đź“• Node [[20210526115604 dialectics_why_theory]]
đź“„ 20210526115604-dialectics_why_theory.md by @ryan

Dialectics | Why Theory

source : Dialectics by Why Theory | Free Listening on SoundCloud

Notes

[[Dialectics]] is either:

  1. [[Contradiction]] is the driving force of thought and maybe being
  2. Identity is always involved in what negates it

[[Dialectics]] originates in [[Plato]], which for him was a form of argument. It was the idea that you could arrive at a form of [[truth]] by identifying contradiction.

Aside: Ryan makes a point in this episode that [[sophistry]] seems to have won out. In the court of law, the truth does not win out, but the best argument does.

Dialectics comes back onto the scene in philosophy with [[Kant]]’s “transcendental dialectic.”, which for him is the idea that we can know the limits to reason at the points where we run into contradiction, e.g. “does the universe have a beginning and an end?” We cannot know the fixed beginning and end.

[[Hegel]] intervenes at this point, believing that we can say something about these moments. “The failure of knowledge indicates something on the level of being.” It becomes an ontology for Hegel.

[[sense certainty]] : “all I can trust are my senses”

Aside from Ryan: we’re not “post-truth”, we’re pre-[[Enlightenment]], because of the prevalence of [[conspiracy thinking]].

For [[Hegel]], identifying something means to identify all the things it is not. Todd says that [[Adorno]] is wrong, then, because for Hegel, every position ultimately undermines itself if you simply play it out.

[[Hegel]], unlike [[Plato]] and [[Aristotle]], didn’t think one should simply get rid of a concept because it’s contradictory.

The [[dialectical]] approach sees things as interconnected, in contrast to the analytic approach which sees things in isolation.

Todd and Ryan believe that [[Lacan]] is a dialectical thinker, because he rejects the [[subject-object divide]]. This is best illustrated in his concept of [[objet a]], or the “object cause of desire”, because it’s something “external” to the subject but something that’s important to the subject, affecting the external world.

The link between [[Lacan]] and [[Hegel]] is the idea that the concept of [[drive]] is one of self-undermining.

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