STATEMENT

6 DEC 2024

Statement on the Routledge International Handbook of Dialectical Thinking (2025) edited by N. Shannon, M.F. Mascolo & A. Belolutskaya

It is perhaps fittingly contradictory that The Routledge International Handbook of Dialectical Thinking should open with the statement that “no single, dominant definition or model of dialectical thinking currently exists.” Nor, its editors argue, “should this be the case, since the concept of dialectic is a fluid one that has emerged over centuries of development in human thought.” The contradiction arises, however, when, on the same page, they acknowledge that “dialectical thinking is, today, commonly associated with a triadic model where a thesis [...] is countered by an antithesis [...] which is ultimately resolved by the generation of a synthesis.”

The problem with this statement is that, contrary to their initial declaration that dialectical thinking cannot and even should not be defined in any specific way, the editors proceed to endorse a problematic and long-discredited conception of dialectic that, unfortunately, will resurface repeatedly throughout the book. It is, therefore, doubly regrettable that the editors, first, feel they are unable to provide a proper definition of dialectical thinking, yet then go on to establish a spurious “synthesis” model of dialectic that is uncritically accepted and employed by the majority of the book’s contributors, thus undermining its claim to be a handbook of dialectical thinking at all.

So, what’s wrong with “synthesis”? In a word, nothing—the “synthesis of opposites,” “resolution of conflict,” “harmonization of opposing ideas,” “integration of oppositions”—all these are legitimate endeavors that can lead to beneficial outcomes, as demonstrated throughout the book. They’re simply not dialectical. And the problem isn’t just the form, i.e., the triadic formula of “thesis–antithesis–synthesis” (TAS)—which the editors rightly point out has a long (and erroneous) history of association with the 19th century dialectical philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel. As they explain, TAS does not appear in Hegel’s work at all, but, in fact, predates him, appearing, instead, in the late 18th century writings of J.G. Fichte—specifically, his book, Science of Knowledge, which contains countless references to “synthesis.” One word notably absent from Fichte’s work, however, is dialectic—an absence that should come as no surprise since Fichte never claimed to be a dialectical thinker … but it should signal significant problems for anyone hoping to maintain a synthesis model of dialectic, since, in shifting their paradigm of dialectical thinking from Hegel to Fichte (in order to hold onto the formulaic conception of dialectic as TAS), the handbook’s editors (and most of its contributors) have, inadvertently, abandoned dialectic itself, as well. This is because the most serious error wasn’t believing that TAS was Hegelian in origin, but that TAS (or synthesis-thinking, more generally) was dialectical at all—so, taking a leap back to Fichte addressed only the minor problem of attribution, rather than the much more significant need to define dialectic accurately and authoritatively in the first place … and, in that case, the initial instinct to appeal to Hegel proves to have been correct.

Adorno described dialectic as “the epitome of Hegel’s philosophy,” and acknowledged him as “the great founder of dialectics,” while Marx praised him as “the first to present its general forms of motion in a comprehensive and conscious manner.” Hegel himself explained that his system of thought “sets out a new elaboration of philosophy”—one in which “an altogether new concept of scientific procedure is at work.” That concept is dialectic—and dialectic, for Hegel, is decidedly not a synthesis. We know this not only because Hegel does not use the word “synthesis” to describe the workings of dialectic, but also because he explains that “the sense most closely attached to ‘synthesis’ is that of an external gathering of things externally at hand.” (And the same could also be said of “integration,” “harmonization,” and other pseudo-dialectics employed in the Handbook.) “Synthesis,” Hegel says, “easily conjures up the picture of an external unity, of a mere combination of terms that are intrinsically separate.” Hegel is here identifying the main problem with trying to see synthesis, integration, harmonization, etc. as dialectical: i.e., their presupposition of opposed elements (dualities, dichotomies, etc.) in need of being brought together and unified, while the result of such a unification could only be what he describes as “a neutral unity, or a synthesis, that is, a unity of terms that are originally separate, [and therefore] only externally conjoined.”

Adorno explained that he, too, had an “aversion towards the concept of synthesis,” which he said he found to be “profoundly suspect,” while he regarded the “creaking triadic scheme” of TAS as nothing more than an “external intellectual game of juggling contradictions”—a game he called “absurd and superficial,” as well as “entirely misleading.” We could also mention here Gadamer’s account of TAS as just “a few rickety concepts,” whose combination he described as an “artificially formulated” construction.

If dialectic is not a synthesis or bringing together of things that are separate and opposed to each other, then how does Hegel explain it? At its simplest, he says dialectic is “nothing more than the regulated, methodically cultivated spirit of contradiction that is inherent in every human being.” Now, normally, logical thinking attempts to avoid contradiction at all costs, rather than embrace it, as Hegel does in this statement. In fact, the principle of non-contradiction is usually considered to be one of the inviolable “laws of thought,” yet Hegel’s philosophical career began with his public defense of the thesis: “Contradiction is the rule of the true,” while, later, in his philosophical Encyclopedia, he wrote even more forcefully:

While not thesis–antithesis–synthesis, there is, in fact, a triplicity to Hegel’s thought, beginning with the above-mentioned intellect or understanding (Verstand). “[I]ts principle is identity,” he says—“Everything is equal to itself; A=A”—by which the intellect differentiates, defines and holds things apart—hence Hegel’s characterization of it as “abstract”—from the Latin, abstraho: to drag away, remove (forcibly), detach, separate. This principle, however, “instead of being a true law of thinking,” Hegel says, “is nothing but the law of the abstract intellect.” It is this abstraction that enables us to apprehend things “in terms of their determinate differences,” and we employ it, he says, in our consideration of nature, in mathematics, geometry, education, the law, the functioning of the state, and even in philosophy itself, which “requires, above all, that each thought should be grasped in its full precision and that nothing should remain vague and indeterminate.”

This power of abstraction, however—what Hegel calls the intellect’s “strict either/or”—is not only its strength, but also its weakness. Intellectual thinking “is not something ultimate,” Hegel says; on the contrary, “it is finite, and, more precisely, it is such that, when it is pushed to an extreme, it overturns into its opposite.” This is what Gadamer describes as “radicalizing a position until it becomes self-contradictory.”

This realization—that ordinary logical thought “must fall into the negative of itself, [i.e.] into contradiction”—Hegel says, provides us with the insight that “the nature of thinking itself is dialectic.” Marcuse strengthens this point when he writes: “Dialectic in its entirety is linked to the conception that all forms of being are permeated by an essential negativity, and that this negativity determines their content and movement.”

In this way, we can see that dialectic is not what Hegel describes as “an extraneous art;” it is not some esoteric method to be applied at will, but, instead, simply the intellect’s letting go of its own predilection for non-contradiction—i.e., the convention of identity-thinking in terms of fixed, rigid determinations. The way Adorno explains this point is to say that “dialectics means to break the compulsion to achieve identity, and to break it by means of the energy stored up in that compulsion and congealed in its objectifications.” For this reason, we should not think about dialectic “as something brought to bear on thought-determinations from outside,” Hegel suggests, “but rather as inherent in them themselves.” “What is dialectical,” he says, “is the passage of such determinations into their opposites.” And “this does not occur,” he explains, “by comparing one determination externally with another,” or as “the result of hunting about it externally to find its opposite.” That kind of external approach would bring us back to the dialectical fallacy of thesis – antithesis – synthesis, while “true dialectic,” Hegel says, “peers into such a definition as is provided by the intellect and contemplates what is contained therein, whereupon it results that, without anything being brought in from the outside, the definition, by its very content, contradicts itself.”

Note that Hegel is not saying that one thing is contradicted or negated by another, but, instead, contradicts itself. It is this conception of self-contradiction that Marx called “the source of all dialectics,” while, to Adorno, it was the motor of “dialectical movement”, which

Hegel calls this discovery of internal contradiction the “dialectical moment.” This is the second stage of his triplicity of thought, which he describes as “the self-sublation [Sichaufheben] of these finite determinations [of the intellect] on their own part, and their passing into their opposites.” Dialectic is thus “this immanent [process of ] going beyond [such determinacy] wherein the one-sided and limited character of the determinations of the intellect presents itself as what it is, namely as their negation. Everything finite is this, the sublating of itself [sich selbst aufzuheben].”

With its multiple connotations and notable lack of an English equivalent, the German verb aufheben (usually translated as “to sublate”) can be difficult to understand, but its meaning “must be grasped with precision,” Hegel says, because “sublation and what is sublated [...] constitute one of the most important concepts of philosophy.” In the dictionary, aufheben has many contrasting definitions, but Hegel is most interested in two, the first being negative: “clearing away” or “negating,” he says, as in the case of a law being repealed or an institution abolished—both are said to have been “sublated” (aufgehoben). But “what is sublated,” Hegel says, “does not thereby turn into nothing.” This is because aufheben also has the positive meaning of “to keep,” “preserve” or “save”—so that what is sublated is negated without being destroyed or forgotten, but is instead kept and preserved. “This dual sense in linguistic usage, according to which one and the same word has a negative as well as a positive meaning, must not be regarded as a coincidence,” Hegel says. Rather, it should be taken as a sign of “the speculative spirit of our language that transcends the either/or of mere understanding.”

For Hegel, Gadamer says, the originally negative connotation of Aufhebung (“sublation”)

This dialectical transcendence of the intellect brings us to the third mode of thinking alluded to by Hegel above: the speculative. He describes dialectic as “negatively rational” because it sees the negative or self-contradictory nature of things, while he calls speculation “positively rational” because it has the power to see beyond ordinary ways of thinking. Heidegger went so far as to describe the speculative nature of Hegel’s logic as “the most powerful thinking of modern times.” Speculative thought embodies “the principle of totality,” Hegel says, “and shows itself to reach beyond the one-sidedness of the abstract determinations of the intellect.” The “struggle of reason” (Vernunft)—both dialectical and speculative (negative and positive)—he says, “consists precisely in overcoming what the intellect has made rigid.”

We have now seen that, rather than the spuriously dialectical triplicity of TAS (or any kind of “synthesis thinking” more generally), Hegel employs a differently triadic approach to thought, one with dialectic at its heart—i.e., ADS: abstract, dialectical and speculative—in which the intellect abstractly separates and defines things without contradiction, while reason is, first, dialectical in recognizing the contradictions inherent in the one-sided abstractions of the intellect, and, second, speculative in seeing beyond one-sided oppositions to their unity. What is visible to speculative thinking, Hegel says, “is the concrete unity of just those determinations that count as true for the intellect only in their separation and opposition.” The unity of speculative thinking is “concrete” (literally: “grown together”) because it results from mediation—the mediation of passing through the dialectical moment of self-negation so that it is what Hegel describes as “the negation of negation” or “concrete, absolute negativity.” It is in “grasping opposites in their unity,” Hegel says, “or the positive in the negative, that the speculative consists. It is the most important aspect of dialectic, but for the still unpracticed, unfree faculty of thought, [it is] the most difficult.”

Hegel does not claim to have invented or discovered dialectic, but, instead, attributes its discovery (in its modern form) to Kant—Kant’s discovery being that “the contradiction posited in the realm of reason by the determinations of the intellect is essential and necessary.” Hegel says that this discovery—that contradiction is real—must be regarded as “one of the most important and profound advances in the philosophy of recent times.” Kant’s mistake, however, according to Hegel, was in relegating this real contradiction to just a few special cases of thought alone (which he called the “antinomies of pure reason”), when instead, Hegel says (emphatically), we find antinomy (i.e., direct contradiction) “in all objects of all kinds, in all representations, concepts, and ideas.” Marcuse explains this important point by saying:

That “different logic” is dialectic, while “ordinary logic,” Hegel says, is “in error in supposing that the mind is something that completely excludes contradiction from itself.” This is why dialectical thinking cuts against the grain of ordinary (non-contradictory) analytical thought, and why we have seen Hegel characterize it as unfamiliar and difficult … but it is, by no means, impossible. This is because it is in the mind or the human spirit [Geist], Hegel says, that “contradiction as such comes to light.” The mind “has the power to preserve itself in contradiction and, therefore, in pain”—which may seem like an odd thing for Hegel to say, especially when he adds that, as living beings, it is our “privilege [...] to feel pain.” But, “[t]o endure pain,” he says, “means that we preserve ourselves in spite of the negative that is in us.” In other words, the mind “can endure the negation of its individual immediacy [...] i.e., it can maintain itself affirmatively in this negativity.” What this means, Hegel says, is that “[t]he other, the negative, contradiction, division thus belong to the nature of the mind. In this division lies the possibility of pain.”

The mind is able to endure this pain of contradiction, Hegel says,

Above, we saw Hegel characterize non-dialectical thinking as “unfree”—“the still [...] unfree faculty of thought”—unfree because it is bound by the so-called “laws of thought,” compelled to avoid (self-)contradiction, and, therefore, unable to follow thought’s own immanent dialectical (and speculative) development. We have also seen him speak of the pain of negation and contradiction. But, as he memorably puts it in the Encyclopedia: “It is thinking that both inflicts the wound and heals it again.” The abstract thinking of the intellect tries, unsuccessfully, to conceive of itself and the world in non-contradictory terms, while dialectical and speculative thinking reveal and resolve the contradictions inherent in both thought and reality.

This is what Hegel means when he says that the mind produces its own freedom. In fact, he goes so far as to declare that “the essence of mind is freedom”—freedom it achieves through thinking both dialectically and speculatively. “The mind is not an inert entity,” he says, “but is rather what is absolutely restless, pure activity—the negating [...] of every fixed determination of the intellect.”

What Hegel is saying is that dialectical thinking’s dissolution of the restrictive thinking of the intellect and its embrace of contradiction is what creates the possibility of real freedom— freedom that “constitutes humanity's truly inherent nature,” and which “does not consist in static being, but in a constant negation of all that threatens to destroy freedom.” The “concept of freedom,” Hegel says, “is the fundamental object and thus also the driving principle of [human] development.” What speculative philosophy shows, he says, is that “freedom is the one authentic property of the mind,” so that “[r]eason is thought determining itself in absolute freedom.” And the way it determines itself, as we have seen, is dialectically.

Schelling said that “[t]rue dialectic exists only in the realm of freedom; it alone has the power to solve all riddles”—an ability that Marcuse called “the power of negative thinking.” Apart from solving riddles, what Marcuse says this power is capable of achieving is liberation (Befreiung)— a word he borrows from Hegel. “The liberating function of negation in philosophical thought,” Marcuse says, “depends upon the recognition that the negation is a positive act ”—an idea also borrowed from Hegel, who expressed the “simple insight” that

It is determinate negation, Marcuse says, “that denotes the governing principle of dialectical thought,” and “[t]he negation is determinate,” he says, “if it refers the established state of affairs to the basic factors and forces that make for its destructiveness [i.e., its destruction of human freedom], as well as for the possible alternatives beyond the status quo.”

Dialectical thought itself, therefore, becomes “necessarily destructive,” Marcuse says.

Returning to Hegel’s critique of non-contradictory (analytical) thinking, Marcuse says (apparently with Hegel’s famous phrase “[t]he true is the whole” in mind):

Marcuse dramatically describes this unfolding as the “catastrophic dynamism” of dialectic— catastrophic because it “reflects the unconscious destructiveness of nature, [and] the conscious destructiveness of history,” both of which—the world and history—exhibit dialectical movement and development within themselves. Everything that exists, Marcuse says,

This progress towards (self-)liberation is what we saw Marcuse refer to above as going “beyond the status quo,” i.e., “qualitative change”—a prerequisite of which, he says, is “the ability of thought to develop a logic and language of contradiction.” This is “the power of negative thinking” or dialectic in action, which Marcuse says “‘corresponds’ to reality only as it transforms reality by comprehending its contradictory structure. Here the principle of dialectic drives thought beyond the limits of philosophy,”—i.e., from thinking to doing, from theory to practice. Sartre said “dialectic is nothing other than praxis,” and described it as “the living logic of action.” One might even characterize this praxis as the “dialectics of liberation” … but not Marcuse, who called this a “redundant phrase”—redundant because, he says, “I believe that all dialectic is liberation—and not only liberation in an intellectual sense, but liberation involving the mind and the body, liberation involving all of human existence.”

To return, finally, to the problems of the Handbook of Dialectical Thinking, many of its most glaring errors—e.g., dealing in pseudo-dialectics and synthesis-thinking—could easily have been avoided if the book’s editors had started by taking a coherent position on dialectic, rather than resurrecting the dialectical fallacy of thesis–antithesis–synthesis—a “rickety” formula that would never have been accepted as being legitimately dialectical by anyone familiar with the works of dialectical thinkers such as Hegel, Adorno, Marcuse, etc., and which we have seen, has been soundly refuted by others. The editors (and their contributors) might have been aided in this project if their team hadn’t consisted entirely of psychologists, but had instead included a philosopher and/or sociologist versed in dialectics.

In that spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration, we give the final word here on dialectic to a one-man interdisciplinarian: the philosopher and psychologist, William James, who, in his 1908 Oxford lecture, “Hegel and his Method,” explained that Hegel’s dialectic presents “the vision of a really living world, and refus[es] to be content with a chopped-up intellectualist picture of it.” Hegel is accurate, James says, in arguing that “[t]here is a dialectic movement in things, [...] one that the whole constitution of concrete life establishes.” As for his presentation of it—through his “dialectic method”—James says:

That pulse, James says, is “the pulse of dialectic”—“the immanent self-contradictoriness of all finite concepts [which] thenceforth becomes the propulsive logical force that moves the world.”

From that performance, James singles out Hegel’s presentation of “the category of negation” as “his most original stroke.”

We have given the final word on dialectic here to William James, who, it should be noted, was not himself a Hegelian, but it was perhaps his experience as a psychologist in addition to being a philosopher that gave him special insight into the dynamism of dialectical thinking—its immanent and “germinative” nature, as he described it—which was lacking in other commentators of the period, and thus remains a unique and valuable vision of dialectic to this day—a vision not of the balancing or bringing together of static concepts or points-of-view represented by synthesis-thinking, but of the dynamic oppositional and transformative potential that dialectic reveals within thought and reality themselves.

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FURTHER READING:

T.W. Adorno, An Introduction to Dialectics
Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics
H.-G. Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic
G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline, Part One: Logic
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, preface
W. James, “Hegel and his Method,” included in A Pluralistic Universe
H. Marcuse, “The History of Dialectics,” included in Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, vol. 6
Marcuse, “Note on Dialectic,” included in The Essential Marcuse
Marcuse, One Dimensional Man
Marcuse, Reason and Revolution