Understanding the Dialectic
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2022
- New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 21
Leftist thought for at least the past 250 years has taken a particular form that is not the usual form of thinking and understanding we know and love. It's something completely different. The Left, perhaps since Rousseau and definitely since Hegel, has been dialectical in its thinking. It is the Dialectical Left. What is the dialectic, though? What is dialectical thinking? In short, it's the fusion of opposites in a way that understands them from a higher-level perspective, which is necessarily synthetic. In this slightly longer episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay explains the dialectic and dialectical thought in some detail with a considerable number of examples to help you understand this synthetic approach to thought and why it's always going to be a catastrophe in the making.
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that's not a Bullet, that's a Bomb!
Bullet > Bomb = Missile
Thesis > Antithesis = Synthesis
Bullets and bombs are low level and are the weapons of white supremacy. Transformation comes in the form of a missile
The James Lindsay dialectic: he synthetizes such an amount of information & knowledge in 32 minutes that the listener's head explodes 🤯 much love, legend! ❤
I found "Science of Logic" to be a better exposition of what the dialectic's modus operandi was to Hegel than any of his Phenomenologies, although they provide seminal demonstrations of the method. In SoL, Hegel really believed he was laying out the natural ground of the dialectic. Keep in mind that Hegel despised Newton and other British Enlightenment thinkers like Locke because he believed empiricism was flawed and not "real philosophy." Science was just gaining steam at the time and Hegel believed his programme a superior alternative to the lowly Brits. This really comes through in SoL, and later, Marx trumpets historical materialism as a continuation of the same "scientific" enterprise.
Good stuff. Thanks for sharing.
I just started reading “Critique of Pure Reason” by Kant and the disdain for empiricism comes through as well. Maybe that was the source of it.
@@historyandhorseplaying7374 Kant realized that Hume had totally destroyed the foundation of traditional philosophy, and his project was an attempt to rebuild what philosophy could be given the limitations made clear by the devastating critiques Hume made.
Aufhebung is like jam. It annihilates the berries, but preserves them and elevates them to a new.
“With a name like Aufhebung, it’s gotta be good” (substituting from the old Smuckers jam commercials lol)
Really makes you think how many people actually participate in the dialectic unwittingly. Think of all the times you’ve heard someone in an argument say “the truth must be somewhere in the middle”
I’ve always thought that was an absurd simplistic platitude. If I’m right, and you’re wrong, the truth is not somewhere in the middle. That’s just what wrong people say to make themselves feel less dumb
It‘s also what people say when they don‘t actually know what the truth is, but wish to proceed with their own set of assumptions.
It can actually be useful (and is sometimes correct as a “theory”) when doing investigations by means of interviewing witnesses. Witness A says X, witness B says Y, and rarely are both or even either witness correct. But there’s nothing mystical about that- people simply are forgetful, imaginative, or liars.
If i hear 2 stories of a couple. Both telling similar stories but diffrent at same time. You can see what is true by finding out where the stories are together. Where they stories differ we can not simply know the awnser. So my awnser is most often the awnser is most often between the 2 stories.
Well. They are wrong... Dialectic is not some "resolution" of seperate conscepts.
That last line about their synthesis not being orgaic and therefore not touching reality resonates with me.
Thanks the dialectic was the hardest for me to grasp
Love these shorter clips James!!
Shorter than what? This one was 32 minutes.
@@kiwigrunt330 Shorter than his usual 2 hour podcasts? What else is there to compare it to?
@@MrPlatonist His earlier 10 minute (plus) bullets.
@@kiwigrunt330 Right, i completely forgot about those, lol
@@MrPlatonist So did James... 🤣
Damn. Finally someone explains this crap in layperson terms. This was the best piece I've ever heard on this. I think I finally understand what's wrong with the left.
Understanding it is important. But who's really behind it?
It seems to me that this is what is going wrong with the left, but I'm not convinced that this is what the left must always be. I think that the left, maybe not all of it, is infected by Marxism, just as some of the right is infected by religious dysfunctional thinking. Yes? No?
@@MoonshineH gaylo's like you
It's psyops.
@@MoonshineH It's in the video, explained by someone far better at this than me. I get it, but putting it into words is complicated and I don't have the energy, which is why I don't bother with Internet arguments anymore.
James has pulled the lynch pin and loosed the Gordian Knot. It can’t unravel fast enough!!!
An absolutely brilliant overview of this critically important area of intellectual thought. Thank you so much.
Maybe I missed something, but it all seems like unfalsifiable magical thinking.
Pretty much; other appropriate words are "Speculative thinking" and "Sophism". Philosophy divorced from actual reality but then coming around to try to impose itself upon reality.
It is also a strategy.
@Reginheri Wow, way to miss the point. That many marxists were jews is not at all interesting when so many of the people involved have nothing to do with that whatsoever. Freire, Rousseau, Kant, Gramsci, Mao. It is not about jews. It is about believers in the dialectic, as the very video above makes clear; that the most real thing is change, that it follows this pattern and can be consciously manipulated.
@Reginheri ah yes, not a coincidence that Wikipedia now says that cultural Marxism is a racist anti Semitic conspiracy and people start popping into comment sections trying to force the label. Nice try
@Reginheri cringe. Today’s Left hates Judaism and wants Israel wiped off the map. In hating Jews (or any people or creed), you’re doing what the left does. If Judeo-Christian civilization weren’t so successful, then nobody would want to destroy it.
32 minutes! Short? Wooo!
This feels like when I was young in English literature classes and they asked us to review literature. And they would come up with things and I never understood it because it seemed like you could just make up any old answer as long as you could make some argument for it.
It seems like dialectic just means take two opposite things, make some bs justification for how to combine them and claim that justification as knowledge. Bizarre.
Correct. Well, it also means taking two things, perceiving them as a contradiction, and using that as an argument for systemic change.
1. Who other than you thinks Rousseau originated dialectic? The example you give goes back at least to Hobbes. 2. Hegel was not a leftist. 3. Hegel's dialectic is similar to Thomas Kuhn's stages of scientific development. We start from established science ( thesis ). Anomalous results accumulate, that cannot be reconciled with the current theses/hypotheses (antithesis). Eventually, when enough anomalies pile up and they can no longer be ignored, another more comprehensive theory is adopted for scientific research. How is this unscientific, how is this bullshit?
@@ClearLight369More than that, it’s about the process of reflection showing that a position is already self-undermining when its own logic is played out. Hegel starts with sense certainty to show how a consistent “I can only know what my senses tell me” undermines itself because language is necessary for understanding and articulating what is experienced and known, which exceeds sense certainty.
Importantly, though, where we arrive at as we sit through the internal critiques that reveal contradiction shows us 1) how reality is inescapably mediated and 2) how understanding is retroactive.
@@BookofCommonTerror I love James and the work he does on CRT, but every time he talks about Hegel or Gnosticism he makes a fool of himself.
@@ClearLight369 respect you, my dude, but I don’t James, who it seems to me is motivated to misunderstand and misrepresent.
I have issues with CRT as well but that’s consistent with dialectical reflection and not really rooted in conservatism as such. I’ll side with it as far as any situation can call for, but not as a position per se.
I've been thinking about the identity thing... I don't identify as a woman, I just am a woman... kinda how God says 'I am who I am' ... under this 'new religion' it isn't enough to just be... they have to tell you who you are. A lot of this 'new religion' does a lot to obscure one from God and interferes with one's ability to know or be close to God.
It's a shame to see so much of the church doesn't see this stuff for what it is... they weren't joking when they said the devil can quote scrupture.
BRILLIANT! Thanks Dr.James!👍🙏♥️
11:18
"You have opposites on a horizontal level and you have vertical dimension of understanding on higher plane. Of course, when you believe you are understanding on a higher plane, you start to make yourself into a priest that's going to tell all the stupid people who don't understand the difference what the difference is. You're going to become their intellectual or political master. And that' really what the point of the dialectic is."
"It's to make things complicated so you can sit on top and tell people what they are by mixing together opposites in a way that don't make sense. The dialectic is the combination of opposites so that you are claiming to see them from some higher level that is necessarily synthetic."
31:02
"The problem is the dialectic. The problem is using negation to make progress, to cut down in order to get somewhere. That's actually the problem. And so, I don't know if this is a clarifying definition or explanation of the dialectic, but the dialectic is a combination of opposites so that you can see them from a higher perspective that only the wizards can understand. Fascism has its own wizards. Communism has its own wizards. It doesn't matter who they are. They're the super special priest class, that they're the only ones who can understand the actual mysteries of the complex society.
It sounds like you're describing metamodernism. Which makes complete sense.
The dialectic is so important to understand, you can see it everywhere. Like "Here is a problematic thing (thesis), and if we respond with this thing (antithesis/the opposite), then we'll get a perfect higher balance! (synthesis). And then we start the whole equation again, as the synthesis becomes the status quo.
But it's actually alchemical magical thinking. It never ends. In actual hard physics, matter and anti-matter DESTROY each other.
Hegel's idea was abstract and fantastical, kind of a fun idea to think about, but Marx made it material and literal, and now these idiot marxists (who self-identify as "opposition" or "resistance") just want to flip everything around, they want to ruin everything, and they believe that magically some higher synthesis will rise of it. They just want to contradict and problematize everything that is, so a higher being can rise out of it, just somehow magically spontaneily🤷🏻♂️ it's a magical alchemical religious ideology. GET REAL.
Perhaps because we have not reached the ideal status quo yet which is "state of material abundance.
ps. Marsixts seem to believe that they can do it right here right now. teehee
@@mikexhotmail Yes. Marxists absolutely want a state of material abundance, and they think it is the inevitable way of history. All their activism is just speeding up the process and the contradictions, so they can get to their perfect utopia with perfect equality sooner. They have the "gnosis" of how everything should be... Buncha asses.
Yeah, but that is not Hegels dialectic in any way.
@@felixbergman-composer626 Yeah, sure, "that's not REAL dialectic", just like "that's not real communism", it's a garbage failed philosophy, it produces shit
Awesome video, loved it!
By what you said fascism still isn't right wing it's still socialism its just with a tighter focus.
Fascism is race socialism. It’s left wing as both identity politics and socialism are on the leftwing spectrum. Idk how Lindsay hasn’t recognized that let. Great man though.
Yep, and even Conservatism is not liberal because it employs the same dialectic. If it's old it's good.
Marxian thought (for example Mao's "four Olds" campaign ) engages in embracing only non-traditional.
It's all "synthetic". Liberalism uses Scientism, Capitalism, Debate, to explore and develop. It has within it a spectrum from right to left.
Non liberal philosophies have no spectrum, they have splinter groups and schisms. Because they require of themselves to poses a utopian goal from which they must not deviate lest they sow dissent in so doing (revisionism).
Correct.
Well explained, tnx
Great video!!
The more I hear about Hagle and Marx the more I think "Wow these guys loves to smell their own farts."
Servants of Satan
South Park!
Eleven minutes in and it just sounds like pure Plato so far.
It gets better...
Dude. James, thats a cool riff man. Bluesy.
Getting better with your intros, James.
Critic?
😆
@@relaxingsounds1386 huh?
This is a fascinating explanation of the conceptual framework of the dialectic. I’m still a bit hazy though. It seems like the dialectic framework itself is rooted in a true method of understanding, but the problem may be its misapplication?
For instance, and I may be misapplying the concept here, the idea of interdependence in a marriage relationship or a work relationship is a higher order state of being than either being in a dependent or an independent relationship. I believe that to be a true principle. Is this a dialectical way of perceiving this progression?
Also, the famous John Stuart Mill statement on not being able to fully understand your own argument until you have a complete understanding of the opposite argument also seems to have a dialectical substrate.
I guess my question/confusion surrounds when and how the dialectical approach makes sense and when it does not?
Is the main problem with the dialectical not that it tries to compare opposites but it’s insistence on placing the theory above the reality?
The latter.
Theory takes precedence over mundane matter.
Marxism works with society in the same way Radium was a "cure all" in the early 20th century.
Except instead of giving you cancer it drives you insane by creating a method of thinking, like a life long cult member, and are unable to think outside of it and simply finding another person/group/thing to blame as the culprit.
Marriage: two different people come together to fulfill their different roles and make one happy family. They keep doing their individual, different roles, but both are necessary to the whole.
Dialectic: two opposites come together, destroy both, and make up something different.
Mdialectic is not interdependence of different skill sets.
I've been reading Life and Fate and near the middle of the book there's an old Bolshevik in a German POW camp who gets called to an officer's office. He thinks he's going to be tortured (physically) and instead the SS officer starts talking to him about Hegel, calls him teacher, and starts going on about how the Nazis and the USSR are really the same and shouldn't be in conflict. Thanks to James I understood what was happening here was that the SS officer was trying to apply the dialectic to Germany and Russia and synthesize the "opposites". If I didn't understand the dialectic from James that scene would've made no sense to me.
But also, they really are the same as he said at the end. The same thing, one just chooses a different focus
Great job. Great work. Salute 2 you.
I view this concept is very understandable. Cause when you think of it. try to define a color for example. It is actualy a mix of all colors. Red is not simply red. But red yellow and all color at same time in theory. Cause if you take away the yellow hint in the red you get another color.
There's a scene from The Red Scare from 1949 where the rookie communist asks the meeting leader what she means by democracy. She says "rule by the people" and he says "which people? And what does Karl Marx mean by dictatorship of the Proletariat? That's just rule by SOME people."
Then they take home outside and knock him out (kill him) and the Twilight Zone style newspaper headline flashes "Young CPUSA party member killed for being a communist! Communist Party demands justice!"
If being a leftist is just being against the status quo then we would all be leftists here.
Peaky Blinders S5E3 34:10 Tommy says "...for them its just the same, communism, fascism; for most people its an apple and an apple.."
👌
To understand dialectical arguments, I always think of "peas and carrots." One person only thinks you can eat peas, the other person only thinks you can eat carrots. Then the know-it-all comes along and says "why not both?" And so the two people arguing realize the know-it-all is so great and they think he's wise.
That's it. Dialectics is no more complicated than the "why not both?" meme, except you do it to up your clout instead of joking.
Or maybe you up your clout while making a joke. That would be a meta-dialectic.
Kind of, yea. I think Hegel's dialectic actually has a small amount of truth in it, especially as an abstract idea, not so much crudely and materialistically as Marx apparently thought. Like... If you put peas and carrots together, you will get a new thing, peas&carrots mixed up. But that synthesis does not please either of the two people arguing😄 kind of like a democratic compromise. An abstract anti-thesis would be like combining peas with the antithesis of peas... Anti-peas🤷🏻♂️ I don't know I'm just blabbering.
In hard physics matter and anti-matter DESTROY each other into pure energy, they don't magically become some higher thing. We need to get out of this wise-ass abstract magical thinking of Hegel's dialectic.
Taoism is based kind of similarly on the duality of everything, but it prefers BALANCE and kind of a passive acceptance of things being different and fluctuating, NOT forcing the yin and yang into a grey goo🤦🏻♂️ It makes much more sense to me.
@aakkoin Yes, and some people (like me) love both peas and carrots, but don't love peas and carrots in a mix together. Mixes can be very different than their components alone are.
That is not Hegels dialectic though.
@@conforzoRight. It both is and its not Hegels dialectic.
Dialectic is a somewhat difficult concept to define. Philosophy? Reasons?
Alchemy
Yes, it is difficult to define because it isn’t based on objective truth.
When do we strike at the root?
These concepts are so insane at the core, how do they ever gain and maintain any traction?
Because it SOUNDS good to fools.
Yes that is the crux of it. They appeal to some nice sounding concept. They use a nice sounding wordage. “It’s our duty to help people if we can.” Well what does help mean? Does it mean giving them money? No, a wise man once said give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime. But that’s a lot harder, so these people just want to do some small EASY task that they have been told will help people, and they can fill the God shaped hole in the heart and move on and be happy. Like “just call that man a woman.” It’s easy, it will make them happy, it’s compassionate, move on. Not, they have a mental illness and you’re gaslighting them into believing it and teaching yourself not to believe the evidence of your own eyes and ears, and they will take every opportunity there is from real women, and end up endangering the very lives of women everywhere. (Bathroom rape, sports injuries, etc)
I don't know that the placement of fascism on the right is actually correct. It was socialists who invented fascism, and it wasn't because they want to move social to the political right. It seems like the political spectrum was shifted to a different backbone after WWII. The academic left were embarrassed by their support for Hitler so they moved politics from a backbone of power (who controls what) to a backbone of property (who owns what). This artificially moved fascism (and hence the Nazis) to the political right, when everyone at the time knew fascism was an invention of the left.
Just curious, can you give me an example of a leftist academic who supported Hitler?
This man gets it
Yes.
I think James is pointing this out in this talk.
With "right", "far right" and so on.
The more something is not aimed at Marxian-ism the further from the left it is characterised as by the Marxian advocates.
Whereas, in reality, it is merely not Marxian.
So Fascism and National Socialism will be cast as right wing by Marxists.
Think about it though.
Liberalism is the ONLY viable political philosophy that can contain opposing ideas or 'wings' of thought.
The whole notion of there being a "left" and a "right" outside of liberalism is a fabrication of Socialism using the dialectic mechanism to 'other' or expel different utopian, authoritarian, totalitarianism systems from consideration.
The fact that there are multiple forms of Fascism and National Socialism and Marxism is inconvenient for the dialectic. It suggests they are all second hand car salesmen flogging rebadged versions of an unreliable discredited system of thought.
Liberalism on the other hand is engaged in the process of manufacturing, developing and producing cars, and alternatives to cars.
It's why Marxism doesn't know 'how', only 'why'. It's why China cannot invent.
China only achieved the ability to manufacture an entire ball point pen in 2017 because the 'emergent' nature of invention cannot be preplanned.
Everything the CCP permits must be predictable and controllable by the CCP.
Anarchism - Libertarianism - Liberalism - Conservatism - Totalitarianism is a much truer rendition of the political spectrum. The degree to which society is reliant upon a public body normally called the "State" for regulation of people's behaviour.
Neither fascism or Nazism are part of the right. Fascism is basically socialism where society is defined based on nationality while Nazism is socialism where society is defined by race (which is frighteningly similar to what people like Kendi' and BLM believe).
I'm not a philosophy expert, but I've heard podcasts about early philosophers (ie. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) that said that dialectic was also an integral part of their philosophy. Has the left hijacked those earlier concepts of dialectic argument ... what is the difference? I will research this on my own, but if anyone can save me some time it would be much appreciated.
Literally!!
Good vid
The Dialectic concept reminds me of a misapplication of the Taoist concept of Yin and Yang.
This quote from Hegel:
"It is the process of its own becoming, the circle that presupposes its end as its goal. Having its end also as its beginning; and only by being worked out to its end is it actual."
That statement is a tautology, and therefore can not be logically disproved.
And, given that the statement is making an argument about abstract ideas, and not objects which exist in reality, it is only a rational argument if you accept it's premise, which is, of course, also it's conclusion.
It is about objects in reality. This is about overcoming the dualisms that we’re already operative even before modern rationalism and empiricism. It is a critically retrieved return to immediacy where subjectivity, as in critical realism, is integral to apprehending the truth of objects.
Hegel was concerned with psychology.
Conceptually concepts moving into their opposites is a very basic observation.
OK I’m really trying to understand this dialectic stuff. Would an example be public education system, free market education system = student voucher system? I would appreciate an answer from anyone.
Maybe that’s a good example. “Student voucher system” is just collectivism dressed as something slightly more palatable.
Is there a video anywhere as to what James actually believes himself?
I would like to become a member but want to understand his own belief's.
Does he believe in god?
Thanks
We have to find the errors in the premises and correct them. For instance, we are not social beings. There are too many anti-social and introverted types to consider that true. We are familial. We look for like minds and hearts. That puts the correct spin on things.
We are not intrinsically interdependent and never were. There are too many people who prove they can live independently. We have learned to improve our way of life by being cooperative. We are a cooperative being, and we are already doing that, so no change is called for.
And so on.
Yep, the whole “man is a social animal” thing was a pre-Darwinian one…. There is absolutely no genetic or paleontological evidence that “man is collectivist”. Of course Marx can be excused for not knowing that because he was a child of the early 1800s. But there is no excuse for anyone born after 1940 or so.
Michelle Obey-ma's book title: ♂️Becoming♀️.
Sounds good to me
Again, Plato's dialectic of Absolutes (Parmenides) doesn't result in Absolute knowledge, but an either/ or proposition. "If One is not, the nothing is." There is always a "split" in the circle.... a lamella... a 'surplus value'....
THEN nothing is (typo sorry).
"Being" or "Becoming"
Marriage was once a man and a woman and BECAME any pair (manwoman; man/man; woman/woman)
Being - Becoming
I agree with the points you presented from Hegel. That is, until "Reason is conveniently what he believes to be the case." There is a lot of talk about fallacies in philosophy, but what isn't talked about as often is what might be called "ipse dixit". This means, "because I say so" and it stands in for trying to make a statement of fact without any grounding or rational explanation at all. It is worse than a fallacy, because there is no argument made. It is simply a blind assertion that, when couched in various word salad, is expected to be swallowed whole without question.
This rhetorical move seems to be the specialty of the left. The assumption is that if the audience is stupid enough, they won't see the card go up the sleeve and just accept that the claim follows from the rest of the rhetoric.
The problem is that they are correct. Just as in some of the famous algebra proofs where a slightly difficult to find "mistake" is made such that it is proven that 0 = 1, the leftist propaganda always (and I mean that literally) seems to come down to these bogus moves made with a bold certainty and hoping that their audience won't notice... which they usually don't. Partially because they aren't smart enough, but also because they want to believing the infantilizing narrative that is always the endpoint of leftism: the misconception that remaining a child will bring more happiness than assuming responsibility as an adult.
@Russ Ingram Not even close. Actually read the sacred text and practice the techniques therein. Just because _some_ things are couched in metaphor and you haven't done the exercises they prescribe to see the results they predict, doesn't mean there is no method, reason, or technique involved.
You volunteer to limit your freedom on the road primarily because it is in your immediate self-interest to do so. It is a mutually-beneficial and unspoken agreement that we all enter into every time we drive. We have the freedom to swerve into oncoming traffic if we so choose, but that would be foolhardy and self-destructive. So I'm not sure that the driving analogy truly "drives" the point home; although I get the overall point that you are making.
Dang, miss ye on twitt
Good video! I’m experiencing some dissonance, though, in the sense that “the dialectic” here has a specific meaning, but the conversation “lacking a dialectic” is something I say all the time when criticising the woke. Like “the reason I’m concerned about this [enforced thing] is not that I hate black people, but that the process lacks a dialectic”.
In this sense I’m using “dialectic” to mean the process of bashing two opposing ideas together using reason to figure out how to proceed without getting upset.
Should I stop using that term in this way? 😅
No, your use of the term is the only correct and true one. It was coined by Aristotle to describe precisely the process you outlined above: rational discussion based on evidence and carried out according to the rules of logic. The term 'dialectic' was misappropriated by Hegel to lend a false respectability to his dogmatic anti-rationality.
@@Ubu987Ok but was Kant’s use of the term correct? I think people are confusing Hegel with Kant. It was Kant who explained and actually used the term “dialectic”
10/10
❤
this is not a pipe...this is not a brick,its a hammer
With all due respect, the Hegelian Dialectic is definitely not the Thesis, Anti-thesis and Synthesis thing at all. So, let’s see what is Hegelian Dialectic.
According to Hegel, the dialectic “is the process of its own becoming, the circle that presupposes its end as its goal, having its end also as its beginning; and only by being worked out to its end, is it actual." -Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit
You start from the immediate thing at hand through the sense-certainty and perception to find out the properties of the thing. Then, you go to Understanding phase which is the highest stage of Consciousness in order to discover the potentiality inherent in the thing at hand. This is the process of reflection-into-itself. This will give the Essence, the Truth, or the Ideality, the Goal, or the Identity of the thing at hand which is something Universal (being-in-itself). Then you go to Difference which is the reflection-into-another, which in turn is the Particular (being-for-another). Here the opposition and contradiction appear. For the contradiction to be resolved, it got to lead to the essential unity between the Identity and Difference which is the purpose and it constitutes the Final Cause for the resolution of this contradiction. This Final Cause, is Self-Consciousness (being-in-and-for-itself). It is the Subject. The purpose, the final cause, must fuse with the Will to Destiny by an individual and it should turn into focused Passion. That should lead to Reason. Reason is Purposive Activity. Reason is composed of Negative Dialectical Reason and Positive Speculative Reason. Reason in its act, sublate the immediate being and the new being is a sublated reality, which is called the Actual. Sublation is the unity of three acts: negation, preservation and sublation. Actual is the End. This whole movement is called dialectical or rational movement which is also the unity of Subject-Object.
Historical Materialism of Marxists just like the Thesis/Anti-thesis/Synthesis thing has nothing to do with Hegelian Dialectic either. Both of these conceptions of dialectic are nothing but misconception of Hegelian Dialectic.
Thank you. Lots of light in this video and in the comments but no heat.
This is surprisingly well done, especially in comparison to many philosophers' attempts to exposit the notion of dialectical approaches to various familiar dichotomies. It falls into caricature, however, when it begins to describe dialectic as 'theory instead of experience' - a crude oversimplification that could itself do with some dialectical criticism - in this case, courtesy of Kant. As Kant noted long ago, 'concepts [theories] without experience are empty, experience without concepts [theory] is blind.' The silly old 'rationalists versus empiricists' dispute before Kant was ridiculous precisely because it assumed you could have one of those two things - experience and understanding- without the other, when in fact both are inseparably linked where there is actual understanding - i.e., the ordering of the welter of experience through conceptually-informed understanding. And all dialectics is is the practice of noticing how many *other* distinctions we unthinkingly draw end up being false dichotomies that merely reflect incomplete understanding. As such it is quite neutral as between 'left' and 'right' ideologies. There are rightwing dialecticians (like Hegel himself and the Prussian authorities who elevated his philosophy into the state ideology) just as there are leftwing dialecticians (like Marx and the self-described 'Left Hegelians'). And there are rightwing antidialectical morons and simpletons (like George W. Bush) just as there are leftwing antidialectical morons and simpletons (like Joe Scarborough).
interesting ideas. At 28.15 you say 'moving away from the status quo is by definition leftist. That is what leftist means.' I am not sure I follow this. Does 'right-ist' therefore mean always stick to the status quo? In the world where I live, even people on the right want change. The friction seems to be on how we need to change, and people with different life experiences tend to want different changes. That's why we have elections, and that's why we want as many voices heard as possible.
Great half-hour on Hegelian dialectic. Because I'm now writing on Hegel's phenomenology of Spirit, I've watched about a dozen UA-cam videos on the subject, and yours is easily the best. But I wonder if you are selling Hegelian dialect short because it is synthetic, rather than organic. You have a degree in physics, and it seems to me that Ohm's Law, for instance, is dialectic used to explain electricity, with voltage the thesis, ohms the antithesis, and amperage the thesis. Explaining electricity from the integration of three separate principle is synthetic, but it can't be properly understood and explained otherwise. Another example of a useful (non-leftist) dialectic is the Holy Trinity (Trikaya in Buddhism). I contend that the spiritual en-Light-enment project, which I write on, cannot be properly explicated and elaborated sans a dialectical trinitarian paradigm.
Absolute BS. This is the WORST explanation of dialectics. The reason he rejects it is because of his class, i.e. monetary interest.
The problem isn’t synthetic, thst is a way to describe the problem. Another way to describe The problem is that it’s completely insane and calls for the destruction of society and the trampling of individual rights, and the total consolidation of power in the government to crush people with equity so hard until the ends justify the means and we arrive at some nonsense paradise where everyone just gets all things equally magically with bo explanation how and we ignore things like individual MOTIVATION being the sole driving factor for humans and if it isn’t guided rightly most people won’t do something they don’t reallllly enjoy if they don’t have to.
its completely unnattached to reaality and is made up by people who want to explain why they are such parasitic self indulgent lazy feckless irresponsible losers who rely on the hard work of others to sustain their lifestyle. Then it tricks hard working people into enabling them because everyone feels good if they think they are helping people, but in reality they are just enabling destructive awful behavior.
Hegel’s thought is not synthetic, and whoever tells you that is selling a misinterpretation. Perhaps a willing one, as I am sure is the case here with Lindsey.
@@BookofCommonTerror, sorry, but Hegelian dialectic is based arriving at a synthesis. The idea of identifying a valid thesis and antithesis, and then arriving at a synthesis makes sense.
@@l.rongardner2150That cannot be because the “antithesis”-putting it in scare quotes because the thesis-antithesis-synthesis structural protocol isn’t in Hegel, it simply isn’t-isn’t something an original thesis encounters: it is the contradiction within a concept that undermines it. It is the internal logic that unravels the purity of, for instance, sense certainty, that shows sense certainty does not tell the whole story of how the human subject knows. Thesis-antithesis-synthesis is *not* Hegel.
Edit: Deleted a word my phone initially left there.
25:30
👍🏻
I find this an extraordinarily cynical take on the dialectic. You make it sound, James, as if novelty itself (something new becoming) and synthesis itself (two partial truths coming together into something higher) is intrinsically politically Leftist, and even totalitarian. But the dialectic is a feature of reality. A man and woman come together and complement one another (synthesis), and the result is a novel human being (becoming). A child grows into an adult while retaining characteristics of the child (aufheben/sublation). Just because Marxists have stolen these words, don't pretend they own reality. Capitalism tempering itself with social responsibility is much needed. Should Marxists be defining social responsibility? No. But they're going to until somebody else does.
Fascinating, I don't recall Hegel writing, "Reason is agreeing with all of what I just said." Seems like there was a whole lot more to his definition of Reason. If indeed that is true, which it is, then leaving those parts out in order to put the cart before the horse and advance an anti-Hegelian agenda by misrepresenting what he actually thought, is Sophistry, and deception of your audience.
To James - I know this isn't really your wheelhouse, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the connection (if any) to the acceleration of Woke and it's prominence in our culture online, and the loss of internet oversight by IANA and ICANN. It seems to me like the current generation of cultural problems we face right now can be traced back to the loss of US oversight over the Internet, as groups like the WEF replaced IANA and ICANN.
All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”
Adam Smith .....
"The masters ... never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, labourers, and journeymen.”
Adam Smith....
"The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it."
Adam Smith......
“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords…love to reap where they have never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the labourer only the trouble of gathering them, come…to have an additional price fixed upon them.”
Adam Smith...
ADAM SMITH, this supposed stalwart defender of "free-market" capitalism also packed into his book a riot of observations that give comfort and support to those who know that modern markets are never actually free. That Smith could be both pro- and anti-capitalist within the confines of a single tome might be hard for some hard to believe, but it is true.
I already understood Hegelian Dialectics pretty good, mainly due to Polish author Krzysztof Karoń and his probably best analysis of Marxism and neo-Marxism I've seen and read. There are many other authors, scholars and speakers in Poland who talk about it, but Karoń made a warp jump with his methodic, ampleness of material, peculiar way of lecturing, and most importantly - his commitment in effect of his realization of the grave danger exerted by neo-Marxism + Postmodernism on mankind. He also attempted to devise a consistent Civil Knowledge Program, which could give ppl, especially teenagers, initial knowledge and apparatus to recognize neo-Marxist influence and indoctrination. I shall certainly add to this our specific experience with SocRealism, and these freaky intellectuals and scholars graduating from Marxist political economy who specialized in Dialectical Materialism - that is zombie eggheads with briefcases, speaking absolute rubbish when accosted.
I'd like to point out a thing, which from the very beginning should be absolutely clear for someone with technical/engineering background - the "antithesis" isn't really any "opposition" or "negation", it isn't even close, because if it was, the opposites would annihilate out of necessity, and thus no outcome = "synthesis" could be obtained. Reversing this - to have non-null result, Dialectical operands (thesis & antithesis) must consist of at least some non-opposite elements. Contrary to that, in the Dialectic, after the arbitrary choice of "thesis" (which is obvious), the choice for "antithesis" is also absolutely arbitrary, which is a corruption on "anti-", the Aufhebung operation is undefined and too arbitrary, thus "synthesis" is basically whatever "must" be proven. So, it's all again the question of intentional language corruption - concoction of pseudo-philosophical word salad, as a facade for false authoritarian argumentation. It should be mentioned, that neo-Marxists theoretically fight authoritarianism, and maintain, after Young Hegelians (especially Cieszkowski), that philosophy generally has been "completed" by Hegel, thus they only practice action - praxis.
All these "social scientists" infected by this "teaching" and specializing in it, obviously do not utilize simple, natural logic, which makes me wonder: what idea Hegel had about the logic of combining opposites? Turns out - his own!, described in "Science of Logic" (SL/WdL). It actually totally breaks with natural logic and common sense. Diving into the lecture one will inevitably sink through an ever denser bog of trivializations, groundless assumptions, mixing strict and colloquial definitions of terms, inconsistence of application of operations (negation) and expectations as to their subsequent outcomes. The "logic" itself utilizes the Aufhebung operation, for which it shall only establish philosophical grounds, and thus introduces circular dependency between itself and the Dialectic. In fact it's a looped, ordered algorithm, coded in an informal, esoteric language, rather than an actual logic! Eventually, it starts to more resemble an esoteric belief system, like Astrology, than an actual philosophy. I've absolutely no idea, how anyone could even treat it as anything serious? How on Earth the sane, natural logic, loses with this? IOW, how is it even a thing? Leftists fight with good old Christian logic bragging that it's outdated, that they have newer and better one, and then come up with this piece of esoteric babbling? - are you kidding me??
I think, I just started to understand why Hegel's work had to become "completion of philosophy" and why "death of philosophy" and eventually "death of God" must've been trumpeted. For me, it actually means, that natural logic and common sense must be defended and preserved, because it's the only way out of this madness of encroaching Hegelianism - it's the Humanity's only rescue!
Hear hear . That was said very well
Excellent comment!
I love James' comment section.
Literally only replying so I can find this comment again. This thought comes back in lindsay's gnosticism talks. Circular logic
@@phillidaadamus4349 I haven't yet time to watch the latest from Lindsay. I must eke my knowledge soon.
I think you make a good point about how “aufhebung” or synthesis can’t simply be reconciling two opposing thoughts. Reducing this to the basics, Statement 1 is “P” and Statement 2 is “not P”…. How do you reconcile those??? Impossible. So, the statements must be complex enough to contain elements that are common to each other, OR, your “philosophy” must simply have the power to annihilate what P actually is (“woman is just a social construct”).
So, is temperature a dialectic synthesis of hot and cold? Was Frederick Nietzsche using the dialectic in beyond good and evil? Am I a leftist when I mix yellow and blue to create green? Was the oracle of Delphi a leftist when she suggested moderation in all things? I'm really confused now.
I’m only 12 minutes in, but what I’m getting is that James means that Leftists utilize dialectical thinking to produce a priest class of which they are a part to seize political power for their utopian ends.
I personally find Hegel fascinating - I don’t share James’s animosity towards him, because I think his philosophy is more abstract. I see the main culprit as Marx who material-ized Hegel.
No, dialectic can really only be applied to concepts, not reality. Which is partly why the Left seems so ridiculous now- supposedly you can “dielecticize” a man or woman.
From my understanding the dialectic is a false synthesis by highlighting opposites in a way that lures the victim to a designed conclusion to achieve a political agenda. They basically already have the answer picked out then use 2 opposites to justify it and mindfuck people into going along with their ideology. Mixing hot and cold to make warm or mixing yellow and blue to create green is a correct synthesis rooted in science not pseudo intellectual political philosophy.
@@juggernautnation369 thanks for taking the time to answer, your answer was helpful
Hegellian Dialectic - One big Appeal to the Expert Fallacy
Matter and antimatter
They've turned the word woman into a variable which they can place any meaning into. It's a placeholder for whatever data the user wants to fill it with.
Who's they ?
@@Xavier-kq9hp Gender ideologues and queer theorists like Gayle Rubin. You know, the people who have postulated that gender is a social construct.
A joke from 1990, referring to Political Correctness.
The committee had to choose between two black lesbuans in wheelchairs. They hired me dyslexic😊
Meta-knowledge: Metaphysics: gnosis
Question: So would it be fair to state the following concepts are rooted in the dialectic: Ibram Kendi's definition of anti-racism, which most people would understand as racism - calling racism "anti-racism." Labeling the least tyrannical, least patriarchal large scale civilization ( the West), the "tyrannical white male patriarchy." Combining male and female, to get "gender neutral. Is it fair to conceptualize these examples as engaging the dialectical process: pitting thesis against anti-thesis?
The problem is that people are being gas-lit into only seeing racism against minorities and sexism against women. In reality Western societies are highly racist , however this racism is targeted against White people and not minorities, and our society gives women many unfair advantages and treats women better than men. Once you realize that the question becomes if we should do as Kendi says and use discrimination to reverse the effects of this discrimination or if we should just get rid of the institutions that are causing this discrimination to begin with.
The Way to summarize this religion is "trought the use of magical powers you can go around the law of identity in order that you can revert the law of causality and bring a utopia on earth" the confusion comes in identifing the exact methodology for wich there are 3 the fabians(mechanistic), the marxists(morality) , and the marcusian(both but negative thinking becomes positive)
An epistemological Tower of Babel
5:50 It seems like a key misinterpretation to take 'consider' opposite theories, which makes sense, and change it to 'combine' opposite theories, which does not. It certainly explains a lot about the nonsense they consider (combine with?) logic in present day.
Anyone notice that Jesus did away with the priest class as "special" by making every believer a priest? Small wonder he was hated by the religious system of his day (and yet humans have, again, tried to rebuild what he challenged).
He was also hated because he preached that there should be universal healthcare and social security and that people should pay their taxes.
@@limlaith where did Jesus say we should institute socio-economic policies like universal healthcare and social security..?
@@limlaith "Well, there weren't priests in Judaism"
Leviticus classifies all of the sons of Aaron as 'kohen,' literally priests. They still use that word to refer to their priests to this very day, in fact.
"I don't think that he was trying to make everyone a priest, but it's an interesting conclusion."
That's exactly what he did, per Hebrews 7:17.
"He was also hated because he preached that there should be universal healthcare and social security and that people should pay their taxes."
Jesus never said any of those things, and he was explicitly hated because "I am not of this world." Look, I don't ask that people read sacred texts, but _if_ you're going to make claims, about anything, you should at least have enough knowledge about the subject so that you're not bullshitting.
@@limlaithI am sincerely hoping you are being sarcastic. If so, well done!
That is the thing about intellectuals, they think and therefore it is. And they can think of all sorts of awful shit.
Hmmm. I am more on a spiritual path rather than a political or intellectual path. To me JL is absolutely brilliant. Nobody has ever humbled my intellect like JL does. It's like the way Ken Wilber humbles me on the topic of consciousness. In a reality where there is a tangible world outside you (3D), James is the master of this reality. He sees very clearly through the contradiction like nobody I have ever listened to. Seeing through the contradiction, you are at a higher perspective. You see the truth l, at one with The All. In my spiritual growth, which involves months long meditation retreats on the other side of the world regularly, I have been exposed to the idea of One. Maya being the contradiction, the illusory world. Contradiction is the law of the land in the third dimension. What I find incredible is that Hermetic ideas that make three dimensional reality a prison and hell, the same Hermetic principles are the key to escaping three dimensional reality all together. It's like Three Card Monty. You can "win" by taking others who can't see the game, but you also "win" when you know the game well enough not to be played. Hermetic principles can are used to make material existence unbearable. Hermetic principles can and are used to transcend from a material existence to Spiritual one.
thinking you're the priest class when half the world thinks you're the clown class
Speed and position can't both be known
+
Are “Critical Race Theory” books in room with us now, James?
Everyone can claim to be a woman unless you’re an actual biological Real woman, that is 😂
The objective is to make everything meaningless so they can then impose meaning that suits their agenda.
Bill Clinton:
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is,"
Redefining Truth is utter confusion.
There still is a lot of what has been called "level confusion." Confusing the spiritual and divine nature of humans with the materialistic view of humans.
Philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Hegel, and Kant were speaking of the divine nature of mankind, and their writings can only be understood in that spiritual sense.
Ironic that precisely the Communist did not believe in the existence of God and took it all in a material sense. Thus they interpreted the inner unconscious spiritual urge that the divine spirits that we are are due their spiritual recognition from us as meaning that the workers deserved the recognition for their work financially.
And that by identifying ourselves and each other as merely material beings we are suppressing the divine sprits we are, was interpreted as certain humans being suppressed victims that should be freed.
Say no to wizards.
Say yes to Artificers.
never trust evil wizards, wasnt it part of the hacker ethic or something?
Good work James. Garbage plus opposing garbage is still garbage not reason. As was said, Dialectic is synthetic not organic but ‘if it is not organic it is not going to work’.
"If I want to be more free I need to give up my freedoms" is not a good way to understand dialectics, but it's a great way to get people who don't know any better to think it's dumb. If you've ever argued with someone, and you realize that you're both kind of right and both kind of wrong, you've done dialectics. It's actually how most thinking is done today, 18th century "formal logic" doesn't stack up in comparison. but go off.
I would have liked to hear some focus on the role of dialectics in fabricating antagonism - a foundation upon which so much of modern leftist dogma is based. There's a lot more observable evidence of the religious nature of this whole thing when you unravel it this way.
Undoubtedly there are people who think and talk like this. But it ain’t Hegel.
I remember the first time I took shrooms.
Don’t demonize the dialectic. It’s not a problem in and of itself. It’s how we make sense of the world in many ways. Demonize the misuse of the dialectic. Same thing with religion. Lots of good in religion but people abuse and misuse it to their own advantage or cause harm to others.
No, scientists don’t use the dialectic to understand the world, they use empirical methods (which is the definition of experimentation). Even Kant when explaining the dialectic says you can’t apply it to math or higher sciences.
Wow dialectical thinking doesn’t take into account actually physical reality.
A pragmatic understanding of realist makes the theory marches what works in the world but twisted with dialectical thinking and by any means becomes praxis I guess?
Great podcast, but not much of a bullet.
I've watched 4 hours of you talk about the dialectic, and I am still not really clear. Cut to the F'ing chase. Thanks
This seems to me a straw-man of the dialectic concept.
we can utilize quantum physics in nuclear science, mris, and cryptography as a result of scientists synthisizing the apperently contradictory ideas of a particle and a wave into a quantafiable function. This is a dialectic concept at work.
Another simple example could be if we get a snow/frost in the summer, there is the over arching truth of the procession of the seasons
( year over year summer yielding warm temps reliably) contrast this with the truth that the earth does yield circumstances that can create freezing temps without regard for the first truth(ei closer to poles,volcanic ash shadows, shifting ocean currents, winds ect.)
we necassarily synthesize these truths when making predictions in agriculture and event planning, and we base our subsequent actions on the probabilities derived from observing the contrast between them.
Furthermore the assertion at the beginning of dialectics begins with ideas rousseau and hegel is patently false, dialectics has been thoughtfully utilized since plato and aristotles time.
Importantly: We cannot ascribe something as essential as dialectics souly to the leftist ideology while ignoring the presence of it within the right wing's rhetoric.
This video bases the definition of dialectics off of the leftist Marcuse essay the "one dimensional man", which postulates two aspects of industrial economies:
-the one dimsionals- ei// those who dont consider histories relevance to their circumstances, giving way to media, consumerism etc.
- the dialectics ei// those who consider the multiplicity of factors that shaped our circumstance, allows them to change cultural modes
This work is heavily criticized for being adhering to the idealism of marxist class identities.
My take is: that while detractors of this work rightly highlight this fatal limitation, they fail to undermine the basic utility of dialectics itself. Dialectic literacy has a place in philosophy no doubt because it enhances ones ability to determine and articulate what is actually happening in society.
Though there certainly are cases of it being confusing and especially when undermining objectivisms assumptions, however I maintain that by considering the multiplicity of factors and contrasting their effects involved in our circumstance; we will certainly come up with; not a perfect truth but a more complete understanding of what is. I ask now; had we omitted these factors and variables, can we honestly say we have presented an impartial basis for our assertion(s) of what is?
I categorically reject the idea that dialectic is only a leftist phenom and provide the example of writer Thomas Sowells characterization of an unconstrained worldview being leftist and a constrained worldview being right wing. This explanation uses dialectical simplification to outline the contrast between ideologies and provides a more complete; yet not perfect picture of our political spectrums proclivities. This is only one example and his work is referenced to by many modern conservatives.
In essence respect is due for the dialectic as a tool for understanding the chaotic world in which we exist,
the accusations of it being helpful or hindering will best be taken on a case by case basis,
finally let it be known that it may be employed by ANYONE coherent enough: no matter their politics.
I’ve never met a Marxist that was good at math, could do accounting, economics, computer science or studied hard physical sciences. Its like people who are educated, but not educated enough, become Marxists.
Marxist believers can only use science arguments by analogy, not as a method of falsifying their beliefs, because that would be just science and not “dialect” (magic word) and God forbid science tells you your leftist beliefs about the world are wrong 😂