Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On Jul 1, 10:48=A0am, John Holmes <jhol...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Jul 2008, tom.2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> > ...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.
>
> Well put.
>
>
>
> >...
> > 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, 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.
>
> That is one of my favorite lines from Bob Dylan, "all that are busy
> being born are busy dying."
>
>
>
>
>
> > 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.
>
> I've never tackled the "Logic," but I have gone after the
> "Phenomenology" a few times. A very difficult but worthwhile read.
>
>
>
>
>
> > 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.
>
> > 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.
>
> I read Lenin's notes a very long time ago. I remember being quite
> impressed with them at the time.
>
>
>
>
>
> > 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"
>
> Right.
>
> A brief and worthwhile introduction into Hegel's thought I
> would recommend is "Hegel: Texts and Commentary," by Walter Kaufman.
> Only 132 pages long. Doubleday & Co. (Garden City, NY 1966). It's an
> outtake from a big fat hardcover volume.
>
> It's simply the preface to the Phenomenology, with extensive notes.
> But what is most worthwhile is a little four-page piece by Hegel at
> the end, wherein Hegel, for probably the only time in his entire life,
> attempted to explain his philosophy for the general public.
>
> It's titled "Who Thinks Abstractly"? I quote a brief excerpt,
> appropriate to apst, for flavor:
>
> "'Old woman, your eggs are rotten! The maid says to the market woman.
> What? she replies, my eggs rotten? You may be rotten! You say that
> about my eggs? You? Did not lice eat your father on the highways?
> Didn't your mother run away with the French, and didn't your
> grandmother die in a public hospital? Let her get a whole ****rt
> instead of that flimsy scarf; we know where she got that ****rt and her
> hats: if it were not for those officers, many wouldn't be decked out
> like that these days, and if their lady****ps paid more attention to
> their households, many would be in jail right now. Let her mend the
> holes in her stockings!'
>
> --In brief, she does not leave one whole thread on her. She thinks
> abstractly and subsumes the other woman--scarf, hat, ****rt, etc. as
> well as fingers and other parts of her, and her father and whole
> family, too--solely under the crime that she has found the eggs
> rotten. Everything about her is colored through by these rotten eggs,
> while those officers of which the market woman spoke--if, as one may
> seriously doubt, there is anything to that--may have got to see very
> different things."
>
> -jh-

Meaning, dialectics is a tool allowing drawing distinctions with the
appropriate degree of concreteness. This is the aspect that Trotsky
emphasized in "In Defense of Marxism," where he analogized the
relation****p between dialectical and formal logic to motion pictures
and photographs. But how do you get from Engels's three laws to the
method of superimposition (as of photographs) for understanding
process. Dialectics appears as a patchwork, integrated by related
metaphors. This serves only as a starting point only for a science of
dialectical logic.

srd