- 08 Mar 2018 23:39
#14894680
I ask this because it seems ambiguous and I am ambivalent about the way in which it seems reduced in a way that tends to negate the sense of using the term contradiction.
There is ambiguity in the history of Marxist thought
The last part of the above seems to be a Kantian move in confining contradiction as a subjective matter which seems to be a step back from Hegel and anything appropriated from his method, effectively leaving contradictions/antinomies unresolved in the mind.
https://broodsphilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/hegel-change-and-contradiction/
It seems that the term contradiction gets replaced with things like tension, opposition, antagonism and conflict.
The above I can jive with as having a place in Marxist thought and I've seen it reflected in in a summary of Ilyenkov's work in which the universal isn't an abstraction of common attributes for a thing.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/articles/universal.htm
http://69.195.124.91/~brucieba/2014/04/19/ilyenkovs-dialectic-of-the-abstract-and-the-concrete-iii/
But the issue I take with Richard Norman is that it raises the question of why Hegel in the first place had to create a logic for which existing logic was apparently inadequate.
Here's a good summary: Contradiction in Motion: Hegel's Organic Concept of Life and Value By Songsuk Susan Hahn
To which the above author cites authors who assert it is a myth that Hegel denies formal logical princinple of contradiction.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/stewart.htm
So somehow, Hegel's speculative logic stands on a different plane of reasoning, presumably because he has an expanded consideration of what is thought I guess.
Although, the earlier author notes that none of these people really clarify what the status of Hegel's position in regards to the law of contradiction.
It does seem though that there is something specific, that the antiomonies of reason found by Kant are though to be necessary conclusions of correct thought, as opposed to simply sloppy and errernous thinking that formal logic rightly rectifies.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/essays/essay5.htm
It seems crucial to dialectical logic that it is clarified.
There is ambiguity in the history of Marxist thought
Marxist philosophers have made similar denials about the Marxist view of dialectical contradiction. Sometimes contradiction is characterized as the co-existence of conflicting forces, which is hardly a logical interpretation. Priest cites a few to that effect. After the Stalin era (in which contradiction hazily covered a variety of meanings), a growing number of Soviet philosophers dissociated the notion of dialectical contradiction from any taint of logical contradiction (Sheptulin, Narskii), and some maintain that contradictions hold in thought but not in reality (Narskii).
The last part of the above seems to be a Kantian move in confining contradiction as a subjective matter which seems to be a step back from Hegel and anything appropriated from his method, effectively leaving contradictions/antinomies unresolved in the mind.
https://broodsphilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/hegel-change-and-contradiction/
It would be understatement to say that Hegel understands that one might seek to resolve the issue of those contradictions by locating notions in our Mind, and then saying that while contradiction will be necessary in the ‘realm of the Mind”, they don’t say anything about the external world (which would be thus left free of any contradictions). That is the Kantian solution, which Hegel contrasts with his own thus:
"The Kantian solution, namely, through the so-called transcendental ideality of the world of perception, has no other result than to make the so-called conflict into something subjective, in which of course it remains still the same illusion, that is, is as unresolved, as before. Its genuine solution can only be this: two opposed determinations which belong necessarily to one and the same Notion cannot be valid each on its own in its one-sidedness; on the contrary,they are true only as sublated, only in the unity of their Notion."
It seems that the term contradiction gets replaced with things like tension, opposition, antagonism and conflict.
Spoiler: show
The above I can jive with as having a place in Marxist thought and I've seen it reflected in in a summary of Ilyenkov's work in which the universal isn't an abstraction of common attributes for a thing.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/articles/universal.htm
Clearly, the concrete-empirical, apparent essence of the relation that binds together various phenomena (individuals) into some “one,” into a common “set,” is by no means delineated and expressed by their abstract-common feature, nor in the definition equally characteristic of both. The unity (“or commonness”) is provided much sooner by the “feature” which one individual possesses and another does not. The very absence of the known feature ties one individual to another much stronger than its equal presence in both.
Two absolutely identical individuals each of whom possesses the same set of knowledge, habits, proclivities, etc., would find themselves absolutely uninteresting to, and needless of, each other. It would be simply solitude multiplied by two. One wit, as he explained to his young friend the ABC of dialectical logic, advised him to ask himself the question: what is it in his bride that attracts the young man; wherein lie the ties of their “commonness”?
http://69.195.124.91/~brucieba/2014/04/19/ilyenkovs-dialectic-of-the-abstract-and-the-concrete-iii/
Ilyenkov has established that thinking in concepts entails revealing the real living unity of things, their concrete connection of interaction and not abstract dead unity.
Sameness is usually assumed to identify a link or interaction between phenomena. Yet the sameness does not reveal the essence of interconnection. For example two gears are locked together between their teeth and grooves not between tooth and tooth. They are connected through their opposite reflection.
A similar process is observed in chemical process between particles when to become a molecule one particle finds its compliment in another in the electrons within its opposite structure. Bonding takes place through one particle finding in the other a property which it lacks. Without this continuous coming together and breaking apart no cohesion or interaction exists either.
Indeed were two phenomena absolutely identical it would be hard to see any interaction between them ever taking place. Identical phenomena may exist side by side but in order for there to be interaction between them certain changes must take place within them that turns them into mutually opposing moments within a coherent whole.
But the issue I take with Richard Norman is that it raises the question of why Hegel in the first place had to create a logic for which existing logic was apparently inadequate.
Here's a good summary: Contradiction in Motion: Hegel's Organic Concept of Life and Value By Songsuk Susan Hahn
Either he must affirm contradictions, but they are of the barren variety that fatally reduces contradiction to an error that ought not to happen - hence, he loses contradiction as the positive, dynamic force that propels dialectical visions forward- or he must endorse a watered-down version involving conflicts and inconsistencies, which falls short of affirming strong, full-blooded contradictions, hence he loses his motivation for revising traditional forms of logical judgements. Hegel dismisses this either/or as artificial because it doesn't begin to exhaust the richness of possibility that can arise on a radically revised speculative logic.
To which the above author cites authors who assert it is a myth that Hegel denies formal logical princinple of contradiction.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/stewart.htm
The Myth that Hegel Denied the Law of Contradiction
It is often claimed in the Anglo-American tradition, which prides itself on its methodological rigor and deference to formal logic, that Hegel foolishly denied the law of contradiction. Some analytic philosophers, such as Bertrand Russell, have been led to this conclusion by a mistaken interpretation of Hegel’s dialectical method, which they claim resolves all dualisms and oppositions by simply not recognizing the contradiction involved in simple statements such as “P and not P’ The implication is that Hegel would have miserably failed a course on introductory logic. This Hegel legend is addressed by two different essays in this collection.
Robert Pippin, acclaimed for among other things his seminal study, Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness, recounts this myth and focuses on the notion of contradiction as a logical category in Hegel’s Logic. In his analysis of the Wesenslogik where Hegel’s disputed doctrine makes its appearance, Pippin tries to unpack some of Hegel’s most obscure philosophical terminology, such as “determinate negation” and “Aufhebung.” On the basis of this he offers a corrective interpretation of the notion of contradiction according to Hegel’s dialectical view.
In his essay, Robert Hanna complements Pippin’s analysis of Hegel’s doctrine of contradiction. Hanna indicates the different conceptual levels of logic according to Hegel, which allows him to make sense of Hegel’s criticism of the logic of his predecessors. Far from denying any logical principles per se, Hegel’s critique amounts to reinterpreting them from a higher standpoint. Hanna analyzes carefully Hegel’s account of judgment, syllogism, and contradiction, and lays to rest the view that Hegel rejected the law of contradiction.
So somehow, Hegel's speculative logic stands on a different plane of reasoning, presumably because he has an expanded consideration of what is thought I guess.
Although, the earlier author notes that none of these people really clarify what the status of Hegel's position in regards to the law of contradiction.
It does seem though that there is something specific, that the antiomonies of reason found by Kant are though to be necessary conclusions of correct thought, as opposed to simply sloppy and errernous thinking that formal logic rightly rectifies.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/essays/essay5.htm
he old logic, coming up against the logical contradiction that it itself brought to light just because it rigorously followed its own principles, always baulked at it, retreated to analysis of the preceding movement of thought, and always strove to find an error or mistake in it leading to the contradiction. For formal logical thinking contradictions thus became an insurmountable barrier to the forward movement of thought, an obstacle in the way of concrete analysis of the essence of the matter. It therefore also came about that ‘thought, despairing of managing by itself to resolve the contradiction into which it had got itself, turns back to the solutions and reliefs that were the spirit’s lot in its other modes and forms’. It could not be otherwise, since the contradiction did not develop through a mistake. No mistake, it ultimately proved, had been made in the preceding thinking. It was necessary to go even further back, to uncomprehended contemplation, sense perception, aesthetic intuition, i.e. to the realm of lower forms of consciousness (lower, that is, in relation to conceptual thinking), where there was really no contradiction for the simple reason that it had still not been disclosed and clearly expressed. (It never hurts, of course, to go back and analyse the preceding course of argument and check whether there has not been a formal mistake, for that also happens not infrequently; and here the recommendations of formal logic have a quite rational sense and value. It may turn out, as a result of checking, that a given logical contradiction is really nothing but the result of committing an error or mistake somewhere. Hegel, of course, never dreamed of denying such a case. He, like Kant, had in mind only those antinomies that developed in thought as a result of the most formally ‘correct’ and faultless argumentation.)
It seems crucial to dialectical logic that it is clarified.
A general impression though of Wald's discussion and of more recent discussion [Moran 1982], is that Marxist logicians everywhere recognize the law of contradiction as the key problem of dialectical logic, and have reached a level of high technical sophistication in these discussions, but no unanimity.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics
-For Ethical Politics