Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 23:44:05 -0800 From: Charles Andrews <chandrews-AT-igc2.igc.apc.org> Subject: Dialectics and Aristotle Dr. Chris M. Sciabarra praised Aristotle for dialectics: >...dialectics is, at root, a methodology totally opposed to monism and to dualism, forms that can be found in the Kantian antinomies, but that are not to be found in the Aristotelian tradition. It was Aristotle's commitment to the analysis of the whole, his rejection of Platonic idealism and Democritean atomism, his rejection of the fallacy of reification, that was most dialectical and influential... and unfortunately, unheralded, by later "formalist" Aristotelians who viewed dialectical logic as antithetical to logical thought. It was Marcuse in REASON AND REVOLUTION who reminds us that even Hegel sought to recapture the dynamism of Aristotle's ontology, the simultaneous focus on both being and becoming.< Was Aristotle dialectical when he supported Parmenides against Heraclitus: "In general, it is absurd to present the fact that familiar objects appear to change and never to remain in the same state as a criterion of truth. For in the pursuit of truth one must start from whatever is always in the same state and does not undergo change." (Metaphysics, trans. Richard Hope, 1963, p. 231) Or was Aristotle dialectical when he denied the unity of opposites: "...such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect; we must presuppose, to guard against dialectical objections, any further qualifications which might be added. This, then, is the most certain of all principles ....For it is impossible for anyone to believe the same thing to be and not to be, as some think Heraclitus says. "There are some who, as we said, both themselves assert that it is possible for the same thing to be and not to be, and say that people can judge this to be the case. And among others many writers about nature [the Ionian materialists] use this language. But we have now posited that it is impossible for anything at the same time to be and not to be,..." (Metaphysics, translated by W.D. Ross, Great Books of the Western World, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952, 1005b-1006a) Okay, Aristotle admitted: "But all existing things and intermediates in fact change into their opposites." (Metaphysics, trans. Hope, p. 83) His writings are a unity of opposites...with a predominant aspect. The Great Classifier was basically opposed to revolutionary dialectics, which is simply thorough dialectics. --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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