articul8 said:no not really - if you short-circuit logic by simply collapsing identity and non-identity into each other you end up with 'bad infinity'.
This is very different to project of achieving the reconciliation of identity and non-identity in whilst continuing to recognise, acknowledge and respect difference (or differance ).
ie. the dialectic is always a negative dialectic. It allows for no simple position of affirmation.
Fruitloop said:Most of the stuff revealed by a casual google seems hopelessly sunk in new-ageisms. I'll have a better look when I'm not at work.
If you read any classical Chinese literature/philosophy at all ever, then I'd recommend the Richard Wilhelm edition of the I-Ching. I guess I should point out that what I mean by this comparison isn't that the I-Ching has all the answers (although it's definitely a fascinating book), but that as far as I can see the insights of dialectical thinking are pretty unremarkable, philosophically speaking.
articul8 said:I have and a found it a little flat to be honest. If you're that way inclined, you might be interested in the recently published correspondance with Elisabeth Lenk (not sure if there's a translation yet), a young student he was supervising (not sure if that was all he was doing . She was involved in radical circles around 68, interested in surrealism and SI stuff. That shows old Teddie as a lot less of a left=conservative fuddy duddy than is often presented.
I reckon it might be best avoided, since too much study of the dialectic seems to cripple the ability to either think or speak clearly and logically. Also, after more brain-battering reading on the subject, I'm still yet to see any particularly useful or interesting insights arising from it.In Bloom said:Funnily enough, before I read this thread, I thought I knew what the dialectic was, sort of. Turns out I don't have a bloody clue what it is or what it's doing
Fruitloop said:I reckon it might be best avoided, since too much study of the dialectic seems to cripple the ability to either think or speak clearly and logically. Also, after more brain-battering reading on the subject, I'm still yet to see any particularly useful or interesting insights arising from it.
Fruitloop said:I've read all of Adorno's work that has pertinence to musicology. I have quite a lot of time for Adorno, as it happens - the shift of focus that begins with him from essentially narrativising the works of the great masters of the canon (cf Tovey et al.) to what amounts to a 'sociology of musical listening' is one that's proved pretty fruitful for music analysis, and has allowed it to gradually remove the ethnocentric and cultural-capital blinkers that to be honest still bedevilled Adorno himself.
I think my suspicion of the dialectic partly stems from musicological concerns; there was a lot of distinctly Hegelian-looking systematisation of musical analysis and composition, of which much of the former has since been judged to be worthless principally because a analytic system that finds the same characteristics in every object of study tells you only about itself, and because the latter's attempts to formulate some kind of generative musical grammar were such a laughable failure that they are now studied only as historical curios. Yet they were all the rage at the time, and many academic careers were made on these bases.
Maybe there is more 'meat' to the dialectical method, but to be honest I've yet to see it.
Fruitloop said:So what do you imagine a political program based on your understanding of Marx's dialectical method would look like? Given that the point it to change the world, rather than interpret it.
It's your philosophy that's doomed.phildwyer said:I'm afraid I don't accept your given. I think the world is doomed.
Thank you for that succint explanation, I knew it couldn't as difficult to grasp as phil et al are making outBinkie said:Dialects doesn't imply Idealism.
Take from it what only philosophers fail to see:
1. This dynamic view of the development of ideas and other objects is contrasted with the static notion of eternal truths waiting to be discovered.
2. The idea of the dialectic is that new ideas and other objects emerge through the clash of existing ideas and objects. If there is a resolution, it is only temporary and will in turn come into conflict with further ideas and objects.
3. It explains how new phenomena emerge.
4. Dialectical Materialism takes this commonsense idea one step further by confirming that all these ideas originate in experience - in contrast to the old 'philosophical' or 'idealistic' view that says ideas originate either in some mysterious process of introspection or through 'ideal forms' that are supposed to be eternal. Only professional philosophers and idiots still take this view seriously.
Note: Even Classical Materialism realizes that ideas are objects.
Binkie said:Dialects doesn't imply Idealism.
Take from it what only philosophers fail to see:
1. This dynamic view of the development of ideas and other objects is contrasted with the static notion of eternal truths waiting to be discovered.
2. The idea of the dialectic is that new ideas and other objects emerge through the clash of existing ideas and objects. If there is a resolution, it is only temporary and will in turn come into conflict with further ideas and objects.
3. It explains how new phenomena emerge.
4. Dialectical Materialism takes this commonsense idea one step further by confirming that all these ideas originate in experience - in contrast to the old 'philosophical' or 'idealistic' view that says ideas originate either in some mysterious process of introspection or through 'ideal forms' that are supposed to be eternal. Only professional philosophers and idiots still take this view seriously.
Note: Even Classical Materialism realizes that ideas are objects.
Fruitloop said:Nonsense, phil. It would still make sense just to talk of the clash of existing ideas.
No Phil, nonsense.phildwyer said:But see how your note contradicts your second characteristic of dialectics. If ideas *are* objects then nothing can emerge out of "the clash of existing ideas and objects." In other words: materialism is inherently undialectical. Dialectics assumes that matter and ideas are inseparable, and in fact two parts of a single whole. To claim, as you do, that either pole of this opposition can be reduced to the other is to commit the elementary error known as "reductionism."
Why dialectics is so useful in ontology (study of being) is that it recognizes not just being but also becoming. i.e. that things change. And it therefore explains how (or at least accepts that) new things come into being. The philosophers with their static categories and eternal truths have failed to do this. Grown-up dialectics (i.e. materialist dialects) encourages us to look for and identify and measure not just the objects but the forces at play in a phenomenon and resultant motion or qualitative change. Engineers and scientists (and virtually everyone else) use dialectics as a matter of course. 'Dialectics' was only formulated to show the errors of philosophers. It ought to be taught in schools as a counterbalance to the idealist mumbo jumbo of religious education.Fruitloop said:What I don't understand is why one would think that dialectics is relevant to ontology at all - ontological dialectics seems just as suspect as any 'natural dialectics' that attempts to find dialectical processes in biology etc, if not more so. Capital, not nature or reality, must be the subject of the dialectic - since the latter are never completely revealed to us it makes no sense to talk of their totality.
Er, do I have this right -Dialects doesn't imply Idealism.
Take from it what only philosophers fail to see:
1. This dynamic view of the development of ideas and other objects is contrasted with the static notion of eternal truths waiting to be discovered.
2. The idea of the dialectic is that new ideas and other objects emerge through the clash of existing ideas and objects. If there is a resolution, it is only temporary and will in turn come into conflict with further ideas and objects.
3. It explains how new phenomena emerge.
4. Dialectical Materialism takes this commonsense idea one step further by confirming that all these ideas originate in experience - in contrast to the old 'philosophical' or 'idealistic' view that says ideas originate either in some mysterious process of introspection or through 'ideal forms' that are supposed to be eternal. Only professional philosophers and idiots still take this view seriously
Note: Even Classical Materialism realizes that ideas are objects.
I think that's it. Hegel's dialectical approach superseded the static categories of Kant, fashionable at the time. It recognized that things change. But he made the logical error discussed above that kept him an Idealist. Marx & Engels added the Materialism, standing poor old Hegel on his feet. That should have helped the philosophers catch up with your normal materialist in the street. But like the clerics they realized common sense would have put them out of a job. So Idealism persists among professional philosophers and other mystics. It's so pathetic.Fruitloop said:... the sole useful function of the dialectic was to gradually and somewhat painfully expunge the brain-disease of Idealism from western thought, leaving (some) philosophers once again free to think about things clearly