Rephrased, will dialectics always exist?
Have fun, because I sure don’t.
edit: if it helps your thinking process a bit, consider this:
- Dialectics explains the process of contradictions. So, does dialectics go through its own contradictions?
- If so, that means dialectics has a process of its own and describes its own process as well. It’s a bit like the “does a set of all sets contain itself” question.
- But if the laws of dialectics are eternal and dialectics does not go through its own process and contradictions, then it would be eternal. Is that possible though?
- And finally of course what are the implications of all of that?
The Marxist dialectic is just a way of thinking thats more accurate than anything thats come before it. At some point some other philosopher will end up devising a way of thinking that surpasses the Marxist dialectic. Philosophy isn’t a static thing. Marx built on Hegel’s ideas of dialectics taking it from it idealist sense and flipping it to apply the material world. This is how Marx was able to arrive at the conclusion that capitalism could not last. Socialism and communism will have contradictions like the capitalism that came before it. To overcome those contradictions, maybe a new way of thinking must be surmised - we do not know. For now, it is paramount to act on what we do know and overthrow capitalism. Marxism is a science. Just like Einstein expanded upon Newton’s theory of gravity; Mao and Lenin expanded on the theories of Marx. It’s a process. Theorising “will dialectics always exist?” is a pointless exercise. A different theory will arise. Dialectics is just the most accurate right now.
I think a truly communist society will still have its own contradictions, and dialectics will be useful for understanding them. What they could be is largely an exercise in navel gazing though, I don’t see the point in trying to figure those out when we have our own society’s contradictions to work out.
I’ve always felt like this was needless philosophizing, but if one wants to do it, then go right ahead. It’s similar to liberal college philosophy professors saying that Heraclitus’s idea of “change is the only constant” is paradoxical when in reality they just fail to understand it. Basically, it’s probing for a reduction question to things that aren’t meant to be reduced. We have to stop reducing at some point, and “change being the only constant” is one place where dialectics can stop.
Dialectics, just like all philosophies, is interpretive, meaning that it takes in information and tries to make sense of it. Of course, some interpretations require a priori assumptions about the universe, but these are just metaphysical quackery. All materialisms, physicalisms, realisms, etc. must begin at the a posteriori stage (otherwise they’re just like the metaphysical philosophies), and only then can interpretations make sense with the observations which we have. Dialectical materialism, I believe, has done this relatively well, especially because a core concept in it requires that it adapts to scientific observation instead of making dogmatic, eternal assumptions of the universe and forming itself around that.
Other comments claiming that “dialectics doesn’t exist” are essentially correct. “Objects” or “concepts” as we know them through social interactions do not meaningfully exist in the universe, but only attain meaning when we particularize them to a certain context. A “tree” doesn’t exist, but that tree does. It ceases to become an abstract “tree” when applied to a tree in a real context.
I will admit that I’m still in active research of these things, and I’m open to criticism on things here because I’m certainly no expert. I have found articles such as this and this which have helped me in understanding these concepts, and I recommend them (and all of their articles, really) to anyone wanting to learn philosophy.
It would be a mistake to consider dialectics itself a system with contradictions, in my view. If we think of dialectics as a scientific theory, it’s contradictions are similar to those of gravitational or evolutionary theory. These explanations exist in the context of the material world which tests and refines them, and it’s these challenges which transform the theories, making them more precise and useful over time. The system here is not merely the theory, but the practice of that theory as it runs up against the constraints of the real world. No, theories don’t go through their own processes, but they go through processes nonetheless.
Dialectics is a lens thru which u can examine reality, it will exists for as long as people think it is helpful. There have been many ideological lenses in the past which have been abandoned and i can only assume the people who used them thought they were accurate and helpful for what they were examining so i dont see why dialectics would be any different, some day it will be replaced with more precise, accurate, and relevant framings, or atleast it will become so disused its functionally non existent.
I would argue that yes because any dynamic system is in a constant state of evolution.
Not really a tough one, it just depends what you mean when you talk about dialectics “existing”. If you are referring to the idea of dialectics then the answer is fairly obvious:
No. Because humans won’t exist forever and “dialectics” is a human invented concept. This is just like asking if math or logic or philosophy will always exist. Something which cannot exist independently of a host dies when the host dies, and abstract ideas cannot exist independently of a brain capable of comprehending them.
However, supposing there are (or were, or will be) intelligent aliens somewhere else in the universe who are similarly capable of observation and abstract reasoning, then they probably have also stumbled (or will one day do so) onto these same concepts independently, because these are useful tools for understanding and dealing with reality.
If on the other hand you meant to ask: “will dialectics always be applicable/useful to humans and human society?”, i think that’s a bit like asking “will knowing the laws of physics always be useful?”. I can’t imagine the answer being anything but yes, but i guess if we nuclear bomb our civilizations out of existence that may become a moot point.
But isn’t the apple growing on a tree the constant result of a dialectical process? It goes from a bud to a flower to an apple, a process that is the result of contradictions and continues after the apple ceases to be an apple proper. Whether humans are there to witness it or not, the process still happens. We didn’t invent dialectics as much as we discovered it.
abstract ideas cannot exist independently of a brain capable of comprehending them.
I find this to be an idealist premise, because the next logical step is to say that material reality doesn’t exist outside of a brain capable of understanding matter which is what the idealists of old said. What makes something abstract vs. tangible? There has to be a material difference between the two. If we hold that the brain is matter and the result of matter interaction is what creates ideas, then yes this premise would mean that matter doesn’t exist. Personally I go a step further than “ideas is just matter interaction” and say that everything that exists in the natural world (the one we live in) is by definition material, otherwise it literally could not exist.
However, supposing there are (or were, or will be) intelligent aliens somewhere else in the universe who are similarly capable of observation and abstract reasoning
What about animals? The dog seems to perfectly understand the bowl of food placed in front of him. Isn’t it an abstract idea that consuming nutrients (which the dog knows nothing about protein, fats and carbohydrates) will satisfy hunger? Will consuming food to satisfy hunger stop existing in the universe if there are no more lifeforms to perform the process, or will it just be dormant? Or in other words, if you somehow took away all matter in the universe, made it completely empty, the laws of gravity would still exist – they would just be dormant because they have nothing to act on. But the moment we reintroduce matter, they will be observable again. But they always apply, even when there is no gravity to pull.
Abstract ideas have no causal power in the world outside of the causal power inside the brain. There is no apple object outside of our concept of it, there is only the process of the universe, which is totalizing and undifferentiated. Dialectics is not metaphysical, it is social. Contradictions don’t exist outside of our concept of contradiction because the things in contradictory relations only exist as things in our concept of them.
The proletariat and the bourgeoisie are not objects, they are processes, but they aren’t independent processes except in our minds. They are processes that are identical with the process of society, which is identical with the process of the human species, ad nauseum. None of these processes are independent and none of them have firm boundaries. We invent the boundaries in our conceptualization of the universe, but, as Hegel demonstrated, these concepts are where the contradiction lives.
The universe itself is a totalizing process and there is nothing outside of everything. There is nothing for everything to stand in contradiction with, as Hegel demonstrated in The Science of Logic. Being and Nothing are contradictory only as linguistic concepts, not metaphysically, because they are meaningless metaphysically.
Based asf. It’s funny how when it comes to discussing philosophy some of us resort liberal metaphysics without even remembering to define our terms (no hate, it’s a product of social context). If someone came up to us and asked for the exact monetary line between bourgeois and proletariat we’d laugh at them, but we forget that the same frameworks apply elsewhere.
There is a line between bourgeois and proletariat. It’s not monetary, but we can certainly define one if asked (and in fact do all the time). If we couldn’t, then we wouldn’t have anything better to offer than liberals do with their middle and upper class demarcation. If I’m understanding you correctly.
Lines aren’t real. Everything doesn’t turn to ice the moment the thermostat hits 0.0000* C. We still understand that that delineation is very useful. Class is far less exact. Liberals think we propose that there is a very fine and exact line where everything to one side of it is saintly prole and the other side is evil bourgeois pig. Dialectics acknowledges that there is fluidity. There are many classes and subclasses with various moving parts and their own contradictions. Class relations are always changing and we know class traitors and those who do not understand their interests exist. But we understand that generally under certain circumstances we can define certain general categories the have certain interests according to conditions generally shared.
For another comparison, let’s say you said the exact same thing but about gender. “We know that men and women exist and will give you distinctions about how they work and act.” We know that this statement ignores huge complexity and conditionality. Are revisionist might hold that there is absolute bourgeois and proletariat and there are absolutely two genders. This understanding can be functional enough in many situations, but we both know that such ideas can be further analyzed with the dialectical method to reveal a much truer and more complex picture.
To organize a revolution we don’t say “hey workers, it’s in your interest to go kill your boss, so do it.” If it were so clear cut everyone would just be conscious of their interests and we’d have a stagnant communism already. But dialectics is how the world works, not simple slogans. We analyze all the relevant conditions through observation and existing concepts derived from practice to determine the best course of action within our material circumstance.
Edit: put another way, everything is too interconnected and changing to have a separate stable definition that corresponds to it, yet defining things relatively is very helpful
Hegel was certainly the father of modern dialectics, but he was also an idealist and I see his idealism in your response. It was thanks to Marx that we put dialectics back right side up so to speak with materialism.
I think you’re taking more of a language analysis. Why is the apple called apple and not something else, ultimately. But the apple, by any name, exists objectively. It exists as the result of a process of contradictions, like everything else. An apple has many objective properties, which idealists deny to make the claim that indeed, matter (or things) don’t exist outside of our mind. But an apple has a color (which can be objectively measured), a certain height, weight, size, a certain process by which it comes about that makes it an apple and not an ear of corn or a peach, etc. And this process will continue whether we have a word for it and whether we witness it.
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But isn’t the apple growing on a tree the constant result of a dialectical process?
Describing the process as dialectical is the human part. For the universe, these processes just are, the universe doesn’t care for these labels and categories that we invented to help us understand it.
Whether humans are there to witness it or not, the process still happens.
Precisely. The material process happens regardless. The fact that there is no one there to understand it through the abstract lens of dialectics changes nothing about the process itself.
abstract ideas cannot exist independently of a brain capable of comprehending them.
I find this to be an idealist premise,
Quite the opposite. It is believing that pure ideas exist somewhere out there in the ether independently of the material structure of the brain that is the very definition of idealism.
because the next logical step is to say that material reality doesn’t exist outside of a brain capable of understanding matter
That does not follow at all. That would indeed be idealism. Material reality exists regardless, but it does not care for the language we invented to describe it.
If we hold that the brain is matter and the result of matter interaction is what creates ideas, then yes this premise would mean that matter doesn’t exist.
Again, no, that doesn’t follow. I think we’re just having a semantic conflict with regards to what we mean when we say “ideas exist”.
All i’m saying is that an “idea”, by which we mean a specific type of pattern or process in the brain resulting from the material interaction (as you also said) between the structure of the brain and the electrical and chemical impulses in it, obviously cannot exist independently of the material substrate on which it happens, i.e. the brain. And on this i think we are both in complete agreement, we’re just phrasing it differently.
everything that exists in the natural world (the one we live in) is by definition material
This is a tautology. Of course everything in the material world is by definition material.
What about animals? The dog seems to perfectly understand […]
I can’t know to what degree a dog is consciously aware and capable of abstraction or just acting on instinct because i am not a dog, so i won’t comment on this.
Will consuming food to satisfy hunger stop existing in the universe if there are no more lifeforms to perform the process
This is actually a very good example because it illustrates my point: Hunger is a feeling. It’s real and physical in the same way ideas are but it also depends on an organism that can feel it. Yes, the feeling of hunger can exist in an organism regardless whether that organism is capable of understanding the abstract notion of cause and effect (if ingest food, then no hunger). But if there are no more life forms to experience hunger then clearly the feeling that we call hunger won’t exist anymore.
if you somehow took away all matter in the universe, made it completely empty, the laws of gravity would still exist […] But they always apply, even when there is no gravity to pull.
The laws of gravity are a description, an abstraction that we use to understand how the universe works. They are not actually written somewhere on the fabric of spacetime. Yes they would still apply; that is: if someone capable of comprehending them appeared again those laws would still be valid descriptions of the universe. But as i said before, the universe doesn’t care about the language, categories and abstractions that we use to describe how it works; it just works, it just is.
As i said, i think this all boils down to semantics. It’s a question of language and how we use it.
These questions seem to come from a place of still holding on to Platonism, specifically to platonic theory of forms. Ideas & abstractions don’t exist outside of our brains.
Ideas & abstractions don’t exist outside of our brains.
What is your source for this? Abstract concepts demonstrably exist outside the brain. There is an objective definition of proletariat and there is an objective definition of bourgeoisie. Even if I was not aware of the laws of gravity I could not jump and fly away, the objective laws of gravity supersede the idea I have of them. What may be subjective, i.e. coming from our brain, is our understanding of these laws. But that is what dialectics helps us with, is uncover the objective nature of the world. We see that our collective understanding of physics has improved over the centuries, and each time we come to discover their laws a little bit better. I’m interested because you’ve read Politzer and my takeaway from his textbook is that paragraph.
What is your source for this?
I don’t recall where originally. I think it’s covered somewhere Politzer’s book, which I did read, but it was something I had already had before reading it. Maybe I brought it back with me from a k-hole 🤔
Abstract concepts demonstrably exist outside the brain.
Where? Abstractions are basically classification systems that we invent, because we find them useful in our making sense of the world. But the world exists all the same, with or without our abstractions & conceptualizations of it. The human heart is an abstraction we created, but the more you try differentiate between heart and non-heart, or to delineate the precise boundary between the heart and the not-heart parts of the human body, the fuzzier things get. People interrelated the way that they did both before and after Marx & Engels developed abstractions like proletariat and bourgeoisie.
Even if I was not aware of the laws of gravity I could not jump and fly away, the objective laws of gravity supersede the idea I have of them.
The universe will do what it does regardless of whatever theories/“objective laws” we concoct to describe it. The universe supersedes our ideas of it. It supersedes the concept of gravity developed by Newton and then radically redeveloped by Einstein.
Edit to add: It’s not that ideas are not real—they are—it’s that the place that they exist is in our brains not any place else, because they were created by our brains through our experience with the world.
I agree with your edit, I think philosophical discussions are difficult over text because it’s not entirely possible to exhaustively explain ourselves that way. I could add more but then I would just be restating what you said in other ways lol
Our human context is inescapable. Language doesn’t exist in order to correspond to objective reality, it exists to allow us to socialize and think in order to survive: a practical purpose. Reality can only be understood from a context. Scientific instruments only enhance our senses, they do not reveal something about an ethereal true reality beyond anyone’s perception of pure energy and matter.
Ideas are real because we are real and perceive them. Ideas are concepts. Concepts are human linguistic/imaginitive/etc understandings of what we perceive. They suit a practical purpose. We develop high level concepts that allow us to interact with reality on high levels. The map is not the territory and the territory does not depend upon the existence of the map. Still, the map can be highly detailed and be used to skillfully navigate the territory.
In a causal chain an entity feels the feeling we call hunger, gets the impulse to eat, eats, and the feeling and impulse cease. This language is not real on some transcendent material plane, but as you experience reading it, it functions to make you imagine a scenario you know to occur practically. All such things happen without the need for the word carbohydrate, though that word enhances our ability to interact with a group of substances in process that we have categorized together.
This is what Mao meant, put in the terms of an autistic philosophy nerd.
Personally I go a step further than “ideas is just matter interaction” and say that everything that exists in the natural world (the one we live in) is by definition material, otherwise it literally could not exist.
Agree, as i see it everything is matter at different stages of development. Consciousness being a highly developed stage of matter.
As a philosophy it has developed overtime and will continue to develop. My understanding is that it springs from the structure of language that contains a subject and an object, and that all words are defined by being not something else. When we separate inseparable things conceptually we eventually realize that it does not accurately reflect reality. When trying to describe things we end up words from both sides of dualities and see that maybe that is how things actually are. This is a functional view of the world and developing it improves its functionality. So we make many dualistic conceptual elaborations on nondual reality. Eventually we end up with Darwin and Marx and then understanding physical objects with both particles and waves, infinitely touching and in a way never contacting. We still have a lot to learn about the universe, and being such a great perspective that is inherent to the study of reality, it will continue to advance.
As a philosophy it has developed overtime and will continue to develop
I think that in time, we will find something beyond dialectics that will supersede it, like dialectics superseded metaphysics and the bourgeoisie superseded the feudal nobility. The negation of the negation means that in the same way the bourgeoisie negated the feudal nobility but created its own negation (the proletariat), dialectics is the negation to metaphysics but creates its own negation in the process. So perhaps while the laws of dialectics say that it itself cannot be eternal, the next thing after dialectics will account for and fix that.
Dialectics isn’t some static thing that popped into the world one day and will suddenly pop out with something else in its place. That’s a metaphysical way of understanding dialectics. Marx or Hegel didn’t invent dialectics. Everyone everywhere has discovered it in some sense. We just have the most coherent philosophical form yet seen for a world that has made computer chips and capitalism. Other lenses we can call dialectical have greater understandings of different axes of the development of knowledge.
The old survives within the new while being in other ways more dead than we realize. Nobility and metaphysics are still around in full and in part as remainders in their successors. Buddhism has an advanced “dialectical” philosophy with many schools and turns and obsolete ideas that were forgotten. In the west we learned from Heraclitus, and people are still influenced by him but his worldview is understood to be incomplete. Spinoza made many philosophical leaps and has been largely left behind for those who were influenced by him, though people still read his work. All these philosophies are dead and alive. They have had their negation do the negation. Marx negated Hegel. Marx has been superseded by Lenin without really dying. One day there may be a successor so advanced that only nerds remember Marx like today they remember Heraclitus.
Dialectics started when people started trying to understand the world. Maybe it will end when we are no longer here to care about truth and reality.
I would even argue that, to some level, pre-notions of later views of Dialects could be seen in Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. His conception of the Categorical Imperative relies on the same principles of the contradictory position of opposing ideas determining the correct way of viewing (in his position) moral actions. Though this was less applied to viewing social trends, I think it is interesting to see as a historical perspective.
Kant’s totally in there. Of course, he came after Spinoza and probably developed and disputed his ideas a decent bit. Of course everyone intellectualizing any of these places and times could have had a direct impact on the development of this philosophy. I felt like I had written enough names and didn’t need to add Fichte, Lao Tzu…
To correctly answer the question you’ve proposed we must first consider what is being meant by “dialectics”:
“Dialectics” as a philosophy, social concept, world outlook, etc., is our subjective interpretation of the laws in which reality works, therefore as it is the case with every “thing-for-us” it is a reflection created the human mind and consequently is depended on conscious beings capable of such complex thinking and necessarily has a definite beginning and a definite end.
“Dialectics” as the “thing-in-itself”, as the laws of motion of the universe, is infinite as time itself, for if time is absolute, which it is, it will affect every existing thing in the universe and it does so through “dialectics”.
So the “thing-for-us” called “dialectics” is not eternal and is merely our attempt at understanding the laws of the universe, and as such it is always going to be incomplete state and in a ever changing process of improvement towards the “thing-in-itself” which governs the motion of universe.
All that I wrote here is from my understanding of Engels’ “Anti-During”, where in one of its first chapters he explains the Hegelian concept of different infinites and time, which is pretty much what your question is centered around, so I’d recommend the read.
yes, eventually the contradiction between reality and the heat death of space resolves and in theory the singularity expansion repeats and we’re all back in this enteral loop.
Dialectics is not on its most developed form for sure, but i think there is a kernel of objective truth in it so i don’t think it ever becomes obsolete. I think this is where materialism enters the discussion, one of it’s principles is that reality is objective and the laws of that govern our world can be known and disclosed through practice and science.
Hegel once said that each philosopher spoke the truth of its time, but could it be possible that dialectics is the objective truth? Dialectical thinking has existed long before dialectics was coined by Hegel, so i dont think its out of reach to think there is some objective truth in it.
I don’t really have a well fleshed out idea to add, but you made me see a parallel of applying dialectics to itself and Godel’s incompleteness theorem. Though I’m not sure if Godel’s theorem applies as it is for axiomatic systems, which I’m not sure if dialectics is one?
It does make me think though, what is the natural outcome of applying dialectics to itself and does it result in some paradox?
It’s not a unified system that follows a set of logical postulates dogmatically according to certain rules. That sort of thinking always results in intractable paradoxes, while dialectics is the study of paradoxes. We see that we can describe reality through paradoxes and learn from experience to predict what will happen better and better, but it’s not concrete and ultimately we will see and study what happens in reality beyond our assumptions. We acknowledge that we ourselves are a constantly moving part of a system with factors no less than the sum totality of all that has happened in the universe.
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