dialectical materialism

[ColonelCossack]

hey, comrades, ive been a leninist for a long time now, and ive read a lot of Marx, Engels and Lenin... but there's one part tht still escapes me. What's dialectical materialism?:confused:

[Broletariat]

A bunch of hogwash, Rosa will be along shortly to explain why.

Basically it makes absolutely no sense, and is based on a distortion of language. You'll never be able to understand it because NO ONE can understand it because it is non-sense.

[CornetJoyce]

The principles of dialectical materialism can be demonstrated empirically. First, get some suitably dialectical material. Jello is excellent for this purpose. Proceed with the dialectical process and observe the jello.

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

Hello, CCC from North London.

1) Dialectics is a system of thought that works through opposition of concepts. It goes back as far as the Greek philosopher Zeno.

2) Dialectical Materialism is a tendency in Marxism. It goes back 120 years. It argues that dialectics can be applied, not simply to the way we think, but to the way the world is.

Gotta go.

[Paulappaul]

C.L.R. James on Dialectical Materialism (http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/diamat/diamat47.htm).

[NGNM85]

Warning! Immanent Rosa textwall blitz!

[graymouser]

Anything Rosa Lichtenstein or anyone associated with him/her posts on this topic should be taken with a shaker, or better yet a mine, full of salt.

If you want to understand dialectical materialism, read George Novack's Introduction to the Logic of Marxism, or the chapters on the subject in Engels's Anti-Dühring (which is available online). In short, it's about how things change because of internal contradictions, but you're not going to get enough nuance on an online message board.

[Volcanicity]

This should give you the general idea http://marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm.

[DaringMehring]

In addition to the two works cited by graymouser, do The ABCs of Materialist Dialectics http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/12/abc.htm --- this short article is clear & concise, the best intro to dialectics I've ever read.

I think dialectics is good, because it really produces a mode of thought based on "all things are changing." Vulgar thought easily falls into taking the present to be eternal (just because something is, there must be some transhistorical justification, and therefore, it will be forever)... dialectics help smash that fallacy.

However, the mystical extremes of dialecticians are often laughable. I remember a line of Raya Dunayevskaya, where she mocked a Chinese pig farmer who claimed dialectics helped him do his job better (hah). And of course, as Rosa has demonstrated, people use the mystical "opposites" aspects, or rather misuse and twist, to justify reactionary actions.

[Black Sheep]

Rosa quote bomb approaching

[Broletariat]

Anything Rosa Lichtenstein or anyone associated with him/her posts on this topic should be taken with a shaker, or better yet a mine, full of salt.
Everything you read should be taken with a mine full of salt. Be skeptical of everything.

[ChrisK]

hey, comrades, ive been a leninist for a long time now, and ive read a lot of Marx, Engels and Lenin... but there's one part tht still escapes me. What's dialectical materialism?:confused:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Anti-D_For_Dummies%2001.htm

Rosa's basic introduction to what Dialectical Materialism is and why she disagree's with it.

[Rakhmetov]

A bunch of hogwash, Rosa will be along shortly to explain why.

Basically it makes absolutely no sense, and is based on a distortion of language. You'll never be able to understand it because NO ONE can understand it because it is non-sense.

Let's cut through the cant. Dialectical materialism has profound implication for the study of social science. First you have to go to Hegel and study his philosophy and then you study how Marx corrected Hegel's mistakes. Hegel was an idealist while Marx was a materialist. Dialectics asserts that everything in creation is not static but is in constant motion.

Thesis + Anthesis = Synthesis

Being + NonBeing = Becoming


You can read further in this book:

Marxism: For and Against
by Robert L. Heilbroner

In the lucid style and engaging manner that have become his trademark, Robert L. Heilbroner explains and explores the central elements of Marxist thought: the meaning of a "dialectical" philosophy, the usefulness and problems of a " materialist" interpretation" of history, the power of Marx's "socioanalytic" penetration of capitalism, and the hopes and disconcerting problems involved in a commitment to socialism. Scholarly without being academic, searching without assuming a prior knowledge of the subject, Dr. Heilbroner enables us to appreciate the greatness of Mark while avoiding an uncritical stance toward his work.





http://www.amazon.com/Marxism-Against-Robert-L-Heilbroner/dp/0393951669/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295993291&sr=1-1

[Victus Mortuum]

Oh shit. Where's Rosa at?

[28350]

Dialectical Materialism, be it true or not, has little influence on Marxism as a praxis.

[Black Sheep]

It's a bunch of metaphysics attached to water turning into ice, really.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

VM:


Where's Rosa at?

Watching Manchester United go five points clear at the top of the Premier League, that's where!:)

GrayMouser:


Anything Rosa Lichtenstein or anyone associated with him/her posts on this topic should be taken with a shaker, or better yet a mine, full of salt.

Well, you certainly weren't able to defend effectively this 'theory' of yours when you last summoned enough courage to take me on.

For example, we are still waiting for you to explain to us what Lenin meant when he said that 'opposites' turn into one another.

No wonder you want to warn others off.:lol:

--------------------------------

ColonelCossak:


hey, comrades, ive been a leninist for a long time now, and ive read a lot of Marx, Engels and Lenin... but there's one part tht still escapes me. What's dialectical materialism?

As Christopher Koch noted above, I have written a very basic introduction (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Anti-D_For_Dummies%2001.htm) to this theory for absolute beginners, along with a few of my objections to it.

[scarletghoul]

There are many summaries of DM available online; I recommend reading as many as you can (starting with the shortest) in order to develop a good general understanding. The dialectical materialist school of thought varies quite a bit as theres quite a few major theorists (Marx, Engels, Mao, Zizek, Huey Newton, Lukaks, Althusser, etc )

It can be a bit weird and confusing at first but its completely worth learning because the dialectical materialist method has been the key to most great advances in marxist theory and practice. (Marx explicitly stated that Capital was a dialectical work. Engel's great Origins of the Family etc is a good example of dialectical materialism. Mao's victory over Japan and then the Chinese reactionaries was only possible with his correct dialectical evaluation of material conditions and contradictions. etc)

The Maoist school of dialectics is the correct one imho. I havnt found a good summary of Maoist philosophy so here are his four main philosophical works. Reading them should help develop a good grasp of DM -

On Practice (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm)[/URL]
[URL="http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm"]On Contradiction (http://marxistleninist.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/reading-notes-on-mao-zedong%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9con-practice%e2%80%9c/)
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_58.htm)
Where do Correct Ideas Come From? (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_01.htm)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Mengistu:


Let's cut through the cant. Dialectical materialism has profound implication for the study of social science. First you have to go to Hegel and study his philosophy and then you study how Marx corrected Hegel's mistakes. Hegel was an idealist while Marx was a materialist. Dialectics asserts that everything in creation is not static but is in constant motion.

Thesis + Anthesis = Synthesis

This isn't in fact Hegel's method, but Kant's and Fichte's:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=707195&postcount=7

And Hegel was not only a card carrying mystic and mega-bourgeios ideologue, he was a logical incompetent, to boot. I have explained why here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1941396&postcount=2


Being + NonBeing = Becoming

That is just non-sense -- unless, of course, you can explain why it is true.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Scarlet:


There are many summaries of DM available online; I recommend reading as many as you can (starting with the shortest) in order to develop a good general understanding. The dialectical materialist school of thought varies quite a bit as theres quite a few major theorists (Marx, Engels, Mao, Zizek, Huey Newton, Lukaks, Althusser, etc )

Well, as you know, I have shown that the dialectical theory of change would, if true, make change impossible:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/dialectical-theory-change-t144536/index.html

And Marx knew nothing of this theory of yours.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Black Sheep:


Rosa quote bomb approaching

Strike One!

NGNM85:


Warning! Immanent Rosa textwall blitz!

Strike Two!

------------------------

Any of you dialectical punks feeling lucky?

Go on, make my day...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Paul:


C.L.R. James on Dialectical Materialism.

Do you mean his Notes on Dialectics?

If you do, it's wall-to-wall gobbledygook.

[scarletghoul]

Hello, CCC from North London.

1) Dialectics is a system of thought that works through opposition of concepts. It goes back as far as the Greek philosopher Zeno.

2) Dialectical Materialism is a tendency in Marxism. It goes back 120 years. It argues that dialectics can be applied, not simply to the way we think, but to the way the world is.

Gotta go.


Dialectical Materialism, be it true or not, has little influence on Marxism as a praxis.
Unfortunately this is not true. Dialectical Materialism is not a tendency of Marxism, it is at the very core of all Marxist thought, and has been vital in its practice. The difference between a dialectical materialist outlook and a metaphysical outlook can be the difference between success and failure. I have already given the example of Mao correctly analysing the contradictions in Chinese society in order to establish a great socialist country 'against all the odds'.

Dialectics sees the relations and movements between things, it helps understand how the world changes and therefore is vital to changing the world. Materialism simply reminds us where the truth lies.

You can look up all the commie leaders who actually achieved anything significant, they are almost all dialectical materialists.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

CornetJoyce:


The principles of dialectical materialism can be demonstrated empirically. First, get some suitably dialectical material. Jello is excellent for this purpose. Proceed with the dialectical process and observe the jello.

I'd like to see you try!

[Or are you being ironic?]

[scarletghoul]

i love you rosa

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Scarlet:


Unfortunately this is not true. Dialectical Materialism is not a tendency of Marxism, it is at the very core of all Marxist thought, and has been vital in its practice. The difference between a dialectical materialist outlook and a metaphysical outlook can be the difference between success and failure. I have already given the example of Mao correctly analysing the contradictions in Chinese society in order to establish a great socialist country 'against all the odds'.

In that case, I'd like to see you explain when how it has been put to practical use (other than to justify class collaboration, for example, with the Guomindang).

And sure, you use 'dialectical' jargon to try to do this:


I have already given the example of Mao correctly analysing the contradictions in Chinese society in order to establish a great socialist country 'against all the odds'

Alas for you, it's no more clear how dialectics actually does this than it is when Christians, for example, try to explain their 'Trinity' to us.

Perhaps you should have another go, and be clearer this time...

[Hit The North]

The last thing the Learning forum needs is another interminable thread about DM and Rosa. If comrades really want to debate this then join one of the other zillion threads that have already been launched on this topic.

Thread closed.

EDIT: Actually, I've changd my mind. If you kids want to torture yourself...

But seeing as there is a minute to zero chance of anyone learning anything on this thread, moved to Philosophy

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Scarlet:


i love you rosa

Maybe so, but how does that help show that your 'theory' does not imply change is impossible?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB, I see you too are a unity of opposite opinions...:)

[Hit The North]

BTB, I see you too are a unity of opposite opinions...:)

Bit drunk. Been toasting the latest economic figures.

[scarletghoul]

Its a shame because the OP just wanted to learn something. If Rosa could be banned from Learning, it would stop things like this happening.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Scarlet, before 'he/she' realised 'she/he' could not reply effectively to me:


i love you rosa
After:


If Rosa could be banned from Learning, it would stop things like this happening.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Bit drunk. Been toasting the latest economic figures.

And I thought my life was dull... :lol:

[Broletariat]

Rosa cracks me up, I'm not sure if she's even trying to be funny or it just comes out that way but her posting style just gets me every time.

[graymouser]

Well, you certainly weren't able to defend effectively this 'theory' of yours when you last summoned enough courage to take me on.

For example, we are still waiting for you to explain to us what Lenin meant when he said that 'opposites' turn into one another.

No wonder you want to warn others off.:lol:
Courage? No, it doesn't take courage. Just amounts of time I'm not going to waste on someone who argues in bad faith on an internet forum. Sorry, thanks for playing!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

GM:


Courage?

Indeed, you know, of the sort you haven't got.


No, it doesn't take courage. Just amounts of time I'm not going to waste on someone who argues in bad faith on an internet forum. Sorry, thanks for playing!

In other words, you've bottled it.:lol:

No surprise there, then.

I wonder if Engels advanced this lame excuse when he encountered Duhring?

Maybe someone can tell us...:)

Oh, and we are still waiting for you to tell us what Lenin meant when he said opposites turn into one another.

Was he arguing 'in bad faith', too?

[August21]

Ok, so this is my first post, and I'm glad to meet you, and all those niceties. The OP asked a valid question. A few people answered the question, in one way or another, but the majority were more worried about Rosa and his/her responses, and Rosa was kind enough to provide us with links in which she argues that the dialectic is actually against change. I haven't read (yet) the full argument, but from the preliminary points, I would agree with that, only by remarking that change and becoming are different processes. Hegel mentions that clearly at the beginning of the Science of Logic. Becoming is immanent, it comes from within, the working class is, and hence it can become the motor of change. Change is external, and hence accidental. Hence, I would answer to the OP, that s/he would have to break down his/her question in two parts: what is the dialectic? what is materialism (after quantum theory)?

[Paulappaul]

Paul:



Do you mean his Notes on Dialectics?

If you do, it's wall-to-wall gobbledygook.

C.L.R. James gives the most basic and entertaining elaboration on Hegal's Dialectical method and Marx's. Notes on Dialectics is good, but his "Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity" cuts the crap of the former. I don't necessary agree with it - mostly because I don't understand it.

[NGNM85]

NGNM85:



Strike Two!

Incidentally, I was first. However, this is one of those rare instances in which we are, generally, on the same page. I, too, am extremely skeptical of 'dialectical materialism'. (Although, it doesn't carry the same emotional resonance for me.) Like Postmodernism, it seems to be merely a kind of intellectual chicanery, that there isn't any actual underlying substance.



------------------------

Any of you dialectical punks feeling lucky?

Go on, make my day...

As an aside, I just recently had a mini-marathon of the first three Dirty Harry movies and I love that scene. You can see he's still chewing as he's meting out punishment. The first one is the best, by far, although, Magnum Force is a close second.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Paul:


C.L.R. James gives the most basic and entertaining elaboration on Hegal's Dialectical method and Marx's. Notes on Dialectics is good, but his "Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity" cuts the crap of the former. I don't necessary agree with it - mostly because I don't understand it.

You know, I thought I had read everything there was to read on this theory (in English), but I have never come across his 'Dialectical Materialism'. Where can it be found?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

NGNM85:


As an aside, I just recently had a mini-marathon of the first three Dirty Harry movies and I love that scene. You can see he's still chewing as he's meting out punishment. The first one is the best, by far, although, Magnum Force is a close second.

Love the line, hate the films.:(

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

August21:


I would agree with that, only by remarking that change and becoming are different processes. Hegel mentions that clearly at the beginning of the Science of Logic. Becoming is immanent, it comes from within, the working class is, and hence it can become the motor of change. Change is external, and hence accidental. Hence, I would answer to the OP, that s/he would have to break down his/her question in two parts: what is the dialectic? what is materialism (after quantum theory)?

Well, first of all, in the post to which you refer, I was attacking the theory as it is presented by Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Mao (and a few others), not that which appears in Hegel's work.

Second, my objections to Hegel's garbled 'logic' are different, some of which can be found here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1381066&postcount=30

Third, Hegel's use of 'Becoming' is no less confused, based as it is on a nominalisation of the present participle of the verb 'to become', which he concocted in order to try to solve the bogus and manufactured 'contradiction' in his claim that 'Being' was identical to, but at the same time different from, 'Nothing' -- which is an example of ridiculous word-juggling to rival, and possibly exceed, that which is found in Anselm's infamous 'Ontological Argument'.

Other than that, Hegel's entire body of work is susceptible to the points I made here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1995528&postcount=1

[ar734]

Scarlet:



Well, as you know, I have shown that the dialectical theory of change would, if true, make change impossible:


And Marx knew nothing of this theory of yours.

What do you think about the science of anti-matter? They use matter/anti-matter interaction for PET scans. This seems to sound like something dialectical.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Louisianaleftist:


What do you think about the science of anti-matter? They use matter/anti-matter interaction for PET scans. This seems to sound like something dialectical.

I have no problem with the above science (How could I?). The only difficulty is that I fail to see how it is 'dialectical'.

[Paulappaul]

Paul:



You know, I thought I had read everything there was to read on this theory (in English), but I have never come across his 'Dialectical Materialism'. Where can it be found?

http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/diamat/diamat47.htm

There you go. I am just curious, but what do you think (and I think I may have seen you argue this with Comrade Zanthorus?) about Marx in Capital 1 talking about the change of a quantity into a quality and subsequently into a measure? I remember flipping through it recently and reading a paragraph (I think in Chapter 1) about Quantity, Quality, all that jibber-jabber and thinking "Oh what would Rosa think of this!"

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Well, (in the Postface to the Second Edition) he told us he was merely 'coquetting' with such ideas, and we can see that is so from the example he gave. There is no way that a mere increase in quantity (of money) can turn a medieval guild master into a capitalist, as Marx well knew. It takes a change in the mode of production to do that.

And thanks for the link. I should have guessed it would be in the Marx Internet Archive!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Ok, I have so far read nearly half of James's essay on Dialectical Materialism, and it reveals once again what a great writer he was.

Having said that, he was a very poor philosopher, making all the usual mistakes. He is also full of bluster and bombast. Here is a typical example:


But the seal of the bankruptcy of bourgeois civilisation is the bankruptcy of its thought. Its intellectuals run to and fro squealing like hens in a barnyard when a plane passes overhead. Not a single philosopher or publicist has any light to throw on a crisis in which the fate not of a civilisation but of civilisation itself is involved. The Keynesian theories are now part of the history of economics. The ridiculous “four freedoms” of the late President Roosevelt take their place with the Three Principles of Sun Yat-Sen (the father-in-law of Chiang Kai-shek), the thousand years of Hitler's Reich and the “socialism in a single country” of Stalin. The chattering of Sidney Hook and Harold Laski is stunned into silence by the immensity of their own inadequacies. Thought has abdicated. The world is rudderless. All illusions have been destroyed. “Man is at last compelled to face with sober sense his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” And in face of this the bourgeoisie has nothing to say....

The anti-dialecticians stand absolutely dumbfounded before the spectacle of the mastery of nature for human advancement and the degradation of human nature by this very mastery. The greater the means of transport, the less men are allowed to travel. The greater the means of communication, the less men freely interchange ideas. The greater the possibilities of living, the more men live in terror of mass annihilation. The bourgeoisie cannot admit this, for to admit it is themselves to sanction the end of the bourgeois civilisation.

All this would be less objectionable if he had something useful to say himself about the applicability of his own theory in this regard. But, as we will see, he just gestures at it.

So, for instance, he tells us repeatedly that this theory can account for social change:


The second law of dialectical materialism is the change of quantity into quality. At a certain stage a developing contradiction, so to speak, explodes, and both the elements of contradiction are thereby altered. In the history of society these explosions are known as revolution. All the economic, social and political tendencies of the age find a point of completion which becomes the starting-point of new tendencies. The Russian revolution is one such explosion. But the examination of the Russian revolution involves both the laws of development through contradictions and the change of quantity into quality.

However, as I have pointed out here many times in relation to other dialecticians who say similar things, he failed to tell us precisely what a 'quality' is. That rather slipshod start allows him, just as it allows others, to rope in any old example that takes his fancy (thus applying this 'law' subjectively), and to ignore the many cases where this 'law' fails to work (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2007.htm).

Moreover, he pointedly failed to tell us how it helps understand even the Russian Revolution! He just waves this rather vague 'law' at it, and moves on.

Near the beginning, he added these comments:


We have learnt by hard necessity the truth of the following dictum of Trotsky:


“Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws: change of quantity into quality, development through contradictions, conflict of content and form, interruption of continuity, change of possibility into inevitability, etc., which are just as important for theoretical thought as is the simple syllogism for more elementary tasks.” (Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism.)

Hegel defines the principle of Contradiction as follows:


“Contradiction is the root of all movement and life, and it is only in so far as it contains a contradiction that anything moves and has impulse and activity.” (Science of Logic, Vol 2, p. 67.)

The first thing to note is that Hegel makes little attempt to prove this. A few lines later he says:


“With regard to the assertion that contradiction does not exist, that it is non-existent, we may disregard this statement.”

We here meet one of the most important principles of the dialectical logic, and one that has been consistently misunderstood, vilified or lied about. Dialectic for Hegel was a strictly scientific method. He might speak of inevitable laws, but he insists from the beginning that the proof of dialectic as scientific method is that the laws prove their correspondence with reality. Marx's dialectic is of the same character. Thus he excluded what later became The Critique of Political Economy from Capital because it took for granted what only the detailed argument and logical development of Capital could prove. Still more specifically, in his famous letter to Kugelmann on the theory of value, he ridiculed the idea of having to “prove” the labour theory of value. If the labour theory of value proved to be the means whereby the real relations of bourgeois society could be demonstrated in their movement, where they came from, what they were, and where they were going, that was the proof of the theory. Neither Hegel nor Marx understood any other scientific proof.

The first thing to note is that Hegel's 'definition' of "contradiction" isn't a definition to begin with. It can't be since it uses the word "contradiction" in the alleged definition!

So, it is irrelevant whether Hegel bothered to 'prove' any of this, since we have as yet no idea what he was or wasn't supposed to be 'proving'!

All this is quite apart from the fact that James uncritically accepts this line of argument:


Dialectic for Hegel was a strictly scientific method. He might speak of inevitable laws, but he insists from the beginning that the proof of dialectic as scientific method is that the laws prove their correspondence with reality.

And how did Hegel go about this? Wonder no more:


They were logical abstractions organised according to the method of Hegel and reflecting the movement of human society

We are not told how this mysterious method of 'abstraction' is supposed to work (and no one has bothered to do so since), nor why we should trust its deliverances. Worse still, we aren't told how the hidden mental gyrations of a lone abstractor could possibly coincide/agree with those of any other.

Are they supposed to perform brain surgery, run one another through an fMRI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging) scanner, or try to persuade a psychic to read their thoughts?

Indeed, if we had to rely on 'abstraction' science would be dead and buried (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2003_02.htm).

All this sails right over James's bombastic head.

There is plenty more to take issue with in the first half of this rather poor attempt to defend the indefensible, but the above should suffice.

If I encounter anything else worth commenting upon in the second half, I'll post a few remarks about it later.

[ar734]

Louisianaleftist:



I have no problem with the above science (How could I?). The only difficulty is that I fail to see how it is 'dialectical'.

Well...the negative coming out of the positive, opposites becoming opposites, etc.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LouisianaLeftist:


Well...the negative coming out of the positive, opposites becoming opposites, etc.

But, the 'negative does not come out of the positive', and they certainly do not become one another. When was the last time an electron, for example, became a positron, or came out of one?

Anyway, I thought the opposite of an electron was a proton (and they do not even change into one another), not a positron.

And if anti-matter and matter meet, they do not 'develop' (or even struggle) they just anihilate one another.

Finally, as I have shown here, dialectical materialism, if it were true, would make change impossible:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/dialectical-theory-change-t144536/index.html

[pranabjyoti]

Well, a lot of people know well about Rosa. Recently, we (me and Rosa) are engaged in a debate in this thread at http://www.revleft.com/vb/dawkins-smashes-social-t148940/index.html.
In those threads, Rosa claimed that the triad is formulated by Kant and Fichte and Hegel never mentioned laws of dialectics in any of his writings (not even Marx). She even represented a total new explanation of DM apart from what I know it.
I just want to know, other than her followers, how many support and agreed with her view of DM. As I am not a student of Philosophy, I better want to ask people who know better about philosophy and logic than me in this regard.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Pranabjyoti:


Well, a lot of people know well about Rosa. Recently, we (me and Rosa) are engaged in a debate in this thread at http://www.revleft.com/vb/dawkins-sm...940/index.html.

In those threads, Rosa claimed that the triad is formulated by Kant and Fichte and Hegel never mentioned laws of dialectics in any of his writings (not even Marx). She even represented a total new explanation of DM apart from what I know it.

I just want to know, other than her followers, how many support and agreed with her view of DM. As I am not a student of Philosophy, I better want to ask people who know better about philosophy and logic than me in this regard.

And yet, you have shown yourself totally incapable of providing one quotation from Hegel, Marx, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin or Mao that shows they thought this triad of yours was part of DM.

Just as you have ignored the evidence that Hegel rejected it, as did Lenin.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2005227&postcount=48

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Now, I provided a link to the following material I posted here a few years back, but you plainly did not follow that link.

So here it is (for you to ignore some more):



Some say Hegel used the method of: thesis-antithesis-synthesis, and others deny this. Who is correct?

The most vexing and devastating Hegel legend is that everything is thought in "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis." [...] The actual texts of Hegel not only occasionally deviate from "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis," but show nothing of the sort. "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."

Hermann Glockner's reliable Hegel Lexikon (4 volumes, Stuttgart, 1935) does not list the Fichtean terms "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" together. In all the twenty volumes of Hegel's "complete works" he does not use this "triad" once; nor does it occur in the eight volumes of Hegel texts, published for the first time in the twentieth Century. He refers to "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis" in the Preface of the Phenomenology of Mind, where he considers the possibility of this "triplicity " as a method or logic of philosophy. According to the Hegel-legend one would expect Hegel to recommend this "triplicity." But, after saying that it was derived from Kant, he calls it a "lifeless schema," "mere shadow" and concludes: "The trick of wisdom of that sort is as quickly acquired as it is easy to practice. Its repetition, when once it is familiar, becomes as boring as the repetition of any bit of sleigh-of-hand once we see through it. The instrument for producing this monotonous formalism is no more difficult to handle than the palette of a painter, on which lie only two colours ..." (Preface, Werke, II, 48-49).

In the student notes, edited and published as History of Philosophy, Hegel mentions in the Kant chapter, the "spiritless scheme of the triplicity of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis" (geistloses Schema) by which the rhythm and movement of philosophic knowledge is artificially pre-scribed (vorgezeichnet).

In the first important book about Hegel by his student, intimate friend and first biographer, Karl Rosenkranz (Hegels Leben, 1844), "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" are conspicuous by their absence. It seems Hegel was quite successful in hiding his alleged "method" from one of his best students.

The very important new Hegel literature of this century has altogether abandoned the legend. Theodor Haering's Hegels Wollen und Werk (2 vol., Teubner, 1929 and 1938) makes a careful study of Hegel's terminology and language and finds not a trace of "thesis, antithesis, synthesis." In the second volume there are a few lines (pp. 118, 126) in which he repeats what Hegel in the above quotation had said himself, i.e., that this "conventional slogan" is particularly unfortunate because it impedes the understanding of Hegelian texts. As long as readers think that they have to find "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" in Hegel they must find him obscure - but what is obscure is not Hegel but their colored glasses. Iwan Iljin's Hegel's Philosophie als kontemplative Gotteslehre (Bern, 1946) dismisses the "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" legend in the Preface as a childish game (Spielerei), which does not even reach the front-porch of Hegel's philosophy.

Other significant works, like Hermann Glockner, Hegel (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1929), Theodor Steinbüchel, Das Grundproblem der Hegelschen Philosophie (Bonn, 1933), and Theodor Litt, Hegel: Eine Kritische Erneuerung (Heidelberg, 1953), Emerich Coreth, S.J., Das Dialektische Sein in Hegels Logik (Wien, 1952), and many others have simply disregarded the legend. In my own monographs on Hegel über Offenbarung, Kirche und Philosophie (Munich, 1939) and Hegel über Sittlichkeit und Geschichte (Reinhardt, 1940), I never found any "thesis, antithesis, synthesis." Richard Kroner, in his introduction to the English edition of selections from Hegel's Early Theological Writings, puts it mildly when he says: "This new Logic is of necessity as dialectical as the movement of thinking itself. ... But it is by no means the mere application of a monotonous trick that could be learned and repeated. It is not the mere imposition of an ever recurring pattern. It may appear so in the mind of some historians who catalogue the living trend of thought, but in reality it is ever changing, ever growing development; Hegel is nowhere pedantic in pressing concepts into a ready-made mold. The theme of thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis, like the motif of a musical composition, has many modulations and modifications. It is never 'applied'; it is itself only a poor and not even helpful abstraction of what is really going on in Hegel's Logic."

Well, shall we keep this "poor and not helpful abstraction" in our attic because "some historians" have used it as their rocking-horse? We rather agree with the conclusion of Johannes Flügge: "Dialectic is not the scheme of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis imputed to Hegel."

In an essay by Nicolai Hartmann on Aristoteles und Hegel, I find the following additional confirmation of all the other witnesses to the misinterpretation of Hegel's dialectic: "It is a basically perverse opinion (grundverkehrte Ansicht) which sees the essence of dialectic in the triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis." The legend was spread by Karl Marx whose interpretation of Hegel is distorted. It is Marxism superimposed on Hegel. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis, Marx says in Das Elend der Philosophie, is Hegel's purely logical formula for the movement of pure reason, and the whole system is engendered by this dialectical movement of thesis, antithesis, synthesis of all categories. This pure reason, he continues, is Mr. Hegel's own reason, and history becomes the history of his own philosophy, whereas in reality, thesis, antithesis, synthesis are the categories of economic movements. (Summary of Chapter II, Paragraph 1.) The few passages in Marx' writings that resemble philosophy are not his own. He practices the communistic habit of expropriation without compensation. Knowing this in general, I was also convinced that there must be a source for this "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis," and I finally discovered it.

In the winter of 1835-36, a group of Kantians in Dresden called on Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus, professor of philosophy at the University of Kiel, to lecture to them on the new philosophical movement after Kant. They were older, professional men who in their youth had been Kantians, and now wanted an orientation in a development which they distrusted; but they also wanted a confirmation of their own Kantianism. Professor Chalybäus did just those two things. His lectures appeared in 1837 under the title Historische Entwicklung der speculativen Philosophie von Kant bis Hegel, Zu näherer Verständigung des wissenschaftlichen Publikums mit der neuesten Schule. The book was very popular and appeared in three editions. In my copy of the third edition of 1843, Professor Chalybäus says (p. 354): "This is the first trilogy: the unity of Being, Nothing and Becoming ... we have in this first methodical thesis, antithesis, and synthesis ... an example or schema for all that follows." This was for Chalybäus a brilliant hunch which he had not used previously and did not pursue afterwards in any way at all.... Other left Hegelians, such as Arnold Ruge, Ludwig Feuerbach, Max Stirner use "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" just as little as Hegel.

(quote from the article of Gustav E. Mueller: The Hegel Legend of "Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis", in Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume XIX, June 1958, Number 3, Page 411. The article is still as valid today as it was in 1958)

From: http://www.hegel.net/en/faq.htm#6.4

As well as:


"Britannica: One of the things most associated with Hegel's thought is the thesis/antithesis/synthesis scheme, the process by which reality unfolds and history progresses. But you claim this never appears in Hegel's work.

"Pinkard: This myth was started by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus. It appears in a history he wrote of recent German philosophy (published in the 1840s), in which he said, roughly, that Fichte's philosophy followed the model of thesis/antithesis/synthesis, but Hegel went further and cosmologized that notion, extending it to the entire universe. The book was widely read (apparently the young Marx was one of its readers), and the idea stuck. It's still touted in a lot of short encyclopedia entries about Hegel. Like many little encapsulations of thought, it has the virtue of being easy to understand and easy to summarize. It's just not very helpful in understanding Hegel's thought. It has also contributed to the lack of appreciation of Hegel in Anglophone philosophy. It's not too hard to point out all the places where it doesn't apply, dismiss it as a kind of dialectical trick, and then just go on to conclude that Hegel isn't worth reading at all."

From:

http://www.postelservice.com/archives/000008.html

Bold added.

These might help kill this legend if they are left permanentely on display.