Hegelian Dialectic

Historical insights & thoughts about the world we live in - and the social conditioning exerted upon us by past and current propaganda.
Gopi
Member
Posts: 34
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:00 pm

Hegelian Dialectic

Unread post by Gopi »

Hello all,

It has taken a while to get some research together about this topic... and while I have seen the Hegelian Dialectic mentioned in passing a number of times (for example, here, here and more recently here,) haven't found a direct discussion on it anywhere. If I have missed anything, please redirect it as needed. (Boy is Cluesforum big, it has enough material to publish an encyclopedia!)

I know that to start with this may sometimes deviate a bit more into philosophy than is usual, but I'll do my best to keep it directly tied in to real world events as much as possible.

Hegel's Thought and Ideas

First off, one should ask: who was Hegel and what was the basic concept he was trying to get across? A survey of philosophy shows that he came on the scene during the culmination of German Idealism, and tackled logic itself as a subject. He found that the very structure of logic was something that had become largely mathematical, having its ground in the philosophy of the Greeks (mainly Aristotle and his Laws of Logic). This involved the method of thinking that uses the principle of contradiction: either something IS or it IS NOT, there is no in-between. This requirement was felt as too restrictive by Hegel, not simply because of its natural boundaries, but also because it failed to encompass transformations, particularly living organisms.
Hegel, in [i]Preface to the Phenomenology of the Spirit[/i], 1807 wrote:The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole.
In comparison, Hegel identified the boundaries and defined the famous dialectic:
Hegel, in [i]The Science of Logic[/i], 1812 wrote:Philosophy, if it would be a science, cannot borrow its method from a subordinate science like mathematics.

Dialectic is here understood in the grasping of opposites in their unity or of the positive in the negative.
Seeing no way to tackle the organic process using static concepts, which can only conclude that BUD is not FRUIT, he added on to the logical process by including not only IS and IS NOT, but also BECOMES: BUD becomes FRUIT. The very process of reasoning was extended, and he tried to find the thought that lies behind the opposites. Since the time of the Greeks until the modern time of the Lawyer, logic dictated that there have to be two categories, and social life adapted to it by arguing the two sides to everything. Hegel tried to tackle it at the level of thought itself, so that people can 'grow up':
Hegel, in [i]The Short Logic[/i], 1830 wrote:It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either‑or’, and keeps to the concrete.
This is similar to the legend of navigating between Scylla and Charybdis by Odysseus. So what he was saying was to first see the origin of logic (in IS and IS NOT) understand the existing process (dialectics) and now consciously apply the idea to get at the truth of the matter instead of its rigid opposites. In this he pushed beyond most of the attempts of previous philosophers and mathematicians, who implicitly assumed the applicability of the usual laws of logic to all questions. His approach leads to a Science of Becoming, that is particularly relevant to living beings, and especially to man and his social forms. Viewing history in the same way that one views a plant in development, Hegel connected the successive transformations as further development of the Ideas, calling history the 'clothes' of the ideas.

And just as the "plant" is the concept that unifies seed, sapling, bud, blossom and fruit, for human society Hegel identified the State. And there, as the saying goes, lies the rub.

Hegel's giant mistake

Although there may be several mistakes, this was probably the biggest. After going so far as showing that an entirely new thought process is required, in the actual application of his understanding, Hegel seized upon the Nation-State:
Hegel, in [i]Philosophy of Right[/i], 1821 wrote: The nation state is Mind in its substantive rationality and immediate actuality — the absolute power on earth.
The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea.
The march of God in the world, that is what the state is.
The state is the actuality of concrete freedom.
In this he ignored the good advice of his own fellow countryman, Wilhelm von Humboldt:
Wilhelm von Humboldt, in [i]Limits of State Action[/i], 1792 wrote: The state constitution and the national community, however closely they may be interwoven with each other, should not be confounded together.
National communities and cultures have to do with individual choices and identifications, and especially coercion-free cultural development that pursues morals is more central to human development. Additionally, culture by its very nature has global access, any one can pick up cultural elements like language and music of any other culture. However, possibly there was a lot of confusion between the two concepts nation and state, so Hegel failed to distinguish between them and made the State almost holy. This meant he left the door open to the violence of the State military apparatus:
Hegel, in [i]The Philosophy of Spirit[/i], 1830 wrote:Although the state may originate in violence, it does not rest on it; violence, in producing the state, has bought into existence only what is justified in and for itself, namely, laws and a constitution.
That was the Achilles' Heel, and the corruption wasn't far behind.
Gopi
Member
Posts: 34
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:00 pm

Re: Hegelian Dialectic

Unread post by Gopi »

To continue...

By letting restriction (by means of the State boundaries) and violence enter into his central idea, Hegel couldn't prevent his philosophy from getting quickly hijacked. In fact, ironically, following Hegel's death, his own followers got polarized into "right wing" and "left wing" Hegelians, reversing his philosophical development. Instead of getting at the main truth behind the opposites, they inevitably promoted the old idea of polarities. However this was no mere philosophical tussle, as Hegel HAD hit upon some truth: that the historical process is something living, and the one who understands this can consciously develop and guide it forward. Hegel died in 1831, and by 1848 Marx had stood 'Hegel on his head' by making it a materialistic and economic class struggle. Instead of being a human worldwide ideal (such as the removal of slavery) his philosophy became restricted and applied to a subset of people: the "workers". Since Hegel had already blundered by applying his key idea to government, which has boundaries, Marx worsened the situation by creating boundaries between the "haves and the have-nots" and the first major Hegelian Dialectic project was under way.

The right approach would have been to apply the Hegelian thought to improve science and understand biological organisms, or to study how to develop culture and nations without engaging the military and police apparatus. Hegelian thought is healthy only when it has all of humanity as the basis, and the moment a subset is formed, there are two sides. Just as mathematics and scientific progress does not belong to an economic or national class, a further progress in logic could only be international from the get-go. But because of Hegel's connection of this thought with the State, it could now serve another purpose: to build the World-State.

This was the situation prior to about 1800:

Logic ---> Logic of IS/ IS NOT ---> Material Scientific truths --> International development of science

One possible route for Hegelian philosophy:

Logic ---> Logic of Becoming ---> Social scientific / biological truths ---> International development of social and cultural interrelations

What actually happened, and is happening:

Logic ---> Logic of Becoming --XX--> Economic class --XX--> Economic lies --XX--> Corporate oligarchy.

Logic ---> Logic of Becoming --XX--> State Apparatus --XX--> Social scientific lies --XX--> World-State/World-Government.

Logic ---> Logic of Becoming --XX--> Physical science --XX--> Space/time lies --XX--> Relativity and Wave Particle Duality, Quantum Mechanics.

It hence became a highly developed divide-and-rule weapon. Instead of the truth that lies behind the polar opposites, it was found that the lie was far more lucrative, and this sowed the seeds for fakery on a large scale, all under the guise of global development.

This twisted thought process has run rampant for more than a century, and a few of these will be followed up in a bit more detail.
Gopi
Member
Posts: 34
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:00 pm

Re: Hegelian Dialectic

Unread post by Gopi »

To take up these concepts one by one, we have to identify what the idea is, what its corruption is, how it could have gone and how it went in actuality, and most importantly, who is able to see some of these things and follow up with action.

Capitalism and Communism

This is mainly the dialectic of the Invisible Hand and the Iron Fist:
ImageImage

This false opposition has run nearly a hundred years... and has been discussed on the forum's threads in several places. Although it is not obvious, the two sides are precisely the IS/IS NOT dichotomy between the State and the Economy:

Capitalism : State IS NOT in charge of Economy
Communism : State IS in charge of Economy
Reality: Economy IS in charge of State (Bankers' power)

This dichotomy was firmly embedded after World War I between the West and the East. All the research that talks about the Federal Reserve Banking and Corporate power, for example here, here and here show that part of the story.

Folks like Anthony Migchels, Guido Preparata, Christopher Budd (at least as far as I know) appear to be putting a good amount of research and efforts to build alternatives, especially alternative currencies and "visible hand" associative economics. But that is not enough by itself, because there is another dialectic:

Free Government and Religious/Ethnic State

This has to do with the relation of all cultural elements - national community, education, language, ethnicity, music, religion, science - to the State. There are two dialectical poles, represented on the world map by America and Israel. America claims to separate Church and State and exclude all religious considerations from the politics, but has nevertheless the absurd "Republican/Democrat" or even Right/Left divisions, and starts making laws of about cultural concerns like marriage. Education is also a joke under the State. Israel on the other hand, strongly ties together the ethnicity and government: Zionism. The fracturing of the world into nation-states and their subsequent toppling/merging has been the century-long agenda of this dialectic. World War II, right from the Allied/Axis system to the current War on Terrorism, has been through this.

Free Government: 'Church' IS NOT melded with State (at least theoretically)
Religious State: 'Church' IS melded with State (Islamic World)
Reality: "Nationalism" is bred

Naturally, via the already existing Capitalist Communist dichotomy, funds are channeled to accomplish this, by setting up terrorism and false flags. This promotes the wars and violence, via "patriotism". Both capitalist/communist as well as free state/religious state have the Jewish ethnicity strongly related to it, which is probably why Jewish money power and Zionism are blamed worldwide for a lot of ills. Of course, this blame game is encouraged, so that keeps one stuck in the same old thought process! Cultures are either displaced or exterminated using state power: Holodomor, Armenian genocide, (this thread and this thread) and forced migrations of cultures (here under Multiculturalism).

The two dichotomies are also expressed by another dichotomy, i.e. the pair of books: Brave New World and 1984. In fact 1984 goes so far as to identify the penetration of the dialectic by using words like "doublespeak", "doublethink" etc. Brave New World on the other hand encourages a drugged up "zero think". Yet, at the end of it all, neither shows the way out of the duality, and work as cultural tools. The very same tool is also exercised in the movie series Matrix: the choice is always between the red pill and the blue pill, the right door and the left door.
Last edited by Gopi on Tue Jan 26, 2016 9:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Gopi
Member
Posts: 34
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:00 pm

Re: Hegelian Dialectic

Unread post by Gopi »

Next on the list is:

Professional Sports

Every aspect of the professional sports industry is a powerful impulse to push the dialectic deep into the emotional subconscious: "Us vs Them" and "Whose side are you on?" being the classic quotes of this mentality. This may irritate a lot of sports fans, but I think the very notion of a "sports fan" is a 20th century construct, heavily promoted at all educational and social levels to penetrate the masses. Naturally, sports and physical fitness are a good and healthy part of physical development, until one reaches college, where it is now the time for the mind to be sharpened. Promoting sports for adults is far from "harmless recreation," and in this respect is closer to the Roman circus than anything else. Contrary to the fakery prevalent in all important areas, in sports there is the real thing, where all records of team statistics are meticulously maintained and communicated. So it is likely that this won't come up too much in fakery concerns, there is no need to fake anything here, the real thing is itself the hook! Edit: Tokyojoe1 seems to have seen fakery here as well? Either way, it is a dead end.

And on top of it all, sports are a very efficient way of fueling the patriotic fire. Possibly it is the highest sport of dialectics - chess - that can teach us about how the process works, which is why there are renewed references to the Geopolitical "Great Game". These sports in general keep people locked in the dialectic of the very same Game.

Science vs Religion

This is of course a big one, because it the fight of global ideas. Nevertheless, this has been amped up to feverish pitch recently, and is generally sold as:

Science: Critical examination of facts and events, developing physical laws
Religion: Emotional attachment to faith, developing dogmas.
Reality: Science is becoming religion, and religion is becoming pseudo-science.

The application of dichotomy in energy-science means that a "ether"/"no-ether" dichotomy had to be created. This was accomplished by the great Puppet Einstein, and kept up by other such 'heroes'... Feynman and Hawking. On the other hand, the Heisenberg dichotomy of wave-particle locked up physical thinking and has never allowed it to move ahead from there. On the religious side of things, Galileo and Copernicus are marketed heavily to keep the entire field of astronomy in fantasy-land (the emotions evoked on seeing the stars is closest to religious awe) and for those who question the entire science-religion dialectic, there is a brand new flat-earth religion to sweep them all into one box. Almost all the media fakery and psyops, from Apollo to ISS to Mars to Ancient Aliens/UFO to Science Fiction... are fuel for the same purpose. In the problem-reaction-solution, the solution is always fake.

There are a few here and there, like Rudolf Steiner, Walter Russell, Dewey Larson and (perhaps) Nikola Tesla who attempted to develop a spiritual approach to science. Few takers though, the dialectic had worked extremely well, with fundamental religious folks hating scientists, and scientists in turning hating the religious dogmatism, blissfully unaware of the bigger machinations. Within Science itself, people are kept busy with criticism alone, not realizing that the tools used for criticism are the same used for the dialectic. Of course, this is not to say that criticism is to be eliminated, but just that it shouldn't blind anyone to the thought process underlying it.

Cultural divisions

Here all human divisions of race, class and gender are possible avenues to exploit the dialectic. For Race, Black and White is the perfect example, while for gender it is naturally male/female. There are two ways to artificially perturb the cultural development: one is through the State apparatus and one is through the money mechanism.

State: Politicizing race issues, gender issues, and "multiculturalism".
Economic: Dividing the development of culture itself by heavily financing "modernism" in all its forms: modern art, modern music, movies etc.

So extreme political correctness on the one hand and extreme commercialization on the other, effectively keeps the cultural development out of the cultural sphere, so individuals as individuals can't easily promote a specific culture (such as the one of honest research here on Cluesforum) by any access to institutions or money.

Probably the only sphere which can guide us to get out of the dichotomy in culture is the analogy of music: there can be high pitch and low pitch, but no one can talk of "pitchism". And no one would attempt to hit a flute on a drum to generate "integration" of the "flute race" and the "drum race". They all retain their individuality and yet contribute to the overall music. Perhaps that is a way out, but I have not found many people on that path.

Summary

Well, these are my preliminary thoughts on Hegel and the Dialectic. There is a change in thought process underneath everything that is not popular at all, and is masked by the smoke of a hundred dialectics. I hope it has a few more ideas than the initial "problem reaction solution" idea that is most commonly known. Please let me know what you all think!
Last edited by Gopi on Wed Jan 27, 2016 8:19 pm, edited 2 times in total.
fbenario
Member
Posts: 2256
Joined: Fri Oct 23, 2009 1:49 am
Location: Atlanta, GA
Contact:

Re: Hegelian Dialectic

Unread post by fbenario »

Excellent, excellent, excellent, three great posts!

I've never been able to grasp in basic terms exactly how the Hegelian Dialectic had affected the 20th century. You've done a great job laying it out in understandable terms, and showing how the Dialectic has poisoned human discourse and understanding.

I also like how you've provided the forum with another framework for analyzing future events and discussions, one that by its nature doesn't seem to rest on resentment and intolerance (like so much of the multicultural analysis and negation that has occupied the forum's energy and attention over the last two months). Thank you very, very much.
simonshack
Administrator
Posts: 7341
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2009 8:09 pm
Location: italy
Contact:

Re: Hegelian Dialectic

Unread post by simonshack »

Gopi wrote: Probably the only sphere which can guide us to get out of the dichotomy in culture is the analogy of music: there can be high pitch and low pitch, but no one can talk of "pitchism". And no one would attempt to hit a flute on a drum to generate "integration" of the "flute race" and the "drum race". They all retain their individuality and yet contribute to the overall music.
How wonderfully put, dear Gopi - pure & raw genius, if I may say.

So glad to see you sharing your exceptionally advanced brain matter with this forum. :)
Gopi
Member
Posts: 34
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:00 pm

Re: Hegelian Dialectic

Unread post by Gopi »

Thanks guys... I learned a lot of that through the forum itself.

It is also interesting to see that this mode of thinking that automatically cuts through the dialectics can be built up by anyone, and has actually come up several times in the past century, but usually neglected by our entire educational process. Millions of dollars go into teaching lawyers to argue, and the other aspect is not even acknowledged! Several Russian writers figured it out early on (Vladimir Solovyov, Daniel Andreev, Fyodor Dostoevsky) but the Communist dialectic squashed most of it. An Indian writer Deendayal Upadhyaya figured it out, but got co-opted by a political party. Steiner and Carl Unger tackled it in philosophy... but most focus more on Nietzche and Kant. Besides, Germany was also on the receiving end after WW II.

And gotta thank Apache, it was her comment on a different forum that triggered the whole thing!
Painterman
Member
Posts: 95
Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2015 12:02 pm

Re: Hegelian Dialectic

Unread post by Painterman »

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

Edward Bernays, 1928
The thesis-antithesis paradigm of Hegel, Fichte et al. is a handy tool for social scientists to transform society. The goal of retarding society's advancement, especially, is achieved because thesis-antithesis functions as a containment mechanism to arrest rational social process - such as online forum investigations into the means and motives of demographic engineers advancing the long project of undermining nations.

Take this forum's recent "multiculturalism" debate which sadly disintegrated into what is essentially the natives vs. immigrants dialectic built into the public relations term "multiculturalism" itself. Here the goal of containing and neutralizing thought - to the detriment of society, as usual - also served to misdirect attention from the third party: the "man behind the curtain".

the natives (act out the thesis)

the immigrants (act out the antithesis)

the demographic engineers (realize the synthesis)

Arguing about the pros and cons of diluting a native population/culture with an immigrant population/culture is how the PTB want us to handle their "multiculturalism" topic: as an emotionally polarized controversy. For this purpose we have been trained to locate our discussions in safe containment within the natives vs. immigrants dialectic which the PTB constructed. There is a more productive way to handle the "multiculturalism" topic: as a cooperative, rational investigation into "who done it". We accomplish this by busting out of dialectical containment and looking at the bigger picture which in fact has three parts.

A favorite way to derail rational discourse is to change the subject so that objectivity is marginalized in favor of emotionally charged, interpersonally dramatic, or sensationalist concerns that put subjective bias in the driver's seat. The purpose is to impair cooperation on a project of reason by amplifying self-centeredness, to neutralize a collective real-world undertaking by amplifying "me first" preoccupations often based in imagination, "nothing is real", "there is no truth (uniting us)", "you are the truth", or whatnot. While this purpose often is gained by dissolving consensus into squabbling camps, the same end can be achieved by reframing the topic non-rationally.

Hence, for example, the tabloidization of the media, including the internet, to dumb-down discourse and keep the people spinning their wheels as unproductively as possible. Meanwhile, highly organized forces move relentlessly toward their post-democratic "free market" New World Order where a billionaire oligarchy calls the shots amid the ruins of native societies - most notably Western Europe at the moment - which have been rendered unable to collectively assert the public interest against the colonizing power of money.
The three main elements of public relations are practically as old as society: informing people, persuading people, or integrating people with people. Of course, the means and methods of accomplishing these ends have changed as society has changed.

Edward Bernays, 1923
Notice how the "cognitive infiltration" spin-offs and the embedded saboteurs targeting Cluesforum tend to be tabloid in presentation: emphasizing personalities, celebrity (on TV and YouTube), sensationalism, illiteracy, subjectivism, dilettante occultism, quack numerology, misleading imagery, pseudoscientific claptrap, etc., while de-emphasizing rational thought in general and - ironically, given the oft-invoked "science" themes - the scientific process especially.

Here's where the polarizing, oversimplifying thesis-antithesis weapon against objectivity is yet again being used: to conceal the said social engineering offensive against this forum. We're supposed to cartoonishly imagine two irreconcilable teams each wearing a conspicuous uniform: investigators and perpetrators. All the while members of the "other team" have joined our investigation to misguide it, mostly through their trademark tabloidization described above.
Apache
Member
Posts: 168
Joined: Thu Oct 22, 2015 11:02 am

Re: Hegelian Dialectic

Unread post by Apache »

fbenario wrote:You've done a great job laying it out in understandable terms, and showing how the Dialectic has poisoned human discourse and understanding.

I also like how you've provided the forum with another framework for analyzing future events and discussions, one that by its nature doesn't seem to rest on resentment and intolerance (like so much of the multicultural analysis and negation that has occupied the forum's energy and attention over the last two months). Thank you very, very much.
I agree, wholeheartedly. :D I also thank you for laying out how the HD works in a manner that is easy for most people to understand. It's always good to inform others about the tools that manipulators use.
Painterman wrote:We accomplish this by busting out of dialectical containment and looking at the bigger picture which in fact has three parts.
I agree with what you are saying, but social engineers are aware that those who have the ability to bust out of dialectical containment are also the ones most hardest to persuade. Not everyone will accept the suggested paradigm the social engineers have on offer, so they have to also come up with other 'alternative' solutions that might be easier for people to accept.

Problem - reaction - solution becomes problem - reaction - multiple solutions.

An example of this is the 'alternative' solution to the money problem offered by people like Anthony Migchels (who Gopi mentions) and who I have read extensively. His solution is not actually an alternative at all, it only looks like one. Banks create money out of nothing and Migchels' idea is to do the same, only without interest attached.

Another 'alternative' solution is the one offered by Amitai Etzioni and the UN. Don't like communism, capitalism, liberalism, or anarchy? - how about communitarianism? Does that grab you?

They don't care which solution you go for as long as it's one of their solutions. And boy do they have plenty on offer.
Painterman wrote:A favorite way to derail rational discourse is to change the subject
Changing the subject for a minute...

Only joking ;)
Painterman
Member
Posts: 95
Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2015 12:02 pm

Re: Hegelian Dialectic

Unread post by Painterman »

Hi, Apache.

Anarchism is yet another of those nihilistic confidence tricks that sleazeball propagandists palm off on well meaning folks in aid of an ulterior motive.

To the extent a nation's citizens buy the anarchist line and, as a practical consequence, take a hands-off approach to government, corruption in government only increases and liberty decreases. Such degeneration of course suits the money interest just fine, since it increases their illegitimate control over government. In the rare instance where government is actually abolished, you find an approximation to voluntaryism, a "free market" and similar utopianisms for as long as it takes the concentrations of gigantic wealth already in existence (like that of the Rockefellers, proud sponsors of the nation-busting "anarcho-capitalist" doctrine) to suit up, move in, and take over - unless you live somewhere it's not worth their bother. In the latter case, you simply get rule by local warlords. That's the lesson of history, most recently in 1990s Russia and the Arab nations collapsed by the War on Terror. There are no counterexamples besides maybe in small, isolated communities. And there are no counterexamples, period, among advanced economies. But an absence of political solidarity in combination with economic backwardness is what billionaires can't get enough of in populations.

As to which form of government is the best, there may not be a single right answer. Probably whichever form a nation's people decide works for them, within reason. What matters is that the people (as a whole, not every individual) stay vigilant and not buy any "hands off the political process" ideological snake-oil which the NWO change agents are selling.
arc300
Member
Posts: 166
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2012 10:13 pm

Re: Hegelian Dialectic

Unread post by arc300 »

Gopi wrote: What actually happened, and is happening:

Logic ---> Logic of Becoming --XX--> Economic class --XX--> Economic lies --XX--> Corporate oligarchy.

Logic ---> Logic of Becoming --XX--> State Apparatus --XX--> Social scientific lies --XX--> World-State/World-Government.

Logic ---> Logic of Becoming --XX--> Physical science --XX--> Space/time lies --XX--> Relativity and Wave Particle Duality, Quantum Mechanics.
Sorry to be the dummy in class who holds everybody back but, Gopi, could you please translate "--XX-->" into English?
I find your posts interesting enough that, even though I "pretty much almost certainly kinda definitely know" what it means from the context, I don't want to leave it to chance. I want to absolutely know what you mean.
Gopi
Member
Posts: 34
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:00 pm

Re: Hegelian Dialectic

Unread post by Gopi »

Painterman wrote:The thesis-antithesis paradigm of Hegel, Fichte et al. is a handy tool for social scientists to transform society.
Apache wrote:Problem - reaction - solution becomes problem - reaction - multiple solutions.
This is one of the reasons why the entire topic has to be checked out in the reverse direction (I may italicize more than usual, to mimic how I speak!)

The transformation of thinking pointed out be Hegel's dialectic is actually only the "tool" aspect of it, or the misdirected part of it. In fact, Hegel himself never used the terms as they are said to be used... the evolution of the idea is something like this:

Kant: thesis-antithesis ---> illusion

Summary: Logic leads to contradiction ultimately. Therefore we can't really know anything. The critique of Pure Reason.

Fichte: thesis-antithesis-synthesis ---> opening

Summary: Logic need not dead-end like that. Maybe we can find a new starting point, through synthesis.

Hegel: thesis-antithesis-synthesis ---> 'living' truth

Summary: Use synthesis not as a schematic, but as a way to transform thinking itself.

In fact, our mutual favorite :) Wikipedia also explains this, without of course realizing the weight of it:
Wikipedia wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis,_a ... _synthesis

According to Walter Kaufmann, although the triad is often thought to form part of an analysis of historical and philosophical progress called the Hegelian dialectic, the assumption is erroneous:[6]
Whoever looks for the stereotype of the allegedly Hegelian dialectic in Hegel's Phenomenology will not find it. What one does find on looking at the table of contents is a very decided preference for triadic arrangements. ... But these many triads are not presented or deduced by Hegel as so many theses, antitheses, and syntheses. It is not by means of any dialectic of that sort that his thought moves up the ladder to absolute knowledge.
Gustav E. Mueller concurs that Hegel was not a proponent of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and clarifies what the concept of dialectic might have meant in Hegel's thought.[7]
"Dialectic" does not for Hegel mean "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis." Dialectic means that any "ism"--which has a polar opposite, or is a special viewpoint leaving "the rest" to itself--must be criticized by the logic of philosophical thought, whose problem is reality as such, the "World-itself."
According to Mueller, the attribution of this tripartite dialectic to Hegel is the result of "inept reading" and simplistic translations which do not take into account the genesis of Hegel's terms.[8]
The essential meaning of the wiki passage is: "Move on from here, conspiracy buffs, Hegelian dialectic is not what you think it means, it is some philosophical nitpicking which we know you won't dare try to sort out." But we can unspin that, and figure out what is the essential thought process. The idea is to misdirect everyone into thoughts of manipulation, so that one can throw out the entire German Idealism thought process via discredit-by-association, or baby-with-the-bathwater. Hence any way out of the dialectic is well and truly barred.

As concluded by Apache and Painter man, looking one way from the dialectic leads to misdirection. Which is the reason to go the other way (the bold section is the one generally masked):

Limits of Logic (Kant) ---> Break out (Fichte and Hegel)<--- Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis ---> multiple solutions ---> manipulation
Break out (Fichte and Hegel)---------> Logic of becoming ---> living forms.

It is no wonder that during the World Wars, philosophical development itself more or less came to a screeching halt and technology took over.

Interpersonal Dynamics

Breaking out of that frame of mind will also alter the way one relates to people, IMHO. For example, consider the same person whom we have mentioned so much: Hegel. On one hand is the aspect of "Defense": One can claim that what Hegel did was a big service to philosophy, and most of the bad name is because his ideas were co-opted. On the side of "Criticism": The chap left the door open for misuse, and probably screwed up our understanding of State (government) for a century or more. This is the interpersonal dialectic, where you either defend a person or criticize him (constructively, of course, we are all honorable men and women). If you get caught up in the dialectic, you can come up with "Oh, everyone has positives and negatives, what's the point of arguing?" If you get stuck a bit further ahead, then all the so-called solutions and controlled opposition crop up "Oh, you don't like Hegel? How about Nietzsche? No? Oh you like Hegel? Then you must study Engels! Oh you're not sure? Try Ayn Rand, she is brilliant!" and so on. It is only after that happens, that maybe one can understand Hegel instead of defending or opposing his ideas. We have to get out of the Hegelian dialectic to understand Hegel! Or to understand anyone else for that matter.
arc300 wrote:Sorry to be the dummy in class who holds everybody back but, Gopi, could you please translate "--XX-->" into English?
I find your posts interesting enough that, even though I "pretty much almost certainly kinda definitely know" what it means from the context, I don't want to leave it to chance. I want to absolutely know what you mean.
Not at all, thanks for asking... I should have clarified that. I meant it as a sort of distortion/misdirection that happens, instead of the straightforward, though difficult path that could have been taken: "--->". I find it a little tricky to represent ideas graphically (sometimes one can end up oversimplifying) so I keep it limited to some primitive arrows!
Apache wrote:They don't care which solution you go for as long as it's one of their solutions. And boy do they have plenty on offer.
Just out of curiosity, Apache... what 'solution', or even direction, do you suggest or offer?
Apache
Member
Posts: 168
Joined: Thu Oct 22, 2015 11:02 am

Re: Hegelian Dialectic

Unread post by Apache »

Gopi wrote:
Apache wrote:They don't care which solution you go for as long as it's one of their solutions. And boy do they have plenty on offer.
Just out of curiosity, Apache... what 'solution', or even direction, do you suggest or offer?
As I was writing generally about the multiple solutions that are on offer by the social engineers is your query regarding a solution or direction in regard to those multiple solutions? :unsure: I'll take it to mean this and I will answer as best I can.

Even if I did have a solution to the multiple choices that are on offer (which I don't, because each person decides for themselves what to believe or disbelieve) the Mighty Wurlitzer (controlled by the Nutwork) would hijack that solution, render it safe, and it would then become a solution offered by the social engineers. For instance Engels offered a solution and Marx hijacked it. This is why all solutions offered have a core of truth in them or some sort of appeal because, at base, there was or is a good idea contained within them. All I can suggest is that each person looks at any solution offered and hunts down the turd in the punchbowl. There usually is one :lol:
fubarfuthark
Banned
Posts: 59
Joined: Mon Feb 15, 2016 12:20 pm

Re: Hegelian Dialectic

Unread post by fubarfuthark »

I have thought about this topic a lot. Because of its constant instrumentalisation by the perps, the Hegelian Dialectic has a bad reputation. But is this justified? The Hegelian dialectic is not just an instrument to impose change upon people, it is also an entire way of seeing the world, that every existing thing and impulse sort of calls into existence its opposite, even containing its own contradiction. Seeing it as merely a means of control misunderstands the totalising nature of the dialectic, which ultimately has to include even the forces not 'explicitly' subject to it, or subject to the 'dialectising agency', as it were. Even criticism of the dialectical method itself, by say a logician, or by Karl Popper as 'not falsifiable' is incorporated into the dialectic itself as something that will call something else into being.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popp ... _induction
(on a side note look at this, Popper's 'solution' to the problem of induction, that the definition of empirical science is that it be FALSIFIABLE. Good god are they brazen. I am a scarcely employed person sitting with neither a qualification in science nor philosophy and i am the one who has to see these connections!? Also of note in that wikipedia article is everything concerning Popper's writings about the Copenhagen interpretation, and indeed looking into that matter itself.)

One has to be able to trace the developments here and what forces set them in motion. For example, there existed in the 20th century a kind of dialectical dogfight between Analyctic Philosophy, like the moronic shill Bertrand Russell (and its barely worth enumerating subdisciplines like ordinary language philosophy, philosophy of science etc.) which emerged from Logical Positivism and which, in turn emerged from the thought of Wittgenstein and possibly Frege, with what is termed 'Continental Philosophy', that is to say Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Existentialism, Deconstructionism, Post-Marxists and some other things like Phenomenology and Hermeneuticism. There is no point in me trying to summarise, in a short post on a website like this, what all these things are, but to put it glibly, 'continental' philosophy talked about the world, culture, social questions and 'analyctic' philosophy concerned itself with the philosophy of language and the last drabs of some ethical ideas about scientfic practice (for an example of this honorable field of endeavour i suggest googling the article 'Heavy Petting' by the Australian Utilitarian Peter Singer.) This dialectic was sort of played out, with the playing field being some sort of abstract need for 'social change' in the case of the Continentals and 'meaningful language' in the case of the Analyctic or English-speaking tradition, who constantly accused writers like, say, Derrida or Deleuze or, god help us, Lacan, of not writing intelligibly. They were not wrong in this. God only knows much absolutely meritless balderdash has been produced by European universities on the subject of 'the epistemological turn in Althusser' or somesuch, often relating to things like film theory (nearly always french). This culminated in 'the Sokal Affair', which I am not going to summarize here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

I think that this was a sort of double hoax because it implies that subjects under investigation by the Physics professor where any more meaningful than the babbling nonsense of the Postmodern theorists And actually if you look at the philosophy of the surrealist Alfred Jarry (all this stuff like clinamen and so on) and compare it to, say the ideas of both Harold Bloom in this tome 'the Anxiety of Influence' and indeed, say, to the absurd fairytales of theoretical physics (dark matter, charmed quarks, supersymmetry etc.), one could actually have the impression that one is looking at the exactly the same thing. Is there any difference AT ALL between relativity and relativism? Between 'of transformational hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity' and the incident where the ESA engineer got done over on twitter for wearing a shirt with a naked woman on it?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... women.html

Do logical postivism and continental philosophy as systems that both, in their own way, violate fundamental human common sense lead ultimately to the same place....space? That is to say by violating human reason in such a fundamental way that a person no longer even knows where they are, things like 'the tractatus' or 'the open society and its enemies' (well seen that Soros' think tank is named after this book) and indeed, books like Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze or 'Empire' by Hardt and Negri have totally destroyed and traumatised the western philosophical impulse, cleaved science from the humanities into an gaping dialectic, as feebly rehearsed in utter bilge like 'the two cultures' by CP Snow and thus subjected the entire edifice of higher education, culture and the production of knowledge into a massive form of specialisation, rigid box thinking and Jobsworthish 'if you dont have a degree in it, you cannot pronounce it' type rank-pulling. And through this, we got lost in space. At least space is now a safe space!

(like a schnapps between courses i would like to thown in this tidbit of dialectical terrorism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat. From 1997, written by Thomas L Friedman, one of the worst scumbags in the American media, and that is REALLY going some (although i do not think you have anybody quite as slimy and egregious as George Monbiot, and I say this as someone with deep ecology sympathies.)

There are so many instances whereby legitimate political movements, or even simple ideas are parlayed into a kind of caricature of themselves in order to be roped into some sort of dialectical movement. I was trying recently to formulate ideas about social darwinism, fascism, the history of Eugenics in Scandinavia (it went on up right into the 70s), Lamarckian inheritance, neo-telegony and the current teachings of the russian orthodox church and i found myself, almost literally trying to dust away the cobwebs of caricature of and falsely dialectical movements. In the end I was floored and did not quite get there. I was basically trying to the root of 'Why was this ever an issue? Who made it an issue? In what way is it an issue?'

I have got sort of sidetracked from my original point, probably because there is simply TOO much to say on this topic. The Hegelian Dialectic also concerns the relationship between truth and falsehood as a dialectic, subject and object, master and slave, everything requiring acknowledgement from the other in order to have its status and even containing in itself its own negation. This is one reason, even if most of their intentions are bad, it is wrong to dismiss modern academic philosophers wholesale, even Marxists, because somewhere buried in there, they often have a point, even if it was not the one they were trying to make. Not to mention the fact that none of us have any idea what kinds of 'messages in bottles' were stuffed into seemingly impetrenable texts. One of the lessons of 'the dialectic' per se is to be able to read things backwards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecuti ... of_Writing
Now Leo Strauss was mostly the worst kind of psycho (as was Alexander Kojeve), but perhaps that is not only what he was. Who knows what incredible things can be found in books by 'mainstream' philosophers if you just LEARN TO PAY ATTENTION.
(Roger Scruton once called out Kojeve, but Scruton is the worst kind of tobacco-company shilling, cravenly establishment-toadying foxhunting turd. I did quite like his book on Popular Music though.)

One should never forget that in the Marxist mutation of Hegel's thought (and the fact that it is apparently compulsory to meditate on the dialectic in the Lodges, I cannot recommend highly enough the anthroposophist Gennady Bondarev's book 'the crisis of civilisation'. He is a modern Philosopher who is definitely 'awake' as it were, and he covers these points at length.
http://www.pdfarchive.info/pdf/B/Bo/Bon ... zation.pdf), there is no final object of History, except a kind of world wide NWO communism. In Hegel, the dialectic incorporates absolutely every conceivable thing in the universe, eventually only resolving itself in Christ, as it were. A kind of cosmic, pantheistic Christ principle that reconciles all opposites. There even exists within this line of dialectical reasoning, especially for an Anthroposophist, a kind of dialectical proof that Jesus Christ, or rather what he represents, in some impossible way embodies the closing of the orouboros coil of the serpent and will be thus, both the christian and the jewish messiah simultaneously. That is to say that Lucifer and Ahriman will incarnate SIMULTANEOUSLY in the same person and that person will be both Maschiach (that is to say the zion king of the last pages of the protocols of Zion) and Jesus Christ: The Lamb of the book of revelations. This person, if they are indeed a person (the last pages of the protocols are extremely interesting, not so many people know them, they involve the promotion anew of handicrafts and sobriety and a king of such immense brain power that he will be capable of governing the entire world.) will be quite something! He will also, out of dialectical necessity, be a gentile. There is a historical inevitability about this, even if it sounds totally impossible, but this is where the dialectic leads. Even our managed, staged, fake society has to contain its out-of-control, freewheeling wild-west corollary, even if just as a point of reference. Or as a weapon to be brandished.

As an example, in order for their to be a fake arab spring, there has to exist real, pissed-off arabs. Nobody would ever claim that 'there are no arabs'. Maybe just 'the Palestinians do not exist'...

Now I feel like I am standing on the beach with a gun in my hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdbLqOXmJ04
Post Reply