The Dialectic

Does life make sense?

Consider the handsome young man who "catches" a wealthy, appreciative, older woman. He has little to do but exercise and look dashing and shop for clothing, and so on. His life is very pleasant for awhile: but soon he discovers that to his wife he is just another decorative bauble that she shows off at dinners and parties. He grows resentful and surly and his wife turns to other handsome men, of whom she has a sizeable collection.

He sits alone before his exercise machines, realizing that he is but one of many. He has no inner resources. He is miserable. What will he do?

Here we have a thesis: his good looks and their power to get him what he wants. And an antithesis: his realization that he has become a possession, a thing. The thesis-and the antithesis are in conflict.What is the resolution?

Hegel saw in Kant's antinomies the process of reason itself. But whereas Kant stopped at the contradictions, Hegel saw them as merely a stage which Mind goes through in coming to know reality. The Mind brings the thesis and its opposite, the antithesis, together into a synthesis, and that synthesis calls forth another antithesis, and on and on.

Hegel begins the development of his philosophy, for example, with the idea of Being. But to understand Being we must recognize its opposite, Non-Being. And how are these opposites reconciled? What can both be and not be? A thing that is coming-to-be both is and is not, so the synthesis is Becoming. And then the antithesis of that is ceasing to be, and so on. According to Hegel this dialectical process operates not only in the realm of thought but also in the world of the present and actual. It operates both in the lives of individuals and in world history.

So what is the synthesis of our example? How can our hero resolve his conflict?How can he retain his looks and yet recapture his status of being a person (and not just a possession)? Perhaps he will go back to school and learn to do something useful, and thereby transform himself into a person of more than decorative value. But of course that will generate conflict, too-- just as Hegel said.

Hegel seemed to believe his dialectic to be rigorously deductive. But clearly we could think of other syntheses for our example. Things don't have to happen as they do, do they? On the other hand, is there not a certain logic in our lives? Can you think of a conflict in your own life that can be understood in terms of Hegel's dialectic?

Bibliography

Hegel, G.W.F., The Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977.

Hegel, G.W.F. Reason in History, The Liberal Arts Press, Inc., New York, 1953.

Hegel, G,W.F., The Science of Logic, A.V. Miller translation, Allen & Unwin Ltd., London, 1969.