Date: Thu, 21 Jul 1994 07:32:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Philip Goldstein <pgold-AT-strauss.udel.edu>
Subject: dialectics


      I think that the dialectical method has been discredited on several 
grounds. One is that dialectical thought does not make an argument or 
defend a point. To consider opposites is to grant that one's position 
allows its contradictory and is, therefore, to contradict one's self. 
Another is that totalizing thought requires categories which will 
integrate or synthesize different spheres of disciplines -- history, art, 
politics, economics. The language for these categories becomes vague and 
ambiguous because the language must do more work than the disciplinary 
terms permit. A third, which comes from Althusser -- the others are from 
analytic philosophy -- is that dialectical thought presupposes an 
underlying idea or concept which different spheres express, whereas the 
different times and developments of these spheres precludes any such 
expressive unity. 
      A defense of dialectical thought, on the first charge, 
contradiction, is that reality is contradictory or that history works by 
contradiction or opposition. In addition, analytical notions of argument 
are reified and can't account for historical change, the totality, etc. 
This defense fails to distinguish between discourse about the world and 
the world itself. The world may be contradictory but good discourse 
should be consistent. What's more, to insist upon the right to contradict 
one's self is to open Marxism to all those charges about manipulation, 
hypocrisy, etc., levelled against communism. A defense of totality is 
that revolution requires it; however, this notion of totality is romantic 
in that a great individual, world historical leader, to use Hegel's term, 
or communist party, to use Lenin's, must grasp the new in the womb of the 
old and, thereby, direct the revolution. This defense too runs into 
difficulties with democratic opposition to such revolutionary leadership. 
Philip Goldstein
Associate Professor of English and Philosophy
University of Delaware (Parallel)



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