What on earth is the dialectic?
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articul8
Dishonest sociopath
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.
. 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.
maomao
普費斯
Fruitloop said:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ich/ictoc.htm
is the Legge translation of the text and a lot of the commentary
http://www.religiousworlds.com/taoism/ichingtx.html
the Wilhelm translation with none of the commentary
http://www.hermetica.info/
translation tools
The main text consists mainly of records of ancient divinations and records of the events they relate to. The Legge translation above has the most English translation of the commentaries that I can find on the internet. 99% of other translations on the web and 80% of those in bookshops are hippie bullshit.
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
That'd be good, because he doesn't come out of the correspondence with Benjamin looking too attractive. Does Jager indicate whether Adorno himself was aware of the SI? I can't think he would have approved, although they were clearly inspired by him.
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:
Well it takes quite a lot of work, and much of the terminology is technical. But if you wanted to learn about quantum physics you wouldn't complain about technical terminology, so why do it with philosophy? And if you say the dialectic isn't *interesting* you're really saying that you don't find philosophy as such interesting, since even those who find the dialectic repugnant are forced to engage with it. You may not like it, but its not *boring.* But our society seems actively to discourage philosophical thinking, and even to make it impossible for most people. Adorno is very good on the reasons for this, I suggest you start with "The Fetish Character in Music and the Regression in Listening," an early Punk manifesto. But only because you'll hate it.
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 in the early to mid20th century, much of which has been judged to be worthless - in the case of the former principally because a analytic system that finds the same characteristics in every object of study tells you only about itself, and with respect to the latter because the 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.
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 in the early to mid20th century, much of which has been judged to be worthless - in the case of the former principally because a analytic system that finds the same characteristics in every object of study tells you only about itself, and with respect to the latter because the 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:
I'd expect that any attempt to apply dialectics to the technical aspect of musical composition would be utter rubbish, just as was Engels's attempt to find it in biology. Well, up to a point. I suppose you could argue that Adorno's totalizing method, which allowed him to see the parallel between 12-tone composition and commodity fetishism, was "dialectical" in a way, because he insists on viewing music and economics as aspects of a single process. His stuff on Beethoven I find less convincing, but I don't know how far it departs from conventional wisdom and am not really equipped to judge it. With regard to his ethnocentrism, which is mostly manifest in his refusal to see anything good in popular music, it has always struck me as a mannered pose of dialectical negation rather than a serious opinion. What he hates is *commercialism,* and so he hates popular music (which in his day meant African-influenced, rhythmically-based music) because and to the extent that it is commercial. Which was, and is, a very great extent.
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.
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:
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."
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.
No Phil, nonsense.phildwyer said:
1. "Dialectics assumes that matter and ideas are inseparable". A clued-in philosopher (e.g. a Marxist) might make a vague statement like this in passing, but what he'd mean is that you can't have ideas without matter. An idea is a configuration of molecules in a brain or on a piece of paper or other medium. He wouldn't mean that you can't have matter without ideas. Only an idealist would say that. Materialists know that matter can exist without ideas. For example planet Earth existed long before there was anyone to have ideas about it.
2. ...either pole of this opposition...
The whole point is that we no longer need the false dichotomy - matter on the one hand, ideas on the other. Ideas are examples of things. An accurate idea is one whose structure models aspects of its object well. A modern materialist would say that the idea was pretty 'true'. There's an 'opposition' between the object and the idea about the object when the idea is an inaccurate model i.e. pretty false - the greater the inaccuracy, the greater the 'opposition'.
I'm afraid the elementary errors seem to be yours my friend. You show all the signs of still being an idealist. No wonder you think "materialism is inherently undialectical".
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:
Maybe it's because I never had a religious education that I don't feel there to be so much point to it, then. NZ state school education is pretty rigorously secular (as it should be, IMO).
I still think that there's truth to the quote that 'What can be used as a laser for logical dissection turns into a chainsaw when projected directly into nature'. What do you make of the idea that a 'dialectic of anything' must include praxis?
It seems increasingly to me that 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 - a position that I would argue was also enjoyed by the authors of the I-Ching etc thousands of years earlier. Such a reading definitely lends itself to a Nietzchean-type view about the 'progress' of philosophy since Socrates.
BTW, the method by which new phenomena emerge in dialectics looks a lot like the 'phase transition' of systems theory to me.
I still think that there's truth to the quote that 'What can be used as a laser for logical dissection turns into a chainsaw when projected directly into nature'. What do you make of the idea that a 'dialectic of anything' must include praxis?
It seems increasingly to me that 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 - a position that I would argue was also enjoyed by the authors of the I-Ching etc thousands of years earlier. Such a reading definitely lends itself to a Nietzchean-type view about the 'progress' of philosophy since Socrates.
BTW, the method by which new phenomena emerge in dialectics looks a lot like the 'phase transition' of systems theory to me.
Er, do I have this right -
Dialectics is a method of looking at clashing ideas. As chance would have it, ideas are a reflection of the material. So, we know that dialectics also explains clashes of objects.
Or what, what does dialectics actually explain - changes in what? What is the relationship between idealistic dialectics and a materialistic dialectic, iyswim. Is not just "this works for ideas, so it works for ideas explaing material things"?
Does it actually operate on the material, does it drive material changes (like I would assume a law would, but I don't know), or just our percpetion of it. If so could the material not still be static, rather its just our perception of it that changes. iyswim
How does a material dialectic operate? iyswim
Sid's Snake
New Member
The dialectic is so last century 
Its all Spinoza now.
Its all Spinoza now.
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:
It's basically a method for understanding the salient features of a particular phenomenon where the object of study is understood as subject to change, rather than something static about which everything can be determined. So the knowledge gained by it is also not composed of a static series of immutable facts, but is an ongoing process of understanding. Even the dialectical method itself isn't a fixed and eternal way of doing things.
It's definitely part of the symbolic order - it represents a way of modeling the material world, not an aspect of the real.
It's definitely part of the symbolic order - it represents a way of modeling the material world, not an aspect of the real.
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