Hegel's Criticisms of Marx and DiaMat

[jacobin1949]

Just as a thought experiment, if we could raise Hegel from the dead how do you think he would defend his system from Feurbach, Marx and Engels' attacks, and what do you think would be his on critique of Dialectical and Historical Materialism?

[gilhyle]

Lovely one. I did come across some Dutch writers once from the late 1980s who developed a really complex Hegelian political economy as an alternative to Marxist political economy - cant remember their names.... its a really good question. I think his key criticism would have been to argue that the materialist conception of history and the Marxist conception of material reality cannot function as the absolute for they have a purely instrumental (i.e. external) conception of consciousness.

In other words Marxism - on this charge - defines consciousness only as serving a certain social and economic function within a material totality. But this - it would be argued - is not to define consciousness at all. The particularity of consciousness, its unique relationship to the being articulating the perspective is ignored - it would be argued.

It would be argued by Hegel, I think, that Marx ascribes a capacity for teleology to nature (and history) in a way that only exists because of consciousness and which resides quintessentially in human consciousness, THus human consciousness cannot properly be treated as an intermediate step in a material dialectic but must define the dialectic.

Illustrating this Hegel might point out that the dialectic of labour in the young Marx is not a dialectic of labour at all - if the beings going through it lacked higher consciousness the dialectic would not happen.Consequently, Hegel would argue that Marx mistakes the external ground on which the dialectic unfolds for the dialectic itself.

....This would of course all be wrong.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Ah, yet more a priori dogmatics...

[gilhyle]

Ah, yet more a priori dogmatics...

Ah, yet even more a priori dogmatics...

[Volderbeek]

It would be argued by Hegel, I think, that Marx ascribes a capacity for teleology to nature (and history) in a way that only exists because of consciousness and which resides quintessentially in human consciousness, Thus human consciousness cannot properly be treated as an intermediate step in a material dialectic but must define the dialectic.

So you think Hegel would argue that we all live in the Matrix or something? Reality is perception or something along those lines?

About teleology, I think it's sort of a chicken-egg thing. Does everything happen for a reason, or do things happen and we later attach meaning? It could go either way, but it doesn't really matter.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

V:



Does everything happen for a reason,


It does for idealists

[Volderbeek]

It does for idealists

With dialectics, that's really a meaningless distinction.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

V:


With dialectics, that's really a meaningless distinction.

It is for you mystics, I agree.

[gilhyle]

So you think Hegel would argue that we all live in the Matrix or something? Reality is perception or something along those lines?

About teleology, I think it's sort of a chicken-egg thing. Does everything happen for a reason, or do things happen and we later attach meaning? It could go either way, but it doesn't really matter.
In a sense that is Hegel's position - namely that the reason why scepticism about the external world is wrong is that we cannot step outside our own understanding to ask whether it corresponds with reality.

But that is not really my point. My point is that Hegel would say that Materialism properly understood is the same as idealism because it has to recognise that dumb reality creates consciousness which is then the highest stage of the development of that material reality. Once consciousness exists you can no longer make sense of the materialist proposition, because humans act consciously.

This is all wrong by the way.