What on earth is the dialectic?

[revol68]

It really amazes me the prentious lenghts idealist philosophers go to, to express such an infantile belief that matters existance is dependent on our ability to articulate it or experiance it.

Just because the real can never be grasped within the symbolic order doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

 

[Fruitloop]

Maybe the reason why it's psychologically appealing is that it represents a regress to the sensorimotor stage of intellectual development, in Paigetian terms, leading to something like an ontological equivalent of peek-a-boo.

 

[revol68]

Maybe the reason why it's psychologically appealing is that it represents a regress to the sensorimotor stage of intellectual development, in Paigetian terms, leading to something like an ontological equivalent of peek-a-boo.

I prefer to think of it as closer to the 2 year old who covers their eyes and thinks nothing else exists as it is all dependent on them.

sorry got there first

 

[Good Intentions]

As if *you* are capable of differentiating between philosophical sense and nonsense! You are but a fool. I advise you to shut up and learn.

Jesus Christ, you read like a slightly modified version of Eliza.

 

[Barking_Mad]

To anyone who knows anything about the history of thought, it is clear that Marxism is nothing but Lutheranism apres la lettre.

LOL please, stop. Go back to your nonsense on ID and all its falsehoods.

 

[phildwyer]

How can you have alienation without class opposition? It would seem to imply capital without capitalists, which makes no sense to me unless the locus of your understanding of alienation is situated outside production, in which case it's different to Marx's.

One of the main reasons I started this thread is that I couldn't square the fact that discussions of the validity of the dialectic keep coming back to the issue of Mind vs Matter with the following statement from the intro to RCP:


If the above is in fact the case, isn't it a gross misapplication of the dialectical method to attempt to dialectically resolve the mind/body problem, which predates both alienation and capitalism?

I believe you've misread the quotation, which seems to be a *criticism* of Engels's materialist reading of Hegel. In Hegel, as in monotheist religions generally, alienation is simply the ontological human condition. It is expresed theologically under the rubric of the "Fall." And it is not the mind/matter oppostion that is primary but the subject/object polarity: the subject does not understand that the object its own externalized self, and that is the seminal form of alienation--the objective appears to be, but is not, alien to the subject.

Now, this condition of alienation takes various historical forms, of which the alienation of labour is one. In a Marxist reading, it is the determining form taken by alienation in *all* civilized societies. Capital is merely the latest (as Marx claims the final) form taken by the alienation of labour. The key here is to understand that Marx conceived of "labour-power" as the totality of subjective human activity, which is to say, of human life itself. So the capital/labour opposition is a historically specific form of Hegel's primal subject/object dialectic.

 

[phildwyer]

Not surprisingly, I'd agree with this...but I think this way of expressing it leads also to misleading implications.

ie. matter exists for consciousness precisely as an excess which eludes representation by concepts/ideas - matter is nothing other than the non-dialectical, untotalisable kernel which facilitates the necessarily open-ended dialectic,the fragments of irreducible non-identity which resist the totalising ambitions of Geist . [This is Spinoza, Marx, Adorno...]

so, Ideas are necessary for the phenolomenoligcal disclosure of "matter". But it is only in the inadequacy, the failure of ideas/language that this disclosure occurs. To believe that matter and ideas are identical is the door which compels you (and Hegel!) make an irrational appeal to a single divinity.

I agree with all of this, except for your characterization of monotheism (and I suppose logocentrism in general) as "irrational." On the contrary, the Absolute Idea, logos, God or whatever you call it/Him is what makes reason possible. It is *anti-logocentrism* (aka sophistry, postmodernism, Satanism) that is irrational, or perhaps rather anti-rational. As its adherents openly boast.

 

[phildwyer]

I prefer to think of it as closer to the 2 year old who covers their eyes and thinks nothing else exists as it is all dependent on them.

As if space dust is dependent on our idea of it.

Tit!

Marx had no time for such idealist wank and hence why he rejected left hegelianism.

Shut up, you. You might learn something here if you'd keep the noise down.

 

[phildwyer]

So what you're saying is that our consciousness of matter relies upon our being conscious? Groundbreaking stuff there, phil

You can shut up too please.

 

[articul8]

I agree with all of this, except for your characterization of monotheism (and I suppose logocentrism in general) as "irrational." On the contrary, the Absolute Idea, logos, God or whatever you call it/Him is what makes reason possible. It is *anti-logocentrism* (aka sophistry, postmodernism, Satanism) that is irrational, or perhaps rather anti-rational. As its adherents openly boast.

well, I guess it depends on what you call "rational" - if you're still operating with unreconstructed Enlightenment notions of absolute transparency and universal Truth - then I guess 'rationality' stands or falls on the existence of God. This is precisely the mistake which postmodern irrationalism also makes.

What I mean by rational is knowledge which recognises and acknowledges its own inherent limits. Matter is as good a name as any other for these limits. If anti-logocentrism = satanism then I am of the devil's party

 

[revol68]

well, I guess it depends on what you call "rational" - if you're still operating with unreconstructed Enlightenment notions of absolute transparency and universal Truth - then I guess 'rationality' stands or falls on the existence of God. This is precisely the mistake which postmodern irrationalism also makes.

What I mean by rational is knowledge which recognises and acknowledges its own inherent limits. Matter is as good a name as any other for these limits. If anti-logocentrism = satanism then I am of the devil's party

great post.

yes the problem is that post modernity is as absolute as the crudest mechanical rationalist. For both either rationality is an absolute or it is nothing. It is just absurd.

 

[In Bloom]

You can shut up too please.

Not got an answer to mine or revol's posts then?

You have yet to actually post up an argument for your claims, all you ever provide is vague hand waving about your *ahem* "unconventional" interpretations of obscure German philosophy. Call me crazy, but who fucking cares if Hegel would agree with you or not, anyway?

 

[revol68]

Not got an answer to mine or revol's posts then?

You have yet to actually post up an argument for your claims, all you ever provide is vague hand waving about your *ahem* "unconventional" interpretations of obscure German philosophy. Call me crazy, but who fucking cares if Hegel would agree with you or not, anyway?

Hegels whole theory ends with the ideas and matter coming to one, something he thought was happening with the lovely Prussian state. The problem with his analysis is it always ends up making reality and reason synomous hence supportive of the status quo.

 

[phildwyer]

Hegels whole theory ends with the ideas and matter coming to one, something he thought was happening with the lovely Prussian state. The problem with his analysis is it always ends up making reality and reason synomous hence supportive of the status quo.

No, twit. When he says "the rational is the real" he means that only what is rational is truly real, not that whatever exists is rational.

 

[revol68]

No, twit. When he says "the rational is the real" he means that only what is rational is truly real, not that whatever exists is rational.

ahh right so soemthing irational like capital isn't real?

There was me thinkin the real was beyond ideas of rational and irrational.

 

[phildwyer]

ahh right so soemthing irational like capital isn't real?

Precisely.

 

[phildwyer]

There was me thinkin the real was beyond ideas of rational and irrational.

Presumably because, like most ordinary people, you mistake *appearance* for *reality?* You assume that the way things *seem* to be is the way they *are?* Am I right?

 

[revol68]

Presumably because, like most ordinary people, you mistake *appearance* for *reality?* You assume that the way things *seem* to be is the way they *are?* Am I right?

yeah us dumb ordinary people who haven't reconciled our selves with the Zegeist.

No actually it comes from the fact reason is a human construct not something eternal. How the fuck could we proscribe rational and non rational to evolution or the behaviour of quantam particles?

And I take it Zizek, Foucault or indeed most critical theorists of the 20th century are all fools who mistake appearance for reality?

 

[Fruitloop]

Personally I reckon that how things appear is also part of the symbolic order, whereas the real is not.

What exactly is the connection between this and the dialectic anyway?

 

[revol68]

Personally I reckon that how things appear is also part of the symbolic order, whereas the real is not.

What exactly is the connection between this and the dialectic anyway?

yeah atoms are part of appearance, they are in the symbolic order.

 

[Fruitloop]

I believe you've misread the quotation, which seems to be a *criticism* of Engels's materialist reading of Hegel. In Hegel, as in monotheist religions generally, alienation is simply the ontological human condition. It is expresed theologically under the rubric of the "Fall." And it is not the mind/matter oppostion that is primary but the subject/object polarity: the subject does not understand that the object its own externalized self, and that is the seminal form of alienation--the objective appears to be, but is not, alien to the subject.

Now, this condition of alienation takes various historical forms, of which the alienation of labour is one. In a Marxist reading, it is the determining form taken by alienation in *all* civilized societies. Capital is merely the latest (as Marx claims the final) form taken by the alienation of labour. The key here is to understand that Marx conceived of "labour-power" as the totality of subjective human activity, which is to say, of human life itself. So the capital/labour opposition is a historically specific form of Hegel's primal subject/object dialectic.

So the Fall does in fact happed at the end of the sensorimotor stage, when the developing infant realizes that objects have an independent existence outside its perception of them? A return to a prelapsarian condition in this sense would presumably resemble what Freud calls the 'oceanic experience', where subject/object distinctions are dissolved.

If the alienation of labour under capitalism is simply the original existential crisis in a different guise, what is the point of political praxis that aims to destroy this particular instance of alienation? Would it not simply be replaced by another permutation of the primal alienation of subject and object?

 

[Fruitloop]

yeah atoms are part of appearance, they are in the symbolic order.

So they're not part of the real? Quantum field theory suggests that particles can be viewed as local excitations of the ground state, rather than as having a position as a function of time as in quantum mechanics, which does cast some doubt on their inherent 'thingness', to my mind.

 

[articul8]

Personally I reckon that how things appear is also part of the symbolic order, whereas the real is not.

well, yes but the real cannot be apprehended except insofar as it discloses itself through its resistance to symbolic capture

What exactly is the connection between this and the dialectic anyway?

this irreducible kernel of the Real (Lacan) or the historically material (Marx) is what prevents the dialectic reaching historical closure (Hegel).

 

[revol68]

So they're not part of the real? Quantum field theory suggests that particles can be viewed as local excitations of the ground state, rather than as having a position as a function of time as in quantum mechanics, which does cast some doubt on their inherent 'thingness', to my mind.

no they are ways of ordering the real but we can never have direct access to the real, therefore they will always be appearance.

Like your poster here (whose obviously spent alot of time reading Lacan or maybe Zizek) says;

well, yes but the real cannot be apprehended except insofar as it discloses itself through its resistance to symbolic capture

 

[kyser_soze]

Precisely.

phild meet zArk

zArk, meet phild

You kids should get on like a house on fire!!!

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=151365&page=1&pp=40

 

[articul8]

Like your poster here (whose obviously spent alot of time reading Lacan or maybe Zizek) says;

both actually. And Althusser/Macherey, who were influenced by Spinoza and Marx.

 

[revol68]

both actually. And Althusser/Macherey, who were influenced by Spinoza and Marx.

not a fan of Althusser especially the lil niche he carves out for "science" ie him and the party leadership that is away from the hussle and bustle of dirty ideological everyday life.

Actually for all Phils hate of Althusser he's just a more idealist version, sure don't be have distain for the worker who can't see the essence behind the appearance.

 

[articul8]

I wouldn't claim to be an "Althusserian". But he did offer a very necessary critique of crude empiricist responses to 'experience'. Ideas are never sufficiently representative of the 'reality' which they claim to represent.

Trouble with Phil is he reacts to a positivist reading of Marx, by (re)conflating Marx with Hegel, and restoring the old religious baggage, which is unavoidable if you ignore Spinoza's radically atheistic departure from Enlightenment assumptions.

Phil - I agree with you that 'matter' has no sense outside of consciousness. But why does this mean matter and consciousness are ultimately identical (in God?) My argument is that ideas necessarily engender or encounter limits , thus disclosing the presence of an 'outside' (unknowable "in itself") but which generates an open-ended dialectic which gestures towards, but necessarily resists, totalisation.

GOD IS THE NAME OF A FANTASY.

 

[kyser_soze]

Isn't 'dialectic' when you can't control the amount of shit coming out your arse?

Oh...

 

[vimto]

Dialectic means that every thing is not static. Change is inevitable.