Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On 30 Jun, 23:26, stephen <srdiam...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Jun 30, 9:31 am, rab <rogeralanblackw...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > It is only by taking a critical attitude to this 'formalising of
> > dialectics' that we can develop dialectical materialism today but this
> > work doesn't easily fit into the everyday consciousness because in the
> > struggle to grasp even works by Hegel the mind tends to 'formalise'
> > the content in order to understand the logic espoused.  It is
> > necessary to suspend 'judgement' for a time and just follow the
> > 'argument' in the order that this 'content' may stimulate new thought
> > through contradiction.  Whilst the work of some of those soviet
> > philosophers may be useful in presenting the 'bare bones' of
> > dialectical categories and their interconnections it is necessary to
> > understand the 'active' side of dialectics and the fact that it
> > develops through struggle.
>
> There's a reason 9 out of ten times an apst poster invokes a
> dialectical law, it is the law of the transformation of quantity into
> quality. It is the only law anyone understands.
>
> We have a dialectical law described as the "law of the
> interpenetration of opposites." Neither of the two substantive terms
> mean much of anything relevant to most people, myself included. Does
> anyone have a *straightforward* idea of what interpenetration of
> opposites is, like we all do for quantity/quality?
>
> Forget formalization. What is needed is explication, built up from our
> current vernacular, rather than continuing to express these concepts
> in an archaic Hegelian ideolect. It seems to me that the subjective
> experience you describe when you suspend judgment resembles the
> mystical more than the scientific.
>
> srd

It is fine to use the everyday language of the 21st century but the
formal logic learned at school and university does not suffice to
'understand' dialectics and that is why I wrote about suspending
judgement not as a thing of faith but keeping the mind open enough to
learn a new approach to thinking itself.  And I do think that many
people understand the transformation of something into its opposite,
the new into the old, the revolutionary party into a counter-
revolutionary one as with Stalinism etc.

Not all Hegelian concepts and categories are archaic, many remain
useful in developing critical thought.  I would agree that sometimes
Healy for instance presented dialectics perhaps too heavily loaded
with Hegelian concepts and categories for many to understand but it
will always be a struggle to teach dialectics because it is very much
an active method of thought rather than a more passive and structured
one.  Dialectical thought and revolutionary practice go hand in hand
and will always antagonise the formal scholar.

Roger