What is the Hegelian Dialectic?

[Bootstrap]

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.

Of course it's a dialectical world. Things change. People learn.

You start with the way things are today or the understanding you have today. Something comes along to challenge the way things are or the way you thought. As a result, you learn something, preserving what was good about the first state, adding in something new that you learned as a result of the challenge. It's not a black-and-white either-or thing where you keep the starting state unchanged or replace it completely, you learn from what you knew and you learn from the challenge.

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

Interesting, I had no idea King had studied Hegel. But King just said the same thing I did, in bigger words, and using the Kantian terms thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. What comes out of the process is neither what you had at the beginning (the thesis) or the thing that challenged it (the antithesis), but something better that learns from both.

[Bootstrap]

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.

That's odd. Eristics usually means wranglings, wrestling, or debate, where one side wins and the other loses. In Hegel's dialectic, you learn from both voices.

“Dialectics” is a term used to describe a method of philosophical argument that involves some sort of contradictory process between opposing sides.

Doesn't Hegel's dialectics meet that definition? I don't think it meets the definition of Eristics:

In philosophy and rhetoric, eristic (from Eris, the ancient Greek goddess of chaos, strife, and discord) refers to argument that aims to successfully dispute another's argument, rather than searching for truth. According to T.H. Irwin, "It is characteristic of the eristic to think of some arguments as a way of defeating the other side, by showing that an opponent must assent to the negation of what he initially took himself to believe." Eristic is arguing for the sake of conflict, as opposed to resolving conflict.

To me, Hegel seems to see a good synthesis as a way of learning what you can from both sides, the opposite of eristics.

[Falco Underhill]

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.

That's odd. Eristics usually means wranglings, wrestling, or debate, where one side wins and the other loses. In Hegel's dialectic, you learn from both voices.

The word dialectics is Plato's word and has a very specific meaning that he gave to it. To sum up why Plato would have called Hegel's dialectics "eristics." (I don't know if I can do this in a single paragraph.) Dialectics is a philosophic dialogue that takes place in man's consciousness, and man's consciousness existence takes place in-between the poles of the One and the Many. You can think of the One as God and the Many as the earth (or simply Creation). We feel the pull of the earth on us (the passions, our biological nature) and we feel the call of God on us (often opposed to the pull of the passions) but we exist in-between them both. What Hegel did was to speculatively fuse the One and the Many together. As best I can understand it, Plato's views this as doing a kind of violence to the structure of reality (in a sense warping it, because we live in-between those two poles but they cannot be fused together. Thus what Hegel called dialectics in his system Plato would have considered eristics.

That's Voegelin's insight, certainly not mine, but I agree with it. Whether I've interpreted that right in my own words is another matter.

[Bootstrap]

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.

That's odd. Eristics usually means wranglings, wrestling, or debate, where one side wins and the other loses. In Hegel's dialectic, you learn from both voices.

The word dialectics is Plato's word and has a very specific meaning that he gave to it. To sum up why Plato would have called Hegel's dialectics "eristics." (I don't know if I can do this in a single paragraph.) Dialectics is a philosophic dialogue that takes place in man's consciousness, and man's consciousness existence takes place in-between the poles of the One and the Many. You can think of the One as God and the Many as the earth (or simply Creation). We feel the pull of the earth on us (the passions, our biological nature) and we feel the call of God on us (often opposed to the pull of the passions) but we exist in-between them both. What Hegel did was to speculatively fuse the One and the Many together. As best I can understand it, Plato's views this as doing a kind of violence to the structure of reality (in a sense warping it, because we live in-between those two poles but they cannot be fused together. Thus what Hegel called dialectics in his system Plato would have considered eristics.

That's Voegelin's insight, certainly not mine, but I agree with it. Whether I've interpreted that right in my own words is another matter.

First off, can you say that in plain, simple English?

Can we agree that this is Voegelin's opinion, and yours, but not Plato's? I'm fairly certain that Plato never read Hegel. And why use yet another high falutin' word like eristics? Does that word make anything easier to understand? I have not read Voegelin, I have only browsed Voegelin and the Troubled Greatness of Hegel.

To me, Plato's dialogue takes place between people, not "in man's consciousness," I have read quite a bit of Plato in English and some in Greek. This seems like a good summary:

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

Plato (see entry on Plato), for instance, presented his philosophical argument as a back-and-forth dialogue or debate, generally between the character of Socrates, on one side, and some person or group of people to whom Socrates was talking (his interlocutors), on the other. In the course of the dialogues, Socrates’ interlocutors propose definitions of philosophical concepts or express views that Socrates challenges or opposes. The back-and-forth debate between opposing sides produces a kind of linear progression or evolution in philosophical views or positions: as the dialogues go along, Socrates’ interlocutors change or refine their views in response to Socrates’ challenges and come to adopt more sophisticated views. The back-and-forth dialectic between Socrates and his interlocutors thus becomes Plato’s way of arguing against the earlier, less sophisticated views or positions and for the more sophisticated ones later.

Read Euthyphro, for instance, if you want a flavor of this. Or any of Plato's Dialogues.

Hegel is different because he says you actually learn from both sides, coming up with a better alternative to each. Instead of a "winner", you have a "synthesis" that combines the lessons you learn from each side.

[Josh]

I don’t really want a “synthesis” with people who have anti-Christ beliefs. There is right and wrong, and a synthesis between them is 100% wrong.

[Bootstrap]

I don’t really want a “synthesis” with people who have anti-Christ beliefs. There is right and wrong, and a synthesis between them is 100% wrong.

Sure, but I do want a synthesis of Paul and Peter, arrived at by discernment in the Holy Spirit, as we see in Acts 15 and Galatians and the rest of the New Testament. And I probably do want people to learn from how the New Testament addressed moral issues and think seriously about how to apply that to some things we encounter in the rather different world we live in today - that is also a kind of synthesis.

I don't think the holy warfare model of truth is particularly Christian. Especially when it is not about the things that the Bible teaches. Truth is reasonable. Discernment is reasonable. Both take time and require careful consideration.

[Falco Underhill]

First off, can you say that in plain, simple English?

Believe or not it took all I had to put it that simply, and in doing so I'm 100 percent sure that I oversimplified it. It would be difficult for me to explain it more clearly at the moment.

As for whether this is just Voegelin's interpretation, not really. Simone Weil is another person who arrived at a similar interpretation quite independently of Voegelin. (The two didn't know each other at all, so far as I know.) Voegelin, interpreting Plato, used the word Metaxy (from the Greek, meaning in-between.). Simone Weil, interpreting Plato, used the word Metaxu. She describes it from a very different vantage but it's the same "in-between" structure of conscious existence.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/fleurmach. ... etaxu/amp/

Though I can't explain it better at the moment you can see the fusing of one and the Many in Marx's fusing of the idea with "the center of the earth." Marx knew exactly what he was doing.

From the idealism, which by the way, I had compared and nourished with the Kantian and Fichtean, I arrived at the point of seeking the idea in actuality itself. If the gods had earlier dwelt over the earth, so they were now made into its center.

[Falco Underhill]

Note: Marx says the gods (who were formerly above the earth) were made into it's center.

That's what is meant by fusing the Beyond with the Beginning, or the One with the Many.

(I know. It's complicated.)

[Bootstrap]

First off, can you say that in plain, simple English?

Believe or not it took all I had to put it that simply, and in doing so I'm 100 percent sure that I oversimplified it. It would be difficult for me to explain it more clearly at the moment.

Let me ask you a simple English question then. Do you disagree with what I said about Plato's dialectic, which seeks to decide which of two things are true via dialogue, and Hegel's dialectic, which seeks to learn what is good from both sides? If so, why?

FWIW, I think it's hard to start a revolution with anything that isn't easy to understand and won't fit on a protest sign. I am not terribly frightened of revolutionaries who want to topple the government carrying protest signs that say this:

Dialectics is a philosophic dialogue that takes place in man's consciousness, and man's consciousness existence takes place in-between the poles of the One and the Many. You can think of the One as God and the Many as the earth (or simply Creation). We feel the pull of the earth on us (the passions, our biological nature) and we feel the call of God on us (often opposed to the pull of the passions) but we exist in-between them both. What Hegel did was to speculatively fuse the One and the Many together.

[Falco Underhill]

Let me ask you a simple English question then. Do you disagree with what I said about Plato's dialectic, which seeks to decide which of two things are true via dialogue, and Hegel's dialectic, which seeks to learn what is good from both sides? If so, why?

Plato's dialectics was about clarifying the meaning of words that have their origin in the metaxy (in-between) of man's consciousness. He would ask questions like "What is the meaning of the Good, the Beautiful, the True, or virtuous or things like that. There was no synthesis of the beautiful and the ugly!

(Btw, today's "science" dismisses all such words as "unscientific" meaningless or "emotive" nonsense. )

Remember this: for Plato, the metaxy, the in-between, was "the whole realm of the spiritual."

Hegel's dialectics was applied to political movements.

Is that the realm of the spiritual for you (in a Christian sense?)

So Hegel's "dialectics" involved a synthesis of opposing things which was completely foreign to Plato's dialectics.

So Hegel's dialectics involved a synthesis of opposing things in his methods and also is applied to political movements, both of which are foreign to Plato.

FWIW, I think it's hard to start a revolution with anything that isn't easy to understand and won't fit on a protest sign. I am not terribly frightened of revolutionaries who want to topple the government carrying protest signs that say this:
Revolutionary Protest Sign wrote:

Dialectics is a philosophic dialogue that takes place in man's consciousness, and man's consciousness existence takes place in-between the poles of the One and the Many. You can think of the One as God and the Many as the earth (or simply Creation). We feel the pull of the earth on us (the passions, our biological nature) and we feel the call of God on us (often opposed to the pull of the passions) but we exist in-between them both. What Hegel did was to speculatively fuse the One and the Many together.

Well, the Marxists revolutionariy armies certainly carried guns not placards, but it was Marx's ideas that put them into motion. I just think you underestimate the power of Marx's opinions.