Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On Jul 1, 5:27=A0am, tom.2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:

> I don=92t know why skeptics of dialects like srd insist on turning their
> ignorance about dialectics into a universal! =939 out of 10=94 posters
on
> this apst only understand the principle of quantity into quality but
> not the interpenetration of opposites? Does this mean you went back
> and looked at all messages on dialectics to reach this conclusion srd?

It was a generous estimate. Show me ONE instance where a poster
invoked some other law--the negation of the negation or the
interpenetration of opposites?


> I doubt it. You later say Hegel=92s concepts are =93archaic=94 and must
be=

> updated.

No. That's your misunderstanding. I said the terminology must be
updated, not the concepts represented by the terminology.

This is the source of your skepticism. Dialects must be
> studied to be learned. We may find it difficult that the dialectic was
> discovered by a German writing in the obtuse language of German
> philosophy of the early 19th century, but these are the conditions
> under which it was discovered (in an idealistic way). Once the wheel
> is invented, it doesn=92t have to be reinvented.
>
> srd says that most people understand the law of the transformation of
> quantity into quality, but not the law of the interpenetration of
> opposites. The example in nature of quantity into quality often used
> is the changes in matter from solid to liquid to gas. A quantitative
> change in temperature causes a qualitative change in the state of
> matter.
>
> A similar physical example can be used for the interpenetration of
> opposites. First of all temperature is relative. Temperature can only
> be truly understood in relation to other states of matter. One hundred
> degrees F is hot if we are talking about the weather, but relative to
> the surface of the sun it is insignificant.
>
> But further, dialectical logic sees all matter as a process.
> Temperature is a quantitative measure, but one reading does not
> recognize time. Temperature, when we measure it, is only a moment in a
> process. The relative states of hot and cold are opposites,

Why? What makes them opposites? No one that I'm aware of has even
proposed a definition of "opposite" in the dialectical sense. The
concept was presumably well understood by those steeped in Hegel, but
it need explication in relation to contem****ary understanding,
philosophical as well as scientific.

but they
> are a unity in conflict when seen as a process. You can=92t have one
> without the other if they are seen as a process. Hot depends on a
> source of heat, whether the sun, fire, electricity or the metabolism
> of warm-blooded animals. When the source of heat is removed the
> equilibrium that held hot and cold, which are opposites, in unity even
> while in conflict begins to break down. This unity in conflict is the
> interpenetration of opposites. The same can be seen in the birth and
> death of organisms. Birth and death are a unity in conflict. An
> organism begins to die even as it is being born.

I'm familiar with this and many other *examples*. Missing is an
account of the concepts of "opposite" and "interpenetration," such
that they can be *shown* to be examples of a unified principle.
>
> Roger correctly points out how people who claim to be Marxists
> frequently fall back into formal logic even when discussing
> dialectics. I think one of the reasons this is true today is because
> Marxists placed much emphasis on Lenin=92s "Philosophical Notebooks" in
> the last quarter of the 20th century. This was a book based on Lenin=92s
> notes on Hegel=92s "Logic". If "Logic" is all that someone knows about
> Hegel, they do not know Hegel. It must not be forgotten that Hegel
> came to prominence as a philosopher in his lifetime with
> "Phenomenology of Mind". "Logic" came later as a fine-tuning,
> correction, and clarification of "Phenomenology". In Phenomenology
> Hegel idealistically describes the evolution of sense perception to
> the absolute. It is in this process that he began to understand
> dialectics in a unified way. His Logic examines the various parts of
> thought. Anyone who only knows "Logic" knows the engine of the car,
> but "Phenomenology" is needed to know how to drive the car.

We don't have to read Newton to understand classical physics. Why must
non-scholars read Hegel to understand the dialectic?
>
> An excellent book to read on the subject is Ilynkov=92s 1979 book
> "Leninist Dialectics and the Metaphysics of Positivism:
> Reflections on V.I. Lenin=92s book, =91Materialism and Empirio-
> Criticism". =A0(http://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/positive/
> index.htm) =A0In it he says:
>
> =93But he (Lenin) had perfectly well grasped the essence of Hegelian
> Dialectics even earlier. We know that while he was at Shushenskoe (in
> 1908) he became familiar with the Phenomenology of Spirit, a work
> where this essence comes through the text much more clearly, vividly
> and concretely than in the texts of the "Science of Logic" or the
> "Lectures on the History of Philosophy". The fact that the notes from
> this period were not preserved, of course, by no means serves as
> sup****t for the interpretations of Garaudy and Petrovic.

Why must we read mystically, so that the "essence comes through the
text"?
>
> While preparing to write a materialistic "Science of Logic" by
> retaining everything in Hegel which is truly scientific and not of
> passing value, and by rigorously purging the Hegelian logic of
> everything in it connected with idealism, he studied, made notes, and
> commented on the Hegelian texts at the same time that the cannons of
> the first world war were thundering in Europe and the great October
> Revolution was reaching maturity.
>
> In 1908 he defended the rightness of the dialectics of Capital,
> and he defended its interests in the front lines of the battle for it
> =96
> along the border that then divided (and now divides) the materialist
> dialectics of Marx and Engels from the surrogates which resemble it
> on the surface, including belated Hegelianism. This includes idealism
> in general as well as the idealist version of dialectics.
> Lenin had no doubts that the Machist diversion in the rear lines
> of revolutionary Marxism was the direct continuation of the attack on
> materialist dialectics begun earlier by E. Bernstein. This is shown in
> his note to the article 'Marxism and Revisionism', which concludes the
> section of this article devoted especially to philosophy.=94 (p. 23,
> 24)"
>
> Tom"