What is the Hegelian Dialectic?

[Bootstrap]

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.

Are you saying Plato's The Republic is not a book about politics? That surprises me. Are you saying Hegel's Aesthetics, Phenomenology of Spirit, and Science of Logic are mostly about politics? That also surprises me.

Platonic categories don't really account for things like a penguin or a platypus, which are not pure types.

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

Neither Plato nor Hegel are biblical Christianity. Period.

[Falco Underhill]

Are you saying Plato's The Republic is not a book about politics? That surprises me.

Of course the Republic is about politics. It's just not dialectics. I'm not too surprised by your false presumption though. It seems to be habitual with you.

Are you saying Hegel's Aesthetics, Phenomenology of Spirit, and Science of Logic are mostly about politics? That also surprises me.

They're importantly about politics. Hegel was a very good philosopher in the Platonic sense. He was also a Gnostic speculator. Nobody knows quite where the lines cross
so though everyone agrees he was brilliant and had something important to say, nobody is quite sure what.

[Falco Underhill]

Are you saying Plato's The Republic is not a book about politics? That surprises me.

Of course the Republic is about politics, it's just not something Plato called dialectics. He probably defines dialectics within the Republic somewhere but that's different. There was no "dialectical movement of the Spirit" working itself up to a Republic in Plato's Republic. I'm really not too surprised by your misunderstanding and false presumption though. It does seem to be habitual with you.

Are you saying Hegel's Aesthetics, Phenomenology of Spirit, and Science of Logic are mostly about politics? That also surprises me.

They're importantly about politics. To some of his critics Hegel was a very good philosopher in the Platonic sense but he was also a Gnostic speculator, so though everyone agrees he was a brilliant and great thinker and had something important to say, nobody is quite sure what. This is what I think, too.

[Bootstrap]

... so though everyone agrees he was brilliant and had something important to say, nobody is quite sure what.

There's some truth to that. Which REALLY doesn't work as a slogan for a revolution.

Really, we have to treat Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel all as smart pagans who have profoundly influenced the Western culture we live in and history as far back as you and I can remember.

If we want to know what the Bible says about any of this ... well, that's why we have the Bible.

[Falco Underhill]

... so though everyone agrees he was brilliant and had something important to say, nobody is quite sure what.

There's some truth to that. Which REALLY doesn't work as a slogan for a revolution.

Certainly not, but then neither the Left Hegelians (which included Marx) nor the Marxists themselves based their revolution on a slogan. They saw the potential for it in Hegel's system, and they used it.

Really, we have to treat Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel all as smart pagans who have profoundly influenced the Western culture we live in and history as far back as you and I can remember.

If we want to know what the Bible says about any of this ... well, that's why we have the Bible.

Well, we can actually agree on that.

[Bootstrap]

Certainly not, but then neither the Left Hegelians (which included Marx) nor the Marxists themselves based their revolution on a slogan. They saw the potential for it in Hegel's system, and they used it.

The revolutionary works of Marx are not written in obscure, abstract footnotes.

They sound like this. Better, actually, I don't have a good modern translation, the original German is more forceful and less artificial than this translation.

Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him.

What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

This is what revolution sounds like. Like modern propagandists, Marx knew how to use vivid imagery to make you feel what he wants you to feel. That's what made him a revolutionary.

Hegel ... did not.

[Falco Underhill]

This is what revolution sounds like. Like modern propagandists, Marx knew how to use vivid imagery to make you feel what he wants you to feel. That's what made him a revolutionary.

Hegel ... did not.

I disagree. Hegel's dialectic idealism justified revolutions insofar as they led up to the conservative free society preferred by Hegel. Marx saw the ruse and used his own dialectic materialism to justify his revolution towards an even more free society. (As he thought, anyway). But it's political "dialectics" that justifies revolutions in both cases.

People have always been moved by revolutionary slogans, but those pushing these Gnostic revolutions and slogans are moved by the "dialectics." You just don't seem to understand this.

Hegel and Marx both thought "history" was teleologically oriented towards some kind of free society. Pure speculation. History has no intelligible eidos so far as anyone knows so you just can't say this. Therefore, Hegel and Marx were both incorrect ideologues speculating on a falsehood, IMHO.

[Falco Underhill]

Boot, I'm going to leave you with last word on this one.