WHAT DOES "DIALECTIC" MEAN ANYWAY?

By

Karl H. Puechl

March 1, 1992

The dictionary gives a number of definitions for the word "dialectic"; but current usage, is largely based upon the philosophic writings of the German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), whose writings eventually led Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to the concept of "dialectical materialism", a term which most of us have heard, but if you are like me, a term which you really do not comprehend.

Hegel took the notion of "dialectic" from both the Greek philosophers and from Immanuel Kant; it means, originally, "discussion". In a discussion between two people who are both seeking the truth of the topic which is being discussed, diametrically opposed points of view may first be advanced. Each antagonist, however, may gradually come to understand the other's position, and ultimately both of them may come to agree to reject their own partial views and to accept a new and broader view; i.e., the original opposition will have been reconciled in a higher synthesis. Hegel believed that thinking always proceeded according to this pattern: it begins by laying down a positive thesis which is at once negatived by its antithesis; then further thought produces the synthesis. But this in turn generates an antithesis and the same process continues once more. What is it that drives thinking on in this way? Hegel answers: "the power of the negative". According to Hegel, any process of development has two inseparable aspects; (1) the positive aspect of growth, the emergence of something new; and (2) the negative aspect of rejection, the discarding of the old.

Marx's and Engels' conception of dialectics owes much to Hegel. Everything is in continual process of becoming and ceasing to be, in which nothing is permanent but everything changes and is eventually superseded. All things contain contradictory sides of aspects, WHOSE TENSION OR CONFLICT IS THE DRIVING FORCE FOR CHANGE AND EVENTUALLY TRANSFORMS OR DISSOLVES THE CONTRADICTIONS. The evolutionary process is usually gradual with small-step quantitative increases or decreases, but then, at a certain stage, internal tensions reach a breaking point, and give rise to fundamental changes of quality. For instance, the example usually cited in discussions about communism, is the disparity between the socio-economic classes, between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, which disparity eventually leads to revolution which produces a new social order with perhaps somewhat lesser disparities, which again leads to revolution; and this continues until a social order develops which has no such disparities; i.e., utopian communism eventually evolves. But while Hegel saw change and development as the expression of the world spirit, or the workings of God , realizing itself in nature and in human society, for Marx and Engels it was inherent in the nature of the material world. They therefore held that one could not, as Hegel tried, deduce the actual course of events from any "principles of dialectics"; the principles, they contended, cannot be generalized but must be inferred from specific events.

Since all this was quite complicated, let me review it using somewhat different words. According to Hegel, change is the rule of life. Every idea, every force, irrepressibly breeds its opposite, and the two eventually merge into a "unity" that in turn produces its own contradiction. And history, said Hegel, is nothing but the expression of this flux of conflicting and resolving ideas and forces. Change---dialectical change---is immanent in human affairs. From Hegel's writings, sprang Marx's philosophy of dialectical materialism; DIALECTICAL because it incorporates Hegel's idea of inherent change, and MATERIALISM because it grounds itself not in the world of ideas, but in the terrain of the social and physical environment. "The materialist conception of history," wrote Engels, "starts from the principle that production, and with production the exchange of its products, is the basis of every social order; that in every society that has appeared in history the distribution of the products, and with it the division of society into classes or estates, is determined by what is produced and how it is produced, and how the product is exchanged. According to this conception, the ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in the minds of men, in their increasing insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the mode of production and exchange; they are to be sought not in the PHILOSOPHY but in the ECONOMICS of the epoch concerned." And subsequently, Marx said: "Every society, is built on an economic base---the hard reality of human beings who must organize their activities to clothe and feed and house themselves. But whatever the form in which men solve their basic economic problem, society will require a whole "superstructure" of noneconomic activity and thought---it will need to be bound together by laws, supervised by a government, inspired by religion and philosophy. But the superstructure of thought cannot be selected at random. It must mirror the foundation on which it is raised." Note that this doctrine of materialism does not toss away the catalytic function and creativity of ideas. It only maintains that thoughts and ideas are the PRODUCT of environment, even though they aim to change that environment. "Men make their own history," wrote Marx, "but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given, and transmitted from the past. The process of history pays no attention to likes and dislikes. Gradually conditions change, and gradually, but surely, the classes of society are rearranged. The philosophers hitherto have only interpreted the world in various ways; the thing, however, is to change it". This quotation expresses the real reason for this talk: to show that we are not entirely bound by fate; that we can be a force for change. I'll get back to this later on.

I now suspect, that the reason I never clearly understood Hegel's or Marx' and Engels' concepts is that I doubt their validity. I just don't think that they are valid interpretations of what goes on in the real world. Hegel's philosophy was what I call "animistic" which means that it projects intent or purpose (as is usually ascribed to animal behavior, especially that of man) to everything that goes on in the universe. Marx and Engels did not like this "worldly or spiritual intent" but they were incapable of discarding intent altogether; they simply said that resolution of the dialectic depends on the conditions that exist at the time; which, to me, doesn't say much except that cultural evolution is determined by environment. And this, I think, is not quite correct; I say that first comes chance, or an extraneous occurrence, which is then either rejected or accepted by the environmental conditions; the environmental conditions of themselves do not determine the evolution; there must first be some extraneous event (such as, in biology, a random mutation of a gene or, in sociology, for example, the emergence of a charismatic leader); an extraneous event that alters the state to which the environmental conditions can respond. I further contend that in the real world, whether we are considering cosmology, biology or culture, there are no inherent "evolutionary processes"; evolution is strictly a chancy thing that "advances" or "regresses" depending upon the existing environment. Personally, I believe that each situation has both positive and negative tendencies, like a coin has both a heads and a tails, but that these opposites tend to diverge with time rather than for the differences to become resolved like all three of these worldly philosophers seem to have thought. I'll admit that so far this is only a half-baked idea that I have. Let me try to convince you of its validity; I'll leave lots of time for discussion so that you can argue with me if you become so inclined. While I believe that the correct interpretation of the workings of the dialectic applies to biological evolution and cultural adaptation, with cultural adaptation being the most important to the human species at this time, let me start my presentation with examples taken from genetics. Using this technique, I'm sort of following the path taken by Richard Dawkins in his book entitled "The Selfish Gene", which I referred to in a previous talk.

Mutations occur spontaneously in the genome--the "hereditary substance". These are mainly due to what a physicist would call "thermodynamic fluctuations"---in other words to pure chance. As most of you know, Darwin's theory was not the first systematic theory of evolution. It was preceded by the theory of Lamarck, (Chevalier De Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine De Monet Lamarck, 1744-1829) which rests entirely on the assumption that any new features an individual has acquired by specific surroundings or behavior during its lifetime before procreation can be, and usually, are, passed on to its progeny, if not entirely, at least in traces. Unhappily Lamarckism is untenable. The fundamental assumption on which it rests, namely, that acquired properties can be inherited, is generally recognized as being wrong. However, as I'll cover in greater detail later on, behavior can provide nurture for acceptance or rejection of mutational change, and thereby behavior can indeed influence selection, which leads to what might be called "feigned or pseudo Lamarckism".

Since there are about 100,000 genes in a human cell (which determine who and what we are), a single mutation may, on rare occasions, have large consequences, but usually the changes are relatively minor. However, even though the immediate consequence may be small, most mutations start the organism down a particular irrevocable path of evolution. (This is perhaps best illustrated by looking at cultural evolution; once man took the path of science, technology, and invention, there was no way for him to later refuse to the accept the things that technology handed to him. And I might add that this cultural feature also illustrates my point of increased polarization of the dialectic with time; our technology has now given us nuclear energy which can provide man with his energy needs for millennia, but it also gives man the capability to destroy not only his own species but all life on this planet.) Getting back to biology, even if a subsequent mutation were to occur which reverses the initial mutation, the organism would not end up in its original condition because of intervening mutations of other closely-related genes. Now once on a new path, the organism is somewhat different from the main stream, and this has both positive and negative aspects; or put into other words, every mutation is a "high-risk" occurrence. For example, if a particular mutation produced red hair in a predominantly black-haired society, the red hair would have a number of possible effects for the individual. The effect could be called biologically positive since the red hair might be especially attractive to the opposite sex, and thereby might increase the individual's pleasure and also chances for survival of his novel genetic makeup. However, the effect could also be called negative since the red hair might attract preditors, which could result in the early demise of the individual and the early extinction of the novel genetic makeup. Or, the effect might be doubly negative if it not only attracted preditors but was also considered repulsive by the opposite sex; in which case the tendency for red hair would probably soon be eased out of the gene pool. The mutation, initially, could also be doubly positive but even in this instance it should be noted that the potentially negative aspect is always in the background (as a recessive characteristic if you wish to call it that), and could at times achieve dominance if the environment changed. For example, what might happen to the future of red-haired tendencies in a given locale, if a conflagration (which might be considered to be an unpredictable occurrence and extraneous to the dialectic under discussion) made people associate red hair with uncontrollable fire; i.e., if the cultural attitudes changed so that red hair was thought to be grotesque by the opposite sex? I say again: a mutation such as red-hair, or any mutation for that matter, is a high-risk venture: it could be an immediate flop; it could be very successful initially but, always with the latent possibility for failure;. or it could be successful with success being a continuing battle between the positive and the negative aspects. A priori, nature nor anyone nor anything else cannot predict the outcome. However, I contend that the final outcome will not come about through the resolution of the differences between the positive and the negative aspects, which is what would be expected if one believed Hegel's philosophy; I say that both aspects will continue to exist, with the differences probably widening as further mutations send the "creature" down the path of red hair, fairer skin, freckles, etc.

A similar illustration, but a bit more complicated is the series of mutations, the path laid out by an initial successful mutation, that resulted in reproductive ease or high rates of procreation. In general, the capability to reproduce many off-springs is probably advantageous for the survival of the species; in fact, it might be concluded that capability for reproducing at a high exponential rate was probably necessary for the survival of any species when considering the extremely hostile environment that had to be overcome at any particular time. If many more plants or animals than needed had not been produced at all times in the past, the biota without this capability would have succumbed to the environmental conditions and/or to preditors. Survival through most of the time on earth meant survival through profligacy. On the other hand, this also was a high risk venture, and indeed many plants and animals died out just because they had built into their genetic systems the ability to reproduce at a prodigious rate compared to what was necessary in a benign environment. In such a benign environment, trees for example, might drop their acorns and grow so densely that the sunlight would not be able to penetrate the foliage, and further, the root system might so deplete the necessary nourishment in the soil so that the trees would eventually become incapable of further reproduction and would die out. And if the climatic conditions were such, little wind for example, the entire species would die out because it could not migrate or spread. Similarly, with animals. They too might be so prolific that they exhausted their local food supply, and if they too were prevented from migrating because of geographical conditions, surrounding mountains or deserts, or surrounding preditors, the species could readily become extinct. In fact, even today it is not certain whether the human race will continue to exist and spread because it is so prolific, or whether this prolificacy will eventually lead to its demise because of over-crowding; which can lead to exhaustion of the earth's resources, conflicts over such resources and territory, etc. In short, here too, there is a strong positive feature and a strong negative feature, and, without some apparently extraneous influence (perhaps that which technology can offer) these can be expected to continue to exist side-by-side without any inherent mechanism for reconciliation.

As another example, consider almost any characteristic that is somewhat outside of the norm in a particular society. A Mozart is admired for his uniqueness; someone else with a different unique characteristic that may come from a not dissimilar genetic consequence may be sent to an insane asylum. Again, a strong positive and a strong negative. Nature is an inherent gambler, plays a high-risk game with big stakes; it employs almost an all-or-nothing strategy from initial cosmology to continued evolution of the highest forms of life and, ultimately to cultural evolution.

Now let us consider a more human characteristic, love. Initially, there occurred a mutation that sent an early ancestor of the Homo Sapiens species on the path towards the need for increased nurturing; towards a path so that the young, eventually, were incapable of survival without a long period of reliance: on the mother for nourishment and; on the clan for protection and education. This, in itself, was a high risk occurrence. The immature young were always at risk; a toddler might stray from his mother and eat an attractive red berry, only to die of poisoning; or a predator might escape the wary eye of guarding clansmen and carry the baby off somewhere to be eaten. On the positive side, if the young one ever survived to become an adult, it would be in a much better position to then deal with and adjust to the vagaries of nature or to better find food, or to better ward off preditors. Again, a strong positive and a strong negative aspect to this particular modification or characteristic. Now what may be surprising is that as an organism proceeds down a particular path, for example the path that almost continually increases the post-gestation period of immaturity, the negative and positive aspects of the high-lighted characteristic become more diverse: i.e., they become more polarized. Let's take the case that we are considering all the way up the evolutionary ladder to man. Our young children require the nurturing from the mother and the community; and as a consequence of the mental conditioning resulting therefrom, they will require some degree of nurturing, or love if you will, throughout their lives. The positive aspect of this is that man, throughout life, will require interaction with others and will attempt to find love throughout his life; and since love is a reciprocal relationship, man through this early nurturing has the capability to care for others, and to build a culture. On the other hand, if a young child is deprived of some of this early-required nurturing, of love if you will, he will become what we now call mal-adjusted and will seek excessive amounts of love, perhaps by extreme action throughout his life. Why do we have such phrases as "God is love" or "Jesus loves you"? They were invented to give those who were initially deprived, and later need an inordinate amount of love from others, the chance to be loved vicariously by things which do not exist. Similarly, the need for love, or the need to forget that one is not loved to the extent desired, can result in the use of mind-altering drugs; illegal drugs such as cocaine, heroin, marijuana, or legal drugs such as alcohol, or Valium. Similarly, the need for love results in the desire to own something, territory and things, and even a mate or two, and the need to defend these things, and it also results in jealousy. And even the human inclination for war can be attributed to either a deprivation of early love, or the need for continuing love, or both. Consequently, it can be tersely stated that the human need for love is the mechanism that has produced civilization through the need for cooperation; but this need also has within it the negative seed for the destruction of the human race. Again, it is simply too early to tell whether the positive or the negative aspect of this characteristic will eventually win out.

In an essay entitled "An Evolutionist Looks at Modern Man", Loren Eiseley, the sociologist/anthropologist describes this situation in somewhat different terms but, he misses entirely the relationship between "tenderness" and "toughness", using his words. "Man has not really survived by toughness in a major sense---even the great evolutionists Darwin and Wallace had had trouble with that aspect of man---instead, he has survived through tenderness. ... Although the family differs in many of its minor features in distinct societies, it is always and everywhere marked by its tender and continuing care of the human offspring through the lengthened period of childhood. Man's first normal experience of life involves maternal and paternal care and affection. For without the mysteriously increased growth rate of the brain and the correlated willingness of fallible, loving adults to spend years in nursing the helpless offspring they have produced, man would long since have vanished from the earth. ... He is born of love and he exists by reason of a love more continuous than in any other form of life. Yet this, in all irony, is the creature who professes to pierce the shams of life and to live by tough-mindedness! `Man is,' as the philosopher Henri Bergson once remarked, `a reservoir of indetermination; his power of choice for good or evil is enormous.' Nevertheless, as I have said, no creature in the world demands more love than man; no creature is less adapted to survive without it. ... Man is not yet completed---that is the secret of his paradoxical behavior. He is not made. He is, perhaps, about to be. Once long ago in the Middle Ages he was called "Homo duplex"---a thing half of dust and half of spirit. The term well expresses his predicament. Man, unlike the animal, is aware of the nature of his society. His conscious image of it is tremendously important in shaping what it will become." While I like Eiseley's description of man's predicament, the underlying dialectic, I cannot agree with him that man's realization of his predicament will help to shape man's future. Beyond realization, some force or mechanism external to the dialectic will be needed to balance the scale in favor of survival.

I can quote other sources that also voiced the dialectic or the dichotomy inherent in certain situations. In Ecclesiastes 1:18, for example, the writer says: "Much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."

And using the quotation (by Arnold Toynbee, the historian) that Phil put on the board a few weeks ago: "The same elements that build up an institution eventually lead to its downfall." It should be noted that Toynbee also does not speak of resolution of differences within the dialectic but rather of maintaining the dialectic until one side wins; but, to my knowledge, he never attempts to say why or how this might come about.

Looking at the current world situation, I think that it would not be stretching the point to say that many of the dialectics that have been with us for a long period of time can shortly be resolved, favorably or unfavorably, by the seemingly extraneous environmental changes that have been introduced by man or that will be introduced by nature because of the actions of man. Let me just highlight of few of these by asking some questions.

Will available technology (the extraneous factor) be applied in time to save mankind from misery and possible extinction due to his prolificacy coupled with his newly-found medical advances?

Man's increasing proficiency with "genetic engineering" will undoubtedly resolve some of the dialectics in a favorable fashion; but will man, with his limited intelligence, introduce greater problems than he is eliminating?

Women undoubtedly have the right to the freedom necessary for self-realization, fulfillment, and happiness; however, since this means that they have less time available for providing the nurturing necessary for the development of psychologically well-adjusted offspring, will our culture find an appropriate balance or mechanism so that society does not end up with either bitter women, mal-adjusted offspring, or both? In the two previous examples, technology was the extraneous outside force; in this example, I am at a loss to even conjecture about the nature of the mechanism that might be capable of inducing a resolution.

I'm sure that we can come up with many more similar questions; especially if we begin to consider the nature of our institutions. However, time is running short; so I'd like to wrap this up by leaving you with a very specific thought:

We must not wait for things to come, believing that they are decided by irrescindable destiny. If we want it, we must do something about it. Political and social developments, and the sequence of historical events in general, are not thrust upon us by the spinning of the Fates, but are largely dependent upon our own doing. The destiny of mankind is not to be taken as unalterable, a something decided in advance by some Law of Nature or some Deity. I agree with Karl Marx that the limits of our actions and their impacts are severely constrained by our current condition and the environment under which we live; however, these constraints are no excuses for inaction, an alternative which surely would result in the demise of the species, Homo Sapiens.