perceived essential, if you come across some barrier that prevents you from going further, this acts as a local "contradiction" with respect to you achieving your goal. Now when this occurs in logic, we simply treat this as a dead-end that lacks any more information to help us. And just as many of us do, we often evade contradiction by simply walking away from it.
However, when we find a contradiction that is a paradox (meaning a contradiction in nature that MUST be resolved for some goal), then we must recognize the utility of contradiction as a means to discover. Still, most would agree that this can tell us something useful. Yet often, the default is to only infer that such a direction only informs us that it is a dead end.
What Hegel, I believe was intending to argue, as I do to here, is that in such cases, we CAN formulate a logic using that contradiction as a means to solve the problem in a dynamic way. By "dynamic", I mean that we have to find a formula that uses the contradiction itself to discover a positive way to go forward, especially where we perceive it as necessary to get to that goal AND there is no other apparent options but through that barrier (the paradox).
To me, the solution involves using DeMorgan's Laws to initially restate the problem in a different form. Then we negate this but grant it a 'place' to which it CAN be true, even if we cannot experience this 'place' necessarily. This 'place' is what we normally refer to as "another dimension". It could be a parallel dimension, or it could be a perpendicular one. The parallel one would be hard to reconcile as there are no points in it which seem to meet in the same 'place' we are. However, if considered perpendicular, we can formulate a model that describes how this place could exist if it should in our own world. And if we can find a means for this to make sense, we resolve the contradiction by including this dimension as a logical "contrary" instead.
If you doubt this, this is how we actually derive the dimensions we use in geometry as models to make sense of our reality. The y-axis in a Cartesian plane is the contradiction of the x-axis at each point on the x-axis. For instance, assume we only 'know' of an x-axis reality. If we initially come across something in our reality that appears paradoxical, like that something, for instance, is AT point 3 and also NOT AT point 3 on a number line, this leads us to a contradiction. The solution is to 'imagine' some point not on our 'x-axis' world such that if it exists, it would have to mean something to each and every point away from this contradicting point in both directions that have symmetrical properties.
From Point 3, let's assume the points 1 unit distance from this Point, namely 3-1 = Point 2 and 3 + 1 = Point 4. Wherever this 'new' point could be beyond this x-axis, from Point 2 and Point 4, they must have some NEW unit measure in common. They also have to be described in opposing symmetries that are also equivalent but opposite. So, from Point 2, we might describe the 'unit' to this imagined point, +1UP1. From Point 4, we might describe this as -1UP1. Each of these would have some "absolute value" measure in common. Recognizing that "UP" opposes "DOWN", we might also recognize by symmetry that another such point in this New 'place' would be +1DOWN1 from Point 2 and -1DOWN1 from Point 4.
We already 'know' that we define these points as having an absolute value of "the square root of 2" via Euclid or through Analytic Geometry.
Without going through all the details, my point here is that there is a formulaic process to which we can resolve contradiction by finding where, if such a place exists, can be realized for functioning purposes. If this seems too complicated, let's use a normal everyday type of example.
Imagine you read of someone who appears to be contradicting themselves from some interpretation we make upon reading them. For instance, let us say that in some translation of some past reference, we get some person claiming that "Some particular person was alive and dead during Easter". Without further context, we'd either have to conclude that this person was either delusional or something else is 'wrong' here. For some, we'd chalk this up to delusion and conclude that we should simply ignore anything from this source altogether.
However, if we grant charity to the possibility that the original author had some fair meaning, we might fix this contradiction by recognizing that the original author may have written something like this but had different meanings of the words. For instance, while to us today, Easter is one particular day, it might be that to the original author, "Easter" may have been a celebration that lasted a weeks time. So given this extended 'dimension', the contradiction is removed because reasonably, someone who may have been alive during the beginning of this interpretation of "Easter" being a week-long celebration, this same person could have also died by the end of this week. Thus, this re-interprets the contradiction into a contrary or contrast by re-examination.
I like this example: Notice in the Old Testament that many people seemed to have lived extraordinary long lives? However, if you reinterpret what has come down to us in context to the way ancient peoples may have counted their ages, they likely used a system based NOT on years, but on moon-cycles (months) or even partial ones (weeks). Then an age of 144 would turn out to be a young lad of only 12 [because 144/12 months = 12].
Do you see the logic of this?”
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Scott Mayers
- Posts: 2485
- Joined: Wed Jul 08, 2015 1:53 am
Re: Hegel's Dialectic:
I haven't read the follow-up post yet. All I can say is that I did learn of the thesis/antithesis/synthesis through Marx's dialectic materialism. I could be wrong that it was Hegel who initiated this. I remember taking out his book years ("Logic") ago to which I remember finding it requiring too much effort to interpret in the language I was comfortable with.d63 wrote:“What exactly is going on with Hegel’s dialectic? Is the philosophy 101 interpretation [that which involves the triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis] wrong or right? And if it is, how did people like Deleuze, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Engels get so caught up in it? Or am I just interpreting Deleuze wrong? And if it is a misinterpretation, who started it?”
Since asking this question (a bounce off of Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition (I have come to feel like I’m on some wandering journey (almost Wonderland-like (grabbing advice from some clearly wise and knowledgeable authorities. At the same time, it has felt a little like Kafka trying to gain access to the law in that most of responses I am getting are bounces off the initial post that, while interesting and informative, do not actually answer the question in any direct way. Still they were interesting responses that warrant dissemination or what I call crosspollination in terms of the boards. And it is what we tend to do (for good reason (on the boards in the spirit of the acceleration of discourse embraced by Deleuze and Rorty for the sake of our cultural evolution as a species.
And in that spirit, I am inspired to spend today’s window (or rhizome (disseminating that discourse in what can be described as a kind of bricolage or collage –depending on the dynamic of the board I’m spreading the word on.
But why does this matter? Is it Hegel that you want to discern or the concept of thesis/antithesis/synthesis? There are plenty of Wikipedia topics related to all of this. I only added what I thought was Hegel but since I learned it through Marx, you may be right that Marx/Engels only were inspired by this. What I demonstrated earlier is how I apply what I understood or interpreted it as with relation to my own interest in logic on the particular sub-area of "contradiction".
I'll read on to see what I can add. But I lack an invested interest in the concern for the historical background of the modern philosophers (1800s) where I've gleaned the rationale (even if misinterpreted) for my own intellectual interests. My best background is to the texts that many of these great thinkers often created or contributed to future texts on logic itself. My last response was an attempt to relate how I see the thesis/antithesis/synthesis can be used relating it to my own practice.
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Scott Mayers
- Posts: 2485
- Joined: Wed Jul 08, 2015 1:53 am
Re: Hegel's Dialectic:
I notice that you are cross-linking some discussion elsewhere and not responding to me. [My name, by the way is Scott Mayers. If you could correct this when discussing elsewhere, this would be appreciated as they are uniquely my own.]
Where are you discussing this elsewhere?
Where are you discussing this elsewhere?
Re: Hegel's Dialectic:
One has to be unusual stupid in order to think Kirkegaard and Nietze has ANY relevanec, and it's completely waste of time to spend any time on them.
Re: Hegel's Dialectic:
Sorry Scott: it happens when you are working on the fly.Scott Mayers wrote:I notice that you are cross-linking some discussion elsewhere and not responding to me. [My name, by the way is Scott Mayers. If you could correct this when discussing elsewhere, this would be appreciated as they are uniquely my own.]
Where are you discussing this elsewhere?
I discuss it elsewhere to stimulate discourse. That is all that matters to me.
Hex: you are little more then a common heckler. You have absolutely nothing to add to the discourse. I'm not really sure why you even post, much less take pride in it. But you seem to. So I'll just let you go on showing yourself to be the moron you clearly are.
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Scott Mayers
- Posts: 2485
- Joined: Wed Jul 08, 2015 1:53 am
Re: Hegel's Dialectic:
So my question is to the fact that you appear to be responding to a discussion you are having elsewhere to which I'm curious of other's responses. What has others responded to my take on it, for instance? Has this helped in any way with your inquiry here?d63 wrote:Sorry Scott: it happens when you are working on the fly.Scott Mayers wrote:I notice that you are cross-linking some discussion elsewhere and not responding to me. [My name, by the way is Scott Mayers. If you could correct this when discussing elsewhere, this would be appreciated as they are uniquely my own.]
Where are you discussing this elsewhere?
I discuss it elsewhere to stimulate discourse. That is all that matters to me.
Hex: you are little more then a common heckler. You have absolutely nothing to add to the discourse. I'm not really sure why you even post, much less take pride in it. But you seem to. So I'll just let you go on showing yourself to be the moron you clearly are.
Re: Hegel's Dialectic:
The thing is, Scott, most people on the boards are just looking for something to respond to. This is why the Q & A approach (where the OP asks a question and everyone gives their opinion) tend to be so popular, especially given that a large number of people on the philosophy boards tend to be tourists: people whose lives are primarily filled with the day to day matters and have a passing interest in philosophy. One of the consequences of this is that you're risking neglect every time you write anything over a 100 words. Your post was (with pride on my part) included in a large compilation of various responses which most people are not likely to take the time to read. This has pretty much been the story of my life on the boards. And I have learned to keep on keeping on, focus on my process, and just make it all available to whoever might actually take an interest.
That said, this particular discourse has managed to generate more discourse than most of my rhizomes. I will continue to bring the results of that here as well as, when appropriate, spread your input as well. But regardless, that input is always appreciated for my part.
That said, this particular discourse has managed to generate more discourse than most of my rhizomes. I will continue to bring the results of that here as well as, when appropriate, spread your input as well. But regardless, that input is always appreciated for my part.
Re: Hegel's Dialectic:
“As I understand, according those a little more sympathetic to him, Hegel never really described the dialectic in terms of the triad: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.” –me
“I believe it was Fichte's idea, not Hegel's.” –Zoot Allures from ILP
First of all, thanks again Zoot. This goes towards actually answering the question I was asking. This is not to downgrade or discourage the responses I have been getting. (I would never discourage the way we bounce off of each other: the jam which is the most useful approach to the boards that I see.) They were informative, interesting, and went towards clarity on various issues.
(Also, I apologize for offering information you already have. But this is my way of prepping this particular rhizome for dissemination.)
“This, as they suggested, is a misinterpretation. The actual dialectic, as was related to me through a secondary source (the audio book Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: the Giants of Philosophy), was a process of breaking a given phenomenon down to it most fundamental elements (the atomistic approach of Russell), working on those, then putting them back together in a new and approved way. The problem I’m having is that if the triad version is merely an oversimplified philosophy 101 version, it sure seems to go back a long ways and is shared by a lot of competent philosophers.”
“Right, oversimplified. For Hegel all development was the result of some kind of logical contradiction; here is the basis of the thesis/antithesis model he is using.. two things come into conflict and through a cancellation cause a third, synthetic event. This process of conflict and resolution is dynamic and nonlinear, describing all development whether biological, social, economic, political, whatever. The three working principles according to Hegel were:
The law of the unity and conflict of opposites
The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes
The law of the negation of the negation [from Wikipedia]
For the first, those empirical things that are characterized as opposite things are steadily changing, so their values are not the same; there are no real opposites in nature.. only in language. You could have a hot water thesis and a cold water antithesis. When you blend them they make a warm water synthesis. But how hot is hot and how cold is cold? So a unity and conflict of actual opposites does not seem like and idea read from nature, but rather imposed on it; when we talk about opposites we are not talking about the things (we can't be) but the meaning of things we give to things to fit them into the dialectical form. We designate one phenomena A and say this is what phenomena B is not. But why can't it just be another phenomena, why an opposite? What is the nature of oppositeness..what is oppositeness?
The second is confusing. Do they mean like when an orbiting neutron is added to an atom causing it to change elementally? They should have to, because any other kind of transition from quantity to quality would involve, like the first, a relatively vague process of imposing philosophical description and narrative on actual objects and events in the world as if they were stable entities.
Negation of the negation is supposed to be that logical rule that all change and development follows. The evolution of rational resolution for material conflict.. all part of the evolution of what Hegel is calling the Absolute Spirit. Consciousness as being-for-itself takes and appropriates rational control of the material being-in-itself in a process of constant problem resolution and overcoming, you might say. The Zeitgeist's growing pangs as it matures through its evolution. Pretty radical stuff for that time but you gotta remember Hegel was doing new age philosophy before the new age was new age. So there is that.
He was a far-out dude. Absolutely loved Napoleon... the super synthesis for the conflict of nations. Went to give a lecture one time forgetting to put both shoes on. Claimed only one person has ever understood him, and even he didn't understand him.”
I apologize again for repeating what has already been said. But your last point is worth breaking down and commenting on each point individually.
“For the first, those empirical things that are characterized as opposite things are steadily changing, so their values are not the same; there are no real opposites in nature.. only in language.”
This, once again, brings me to question the dialectic that Deleuze, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche opposed in Hegel in that what you are suggesting is a state of becoming –that which Deleuze posed against identity –that which he associated with repetition: the repetition of the thesis/antithesis/synthesis triad for instance. On top of that, you suggest the over-coding of language, another issue that tends to pop up a lot in Deleuze’s writings –as well as many post- sturucturalist/modernist thinkers.
This returns us to the concern I expressed in the OP: was Deleuze (as well as those he cited (working from the oversimplified, philosophy 101 understanding of Hegel’s dialectic?
“You could have a hot water thesis and a cold water antithesis. When you blend them they make a warm water synthesis. But how hot is hot and how cold is cold? So a unity and conflict of actual opposites does not seem like and idea read from nature, but rather imposed on it; when we talk about opposites we are not talking about the things (we can't be) but the meaning of things we give to things to fit them into the dialectical form.”
Once again, we see the havoc at work that Deleuze saw in becoming. That warm water synthesis (an act of identity (would merely be a point picked (but never captured (in a state of constant change. Once again: becoming. That state of “warm” is defined by the various temps it would be at as the heat units (BTUs (passed in and out of it.
I also see at work Deleuze’s distinction between extensity and intensity. An extensity would be like a plate of fresh baked cookies that a group of stoners could divide between them. There may have been 9 cookies between 3 stoners and they may have (being in the cooperative hippy-like mode they were in (divided them 3 a-piece. But the 3 individual sets of cookies would still add up to 9 –that is until they started munching them down.
3 bowls of water at a 100 degrees (lukewarm (however, does not equal 300 degrees: what Deleuze meant when he referred to intensity. In this sense, Deleuze seems to be just bouncing off of Hegel, not opposing him.
“The second is confusing. Do they mean like when an orbiting neutron is added to an atom causing it to change elementally? They should have to, because any other kind of transition from quantity to quality would involve, like the first, a relatively vague process of imposing philosophical description and narrative on actual objects and events in the world as if they were stable entities.”
I return to the second Hegelian point:
“The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes”
And this issue tends to pop up a lot in writings by and about Deleuze and likely comes down to Liebniz’s description of a seascape in which one enjoys the experience via the cumulative effect of a lot of little experiences, a kind of pointalistic approach to basic human experience: a lot of little dots that, through a cumulative effect, offer a coherent image.
I would offer the example of a computer screen that works in terms of pixels: it is based on four basic colors that (in a quantitative way (are put together to create the qualitative effects that we get through, for instance, a graphics program.
Anyway: at the end of my run. Will look at the third point as a future rhizome.
Actually, the negation of a negation reminds me of Sartre’s point concerning, I believe, Hegel’s sense of nothingness: that a pure nothingness would nihilate (negate (itself. But we’ll have to get to that further down the line: the next jam in an infinite line of jams.
“I believe it was Fichte's idea, not Hegel's.” –Zoot Allures from ILP
First of all, thanks again Zoot. This goes towards actually answering the question I was asking. This is not to downgrade or discourage the responses I have been getting. (I would never discourage the way we bounce off of each other: the jam which is the most useful approach to the boards that I see.) They were informative, interesting, and went towards clarity on various issues.
(Also, I apologize for offering information you already have. But this is my way of prepping this particular rhizome for dissemination.)
“This, as they suggested, is a misinterpretation. The actual dialectic, as was related to me through a secondary source (the audio book Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: the Giants of Philosophy), was a process of breaking a given phenomenon down to it most fundamental elements (the atomistic approach of Russell), working on those, then putting them back together in a new and approved way. The problem I’m having is that if the triad version is merely an oversimplified philosophy 101 version, it sure seems to go back a long ways and is shared by a lot of competent philosophers.”
“Right, oversimplified. For Hegel all development was the result of some kind of logical contradiction; here is the basis of the thesis/antithesis model he is using.. two things come into conflict and through a cancellation cause a third, synthetic event. This process of conflict and resolution is dynamic and nonlinear, describing all development whether biological, social, economic, political, whatever. The three working principles according to Hegel were:
The law of the unity and conflict of opposites
The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes
The law of the negation of the negation [from Wikipedia]
For the first, those empirical things that are characterized as opposite things are steadily changing, so their values are not the same; there are no real opposites in nature.. only in language. You could have a hot water thesis and a cold water antithesis. When you blend them they make a warm water synthesis. But how hot is hot and how cold is cold? So a unity and conflict of actual opposites does not seem like and idea read from nature, but rather imposed on it; when we talk about opposites we are not talking about the things (we can't be) but the meaning of things we give to things to fit them into the dialectical form. We designate one phenomena A and say this is what phenomena B is not. But why can't it just be another phenomena, why an opposite? What is the nature of oppositeness..what is oppositeness?
The second is confusing. Do they mean like when an orbiting neutron is added to an atom causing it to change elementally? They should have to, because any other kind of transition from quantity to quality would involve, like the first, a relatively vague process of imposing philosophical description and narrative on actual objects and events in the world as if they were stable entities.
Negation of the negation is supposed to be that logical rule that all change and development follows. The evolution of rational resolution for material conflict.. all part of the evolution of what Hegel is calling the Absolute Spirit. Consciousness as being-for-itself takes and appropriates rational control of the material being-in-itself in a process of constant problem resolution and overcoming, you might say. The Zeitgeist's growing pangs as it matures through its evolution. Pretty radical stuff for that time but you gotta remember Hegel was doing new age philosophy before the new age was new age. So there is that.
He was a far-out dude. Absolutely loved Napoleon... the super synthesis for the conflict of nations. Went to give a lecture one time forgetting to put both shoes on. Claimed only one person has ever understood him, and even he didn't understand him.”
I apologize again for repeating what has already been said. But your last point is worth breaking down and commenting on each point individually.
“For the first, those empirical things that are characterized as opposite things are steadily changing, so their values are not the same; there are no real opposites in nature.. only in language.”
This, once again, brings me to question the dialectic that Deleuze, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche opposed in Hegel in that what you are suggesting is a state of becoming –that which Deleuze posed against identity –that which he associated with repetition: the repetition of the thesis/antithesis/synthesis triad for instance. On top of that, you suggest the over-coding of language, another issue that tends to pop up a lot in Deleuze’s writings –as well as many post- sturucturalist/modernist thinkers.
This returns us to the concern I expressed in the OP: was Deleuze (as well as those he cited (working from the oversimplified, philosophy 101 understanding of Hegel’s dialectic?
“You could have a hot water thesis and a cold water antithesis. When you blend them they make a warm water synthesis. But how hot is hot and how cold is cold? So a unity and conflict of actual opposites does not seem like and idea read from nature, but rather imposed on it; when we talk about opposites we are not talking about the things (we can't be) but the meaning of things we give to things to fit them into the dialectical form.”
Once again, we see the havoc at work that Deleuze saw in becoming. That warm water synthesis (an act of identity (would merely be a point picked (but never captured (in a state of constant change. Once again: becoming. That state of “warm” is defined by the various temps it would be at as the heat units (BTUs (passed in and out of it.
I also see at work Deleuze’s distinction between extensity and intensity. An extensity would be like a plate of fresh baked cookies that a group of stoners could divide between them. There may have been 9 cookies between 3 stoners and they may have (being in the cooperative hippy-like mode they were in (divided them 3 a-piece. But the 3 individual sets of cookies would still add up to 9 –that is until they started munching them down.
3 bowls of water at a 100 degrees (lukewarm (however, does not equal 300 degrees: what Deleuze meant when he referred to intensity. In this sense, Deleuze seems to be just bouncing off of Hegel, not opposing him.
“The second is confusing. Do they mean like when an orbiting neutron is added to an atom causing it to change elementally? They should have to, because any other kind of transition from quantity to quality would involve, like the first, a relatively vague process of imposing philosophical description and narrative on actual objects and events in the world as if they were stable entities.”
I return to the second Hegelian point:
“The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes”
And this issue tends to pop up a lot in writings by and about Deleuze and likely comes down to Liebniz’s description of a seascape in which one enjoys the experience via the cumulative effect of a lot of little experiences, a kind of pointalistic approach to basic human experience: a lot of little dots that, through a cumulative effect, offer a coherent image.
I would offer the example of a computer screen that works in terms of pixels: it is based on four basic colors that (in a quantitative way (are put together to create the qualitative effects that we get through, for instance, a graphics program.
Anyway: at the end of my run. Will look at the third point as a future rhizome.
Actually, the negation of a negation reminds me of Sartre’s point concerning, I believe, Hegel’s sense of nothingness: that a pure nothingness would nihilate (negate (itself. But we’ll have to get to that further down the line: the next jam in an infinite line of jams.
Re: Hegel's Dialectic:
That posted, Scott, I'm going into Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. Look forward to seeing you there.
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Scott Mayers
- Posts: 2485
- Joined: Wed Jul 08, 2015 1:53 am
Re: Hegel's Dialectic:
I'm uncertain what you are seeking or positing here and why I asked you this before. I had to look up "rhizomes" to discover this a term from biology to refer to a mass of roots. But what particularly is your purpose? Are you trying to discern Hegel's logic as history or are you actually interested in the intentional philosophy behind it?d63 wrote:That posted, Scott, I'm going into Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. Look forward to seeing you there.
I'm confused as I find that instead of wasting effort on trying to interpret what some past person meant precisely unless it is for historical concern only, is it not more useful to attend to the underlying philosophy in terms of those discussing it today?
I know I disliked having to study Shakespeare in high school because, just as most students do, because it masks an interest in the underlying ideas and trades it for cultural significance, something I think belongs in history or some other social study area, NOT English, as it was taught to us. My point is that I don't get the concern to interpret Hegel, or any other author, unless you have some particular narrowed down interest. Are you questioning literature as interpretation of past philosophers OR are you interested in trying to make sense of the semantic ideas of some philosophical area?
And note that I DO like Shakespeare in some of its works but only after understanding the context and having it translated in modern relative terms. That is, I could care less about preserving the particular language of the past as this to me is a separate study.
So, are you interested in the modern philosophers (1800 century) for the sake of interpreting them authentically OR are you interested in the value of the philosophy? [It's like the differences between judging a movie for its presentation (like cinematography, style, or entertainment quality), the author's intended motivations for making it, or the audience's interpretation, among many other concerns.] What is your narrowed interest to discuss Hegel?
Re: Hegel's Dialectic:
All (or I should say MOSTLY all: I do have some political/social interests (all I'm interested in, Scott, is taking in a lot of input from a lot of different sources and seeing what kind of input comes out of it. I do to see what happens.
This is why I embrace the rhizomatic approach: that defined by Deleuze and Guatarri as a de-centered approach that sees its process in terms a vast complex of rhizomes that one moves through almost randomly from point to point with no fixed goal or desire to fix one's understanding to any essence or central system. Connect and forget as Deleuze puts it. This can be better understood by comparing it to the classicist arborescent model such as the old diagram in which metaphysics is put at the roots, physics as the trunk, and the various disciplines as the branches.
For instance, my concern with Hegel's dialectic came out of my recent reading of Deleuze's Difference and Repetition and what I sensed as his understanding of the dialectic. And because of it, I may in the long run bounce into Hegel's Phenomenology (Arminus??????. But for now, you have resolved the main issue for me and it is time to move to the next rhizome. Thanks again.
This is why I embrace the rhizomatic approach: that defined by Deleuze and Guatarri as a de-centered approach that sees its process in terms a vast complex of rhizomes that one moves through almost randomly from point to point with no fixed goal or desire to fix one's understanding to any essence or central system. Connect and forget as Deleuze puts it. This can be better understood by comparing it to the classicist arborescent model such as the old diagram in which metaphysics is put at the roots, physics as the trunk, and the various disciplines as the branches.
For instance, my concern with Hegel's dialectic came out of my recent reading of Deleuze's Difference and Repetition and what I sensed as his understanding of the dialectic. And because of it, I may in the long run bounce into Hegel's Phenomenology (Arminus??????. But for now, you have resolved the main issue for me and it is time to move to the next rhizome. Thanks again.