Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 01:40:00 +0100
Subject: Re: evolutionary dialectics


Zeynep,

This'll have to be brief. More some other time.


>>'Aufheben' -- cancel, raise, resolve.
>
>Yes, "Aufheben". You know, when I tried and couldn't remember the world, I
>thought, if my favorite adversary Hugh wasn't so busy, he'd definitely come
>up with the word. Thanks.

Well, Derek H gave us the 'official' translation -- sublation, which had
slipped my mind (and wasn't in my big Collins German dictionary).


>Hugh, help a bit more. I've forgotten what little German I knew. What was
>the "becoming" word as used in German? German seems to have the ability to
>express "a thing" and "a process" in one word. No such luck in English. It
>is often not necessary just arrogant to use foreign words when speaking
>English, but when it comes to Hegel, English is so poor.

Being = Sein

Nothing = Nichts

Becoming = Werden

Hegel's language is very simple where the words are concerned. He strips
them of an awful lot of accreted crap and uses a very elementary semantic
core. Thinking your way into the extreme simplicity of the terms is a real
problem. Then when he starts putting the words together you get some really
complex conceptual development.


>Also, the above quote is exactly where I start to think Hegel's method is
>inherently and necessarily idealistic. From there on, one, two, three and he
>removes the world - He negates existence.

His method wasn't idealistic, his premises were. And he didn't remove the
world, he just subordinated it to the spirit. Crass, material, soulless
reality is a very important part of his system -- the enlivening of this
materiality by its dialectical combination with the spirit marks a great
step forward in the recognition of its significance. Instead of being
rejected out of hand as evil or nothing, it is incorporated into the
concept of the Spirit. This incorporation or fusion of material nature with
the spirit was in fact the central problem Hegel set himself to solve with
his philosophical system, to overcome the pituitary link of Descartes and
the total separation of Kant.

So you've got to be careful how you use the phrase 'negate existence' -- in
the sense of sublating existence, this doesn't mean annihilating it but
raising Being/Sein (as is) to a higher level in its dialectical unity with
Essence/Wesen in the Concept/Begriff (sometimes translated Notion) and
ultimately the Spirit/Geist.


>What you describe as negation of negation, is movement through
>contradiction. Fine. Why's that "negation of negation"? I said, "negation of
>negation" is either meant to mean what you describe it means and hence a
>redundant term, or is idealistic. Why do we need include that in the method
>of dialectical thought?

The useful aspect of the negation of the negation is that it focuses the
concepts confronting each other in a contradiction. If the concept and its
negation form a polarity, then it's worth seeing if there's a higher level
concept that negates this polar contradiction by including the poles as
factors in its articulation. The same dynamic is pressed upon us by
Goedel's theorem. Movement through contradiction is everywhere and in
everything, it's the basic process of nature and becoming. The negation of
the negation is more of a methodical tool for handling propositions and
relating them to each other.


>The Marxist method of thinking starts from the empirical. The concrete is
>reproduced in thought as a concrete-in-thought. A never complete process of
>successive approximations as the subject moves and acts in the real world.
>An inherent limitation to epistomology that can never be overcome. Is this
>not contrary to Hegel?

The concrete is not actually reproduced in thought, it is represented in
thought. And only essential, abstracted, intellectualized aspects of it are
represented (not a stone in your brain, but a representation of a stone,
not a smell, but a representation of a smell).

Hegel is an objective idealist, he recognizes the limitations of individual
human subjective consciousness. He would say that what you say is true of
individual human beings but not of the Absolute Spirit.


>>You see, Marx didn't just turn it upside down and leave it as it was, he
>>cancelled the contradiction involved in its fundamental idealism, and
>>raised the whole thing to a higher level where the polar contradiction of
>>being and thought was resolved NOT on an idealist foundation, but a
>>materialist one.
>
>Yes, I think so too. That' why I said Marx didn't turn it upside down, just
>place it on its feet. Maybe, turned it inside out would be a better
>description.


Perhaps we should just say he brought it down to earth. He provided the
dialectic with the 'Where to stand?' of Archimedes, firm ground on which it
could move and accomplish the task of changing reality. Instead of the
Cloud-Cuckoo-Land in which Aristophanes so cruelly but justly located
Socrates and with him all the idealist philosophers.

Cheers,

Hugh




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