What is the Hegelian Dialectic?

[PetrChelcicky]

I agree that Hegelian dialectics is rather useless as a tactics to change the world. But i is extremely useful for revolutionary movements in another way, namely: by making changes look inevitable, stirring up a sense of fatalism (we are doomed) in its conservative opponents and, moreover, giving the victorious party the appeal that It is justificated by history.

[Ken]

I agree that Hegelian dialectics is rather useless as a tactics to change the world. But i is extremely useful for revolutionary movements in another way, namely: by making changes look inevitable, stirring up a sense of fatalism (we are doomed) in its conservative opponents and, moreover, giving the victorious party the appeal that It is justificated by history.

I doubt this actually happens in real life. Can you point to any social or political conflict anywhere in the world where conservative forces just gave up because Hegel's dialectic told them that change was inevitable? They might give up when change is, indeed actually inevitable. But not because Hegel told them to. Like, for example, the opponents to women's suffrage did a century ago. No one is still fighting that fight outside of Saudi Arabia. But not because the suffragettes employed Hegelian philosophy to advance their cause. They just won the actual battle.

[Szdfan]

I loved his book and adopted many of his tactics in war games I played.

Tabletop war games or something else?

[Soloist]

I loved his book and adopted many of his tactics in war games I played.

Tabletop war games or something else?

Mostly real time strategy, but also several turn based. Finding people to play tabletop games is too difficult. I'm still waiting for a few people to play Terraforming Mars with me.

[Szdfan]

I loved his book and adopted many of his tactics in war games I played.

Tabletop war games or something else?

Mostly real time strategy, but also several turn based. Finding people to play tabletop games is too difficult. I'm still waiting for a few people to play Terraforming Mars with me.

We didn't play war games, but I was part of an almost weekly board game group before Covid. Now everyone that was a part of it has moved on and scattered. I agree, it's hard to find people to play games with.

[Soloist]

Mostly real time strategy, but also several turn based. Finding people to play tabletop games is too difficult. I'm still waiting for a few people to play Terraforming Mars with me.

We didn't play war games, but I was part of an almost weekly board game group before Covid. Now everyone that was a part of it has moved on and scattered. I agree, it's hard to find people to play games with.
[/quote]

Well if your group ever gets back together, try terraforming mars. Well worth it! I made a co-op form of it too if you ever want the mod.

[Szdfan]

Mostly real time strategy, but also several turn based. Finding people to play tabletop games is too difficult. I'm still waiting for a few people to play Terraforming Mars with me.

We didn't play war games, but I was part of an almost weekly board game group before Covid. Now everyone that was a part of it has moved on and scattered. I agree, it's hard to find people to play games with.

Well if your group ever gets back together, try terraforming mars. Well worth it! I made a co-op form of it too if you ever want the mod.
[/quote]
Thanks! Will do.

[Falco Underhill]

Hegel thinks in terms of processes and progress rather than in terms of static "facts" and even static truths which he thinks was an early but a necessary form of science. I believe this is partly why Christians feel so lost in today's world. The political movers and shakers of the Left think in these terms of processes and progress and regard our ways of thinking as primitive and inadequate.

As Hegel says, dialectics is “the principle of all natural and spiritual life” (SL-M 56; SL-dG 35), or “ the moving soul of scientific progression" (EL §81). Dialectics is what drives the development of both reason as well as of things in the world. A dialectical reason can overgrasp a dialectical world.

Get that? For Hegel, dialectics drives the things in the world because it's a dialectical world. Hegel talks about how dialectics operates in political processes in The Phenomenology of Spirit. I'll try to get back on this later.

Both of the above quotes are taken from the following article:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-dialectics/

As for whether or not Hegel described his triads in terms of thesis-antithesis-synthesis i agree he didn’t use those terms himself. The use of it is sometimes traced to W. T. Stace and whatever its merits it was used in at least some academic circles. In 1953 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr wrote six essays for a two-semester seminar on Hegel at Boston University. Here's an excerpt from that essay:

Thus we have three categories. We began with Being. From that we deduced Nothing. And from the relation between the two we deduce Becoming.21 Being is the thesis. Nothing is the antithesis, and Becoming is the synthesis. The synthesis of this triad, as in all other Hegelian triads, both abolishes and preserves the differences of the thesis and antithesis. This two-fold activity of the synthesis is expressed by Hegel by the word aufheben, which is sometimes translated “to sublate.” The German word has two meanings. It means both to abolish and to preserve.22 In short, the thesis and the antithesis both die and rise again in the synthesis.23

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king ... g-becoming

Obviously MLK jr. was not using those words to deceive anyone, and we can't assume people who describe it that way today are intentionally being deceptive either. We don't know who or what their sources were. They may be as honest as MLK jr. who used it as a shorthand himself.

I also don't agree that the description is entirely meritless.

Hegel's students split into the Right Hegelians and the Left Hegelians.

It was the Left Hegelians that began to suggest using Hegel's dialectics in the activist sense of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. The Frankfurt School that developed it and Critical Theory - on which CRT is based- traced their own project back to the Left Hegelians themselves.

The Left Hegelians started working on the idea that once the goal or purpose of the historical process was known (As Hegel thougnt), then we can and ought to develop ways to manipulate that process to bring about the desired end.

Hegel himself did not use it that way but the Left Hegelians did, thus the use of the term Hegelian Dialectics to describe it is not without merit. Even if it's used now by marxists, and was not by Hegel himself, it's source was the Left Hegelians. Marxists would be the first to admit it.

According to Eric Voegelin, Plato would have termed Hegel's "dialectics" as Eristics, not Dialectics. I consider Hegel's use of the term a kind of perversion and misuse of it.

This is of course overly simplistic, poorly written and way under-referenced but it's the best I can do for now.

[Falco Underhill]

Addendem - if you look closely at Hegel's Master/Slave Dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit you can see the sense of how it works itself out in politics developing.

For some reason the link i tried didn't work when I posted it so Google "Hegel's Master/Slave Dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit" and see what you can find.

[Josh]

I agree that Hegelian dialectics is rather useless as a tactics to change the world. But i is extremely useful for revolutionary movements in another way, namely: by making changes look inevitable, stirring up a sense of fatalism (we are doomed) in its conservative opponents and, moreover, giving the victorious party the appeal that It is justificated by history.

I doubt this actually happens in real life. Can you point to any social or political conflict anywhere in the world where conservative forces just gave up because Hegel's dialectic told them that change was inevitable? They might give up when change is, indeed actually inevitable. But not because Hegel told them to. Like, for example, the opponents to women's suffrage did a century ago. No one is still fighting that fight outside of Saudi Arabia. But not because the suffragettes employed Hegelian philosophy to advance their cause. They just won the actual battle.

The tactics of suffragettes were completely different than, say, how gay marriage got forced on the majority by a minority of people.