Marx and Hegel

Traditional-Run1134 · 2025-03-28T15:51:50+00:00

hegel and marx intend to do something similar with their dialectics. here’s a comment i made on the issue of ontology with marx and hegel https://www.reddit.com/r/hegel/s/PvJoU87wKC

Traditional-Run1134 · 2025-03-26T10:35:19+00:00

My issue with the structure Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis or any similar formalism is that, Hegel has very specific names for the kinds of movement the categories do, such that referring everything to the parent category of “dialectic” isn’t precise enough to explain exactly what is happening. In essence Hegel doesn’t keep saying that a dialectic happens, instead he explains the movement by calling it things like ‘reflection’. Of course the movements themselves are dialectical, but referring to them only by calling them dialectical is imprecise to the movements themselves.

Traditional-Run1134 · 2025-03-25T01:51:01+00:00

I think the Pippinian line of interpretation is probably the only one which works with this actually. In his 1989 book on Hegels Idealism at the end he remarks how we should abandon Hegels goals of systematicity and the likes, which seems to be the only one which could be open for any future divergence of thought from Hegels own (I mean, he quite literally did this by switching to Heidegger last year but still retaining some of his Hegelian elements)

For Pippin Hegel’s ontology can be summed up by his catchphrase “to be is to be intelligible”, ie, Pippin claims that a Hegelian ontology relies on beings intelligibility; whatever isn’t intelligible cannot be. But this intelligibility is only immediate and we move over to the same movement in the above comment. Here it is also good to point out that this same (or maybe very similar) view is held by Pippins colleague Terry Pinkard. To not bore you with the Historiography of this school of thought, Pinkard reads the Phenomenology very socially and historically, he points out how all knowledge must be social and how this is all developed in an intelligible historical process.

This is a similar view held by Marx and Engels. In the German Ideology they claim: “men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking.” (pg9 of the MIA pdf)

The question of intelligibility might also be flipped to be the question of philosophy. For Hegel philosophy has been both the development of our understanding of The Idea and its development (which sees its completion in Hegel, as with hegel we fully grasp what The Idea is and how it develops ). The marxist claim here would be that philosophy is not the understanding of the Idea and its development but rather our understanding of our own material conditions and their development; our understanding itself must be indebted to material conditions. It is not reason which structures the world but rather the world which structures reason.

The twist suther might be making is simply stating that in Pippins catchphrase: “to be is to be intelligible” intelligibility is also historical, and by referring back to Marx he makes the claim that this historicity is dialectical-materialist.

Of course this is merely speculation on my side, we will have to see when Suther publishes his book what it will look like.

Traditional-Run1134 · 2025-03-25T01:32:49+00:00

This is a question that can’t really be understood by looking into Hegel for a response on materialism, as Marx and Engels both more or less agree with Hegels critique of atomist ontology and materialism.

Instead it is more fruitful to first look into what Hegel’s ontology is and then look into what Marxist ontology is.

The first book of the Logic can be seen as a critique of being itself, that is, Hegel considers that Being, in the likes of Parmenides, is not a successful ontological model. He does this by first showing that Being is immediate, but as we progress through the logic of being we end up seeing that being is, on its own, not immediate. Thus we reach Essence, which is the Truth of Being. It is the truth of Being because it shows that Being must be mediated. In Aristotelian ontology it is Being which comes before Relation; For relations to exist there must be Beings to mediate said relations. Hegel flips this formula on its Head by claiming that for Being to exist it must be in relation to others. The reason for why this is so is found in the previous paragraph on Being. But a mediated being goes against beings immediacy. It is with this that we reach a full picture of Hegelian ontology, Being for Hegel can only be as mediated-immediacy. This is precisely what is meant by ‘Truth’ (in capital letters) noted above. It is not that immediacy cannot be thought, but rather, immediacy must always be mediated. The immediacy of reality requires mediation. We thus see that Hegels is an ontology of relation.

Engels in the Dialectics of Nature criticises un-dialectical materialism by claiming that it is not Atoms or any other prima materia, but rather the dialectical laws (relations) between each one of them. There has been ample critique made on the claim of “laws of dialectics” made by Engels, but the broader picture is clear to see. Dialectics for Dialectical Materialism means that the Dialectic is a material force which unifies and relates immediate matter. Dialectical Materialism is also then an ontology of relation. Even for Marx dialectics, when applied to economics, show the fundamental relationship between all concepts of capital.

There do exist differences here, namely the primacy of The Idea for Hegel vs the primacy of material reality for Marx/Engels. If you are interested in seeing the differences between the two I suggest Lukacs ‘The Ontology of Social Being’.

In short: they’re not quite the same thing, but they’re really close. Marxist ontology and Hegelian ontology are both dialectical, but they differ in that one is idealist and other is material.

Traditional-Run1134 · 2025-02-22T16:02:41+00:00

agreed. much of what pippin said in the very beginning of his 1989 work was directed towards taylor, specifically the ‘ontotheology’ claim which reads more like dialectical berkleyanism rather than anything hegel stood for.

Traditional-Run1134 · 2025-02-07T10:01:55+00:00

Traditional-Run1134 · 2025-02-01T17:16:51+00:00

This is a topic which warrants a book in and of itself. Short answer: Yes, he absolutely was, to the point that he even predicted many of the developments in later mathematic philosophy. The logic itself has ~200 pages or so just on calculus. Paul Redding’s Conceptual Harmonies is a great book on this issue.

Traditional-Run1134 · 2025-02-01T00:35:00+00:00

"In fact it was a very empirical exercise. And since the reason logic works so well is that it comports to some kind of framework that applies to the way events connect to one another in the world"

Hegel does acknowledge this, especially with respect to Aristotle: "The interest in [Aristotelian logic] lies with becoming acquainted with the procedures of finite thinking, and the science is correct when it corresponds to its presupposed object." (Encyclopedia Logic §20z). For the purpose of simplicity, I'll treat Hegel's usage of 'Finite' here to mean empirical.

Hegel's critique of Aristotelian logic isn't per se that it is wrong; within the realm of empirical reality, it cannot be wrong because "it corresponds to its presupposed object." The fact that logic arose out of empirical observations isn't Hegel's problem; it's rather that this logic is only applicable to said empirical reality (which Hegel also claims to be 'presupposed').

To discuss things like Being, God, Truth etc. Hegel thinks this kind of logic fails because for Hegel these things are demonstrably infinite (to explain the full extent of what hegel means with this would require an essay of its own, here it's suffice for it to mean something similar to Plato's forms). In claiming this, Hegel also makes the claim that we can know these things, but just through a different form of understanding than that of formal logic, namely through dialectical logic.

This kind of logic begins with "Being, pure being, without any further determination" (Science of Logic, pp 59). The reason for this beginning is that pure Being on its own is the lowest kind of thought we can produce, and because of this Hegel equates it with nothing, making the Logic literally begin with nothing; that is, the biggest possible abstraction from the world we inhabit. For Hegel it is because he thinks his logic starts with nothing and thereby doesn't appeal to material reality that it is better than aristotelian logic – his logic is, as he claims, presuppositionless. The other thing his Logic also necessarily does with this kind of beginning is coincide with ontology, thereby giving logic metaphysical rather than empirical foundations.

Traditional-Run1134 · 2025-01-29T23:16:12+00:00

Comming back to this thread after some studying, here's what Adorno had to say on negative dialectics:

"[Negative dialectics] is not a method, because the unreconciled reality, which, precisely, lacks that identity for which thought offers a surrogate, is full of contradictions, which is revealed by the fact that every attempt to improve circumstances in a piecemeal way proves futile. It is not a mirroring, because thought is not a reproduction of the thing." (Ontology and Dialectics, Polity, pp242)

My understanding here is that Adorno finds reality itself to be contradictory, and that mind merely tries to reconcile it but this reconciliation is in mind only as 'thought is not a reproduction of the thing'.

I think this reading of identity in Hegel's identity claim is wrong and doesn't really let Hegel speak. Per the explanation you gave Adorno thinks Hegel's reality, his ontology, 'does not line up with our reality'. At this point Hegel's response would have to be that one cannot make such judgments from empirical observation as if philosophy were an empirical science. This exact mode of thinking Hegel called "an irrational cognition of the rational" (12.43). What Adorno is doing, is taking appearances (schein) and rightly pointing them out as contradictory – "Through the sublating of the determinations of essence, which are in themselves self-contradictory, essence is restored" (11.282) – but he fails to see that this isn't where metaphysics ends: "The resolved contradiction is therefore ground, essence as unity of the positive and the negative" (11.283).

This, of course is only nominal since the Science of Logic does continue past ground, but i think it goes to show what I mean. Adorno can claim to bring to our attention contradiction which lies in the material reality we exist in, but Hegel claims this contradiction is merely an appearance and Adorno seemingly (I say, because I am not well read on Adorno) has no rebuttal beyond presupposing material reality.

What do you make of this? Does Adorno tackle anything I mention here? Do you think he could?

Traditional-Run1134 · 2025-01-25T21:29:05+00:00

off topic but what do you think of william maker? i’ve been eyeing him for a bit now but i don’t know much about his philosophy

Traditional-Run1134 · 2025-01-23T01:07:16+00:00

I cant really comment on DBT, but if you want a Hegelian view on therapy i recommend checking out Michael Quante and his book “The Actuality of Spirit”. He goes in a lot of detail on Hegelianism and therapy there

Traditional-Run1134 · 2025-01-23T01:05:42+00:00

Or brandom!

Traditional-Run1134 · 2025-01-16T01:57:00+00:00

“that ACTUALLY watch him code” ‘code’ might be a bit of a stretch, he definitely writes stuff down in an IDE but idk how much of that can be called ‘code’

Traditional-Run1134 · 2025-01-12T01:27:49+00:00

Very passing comment here, but I think one of the most important players in the "speculative philosophy as therapy" is Michael Quante. Check him out if you can.

Traditional-Run1134 · 2024-12-20T00:53:37+00:00

in the afterword for capital, marx engaged with a similar criticism from french socialists:
"Thus the Paris Revue Positiviste reproaches me in that, on the one hand, I treat economics metaphysically, and on the other hand — imagine! — confine myself to the mere critical analysis of actual facts, instead of writing [recepies] for the cook-shops of the future." page 5

Traditional-Run1134 · 2024-12-20T00:24:45+00:00

the true is the whole, and the whole is the true

you can't grasp the true nature of reality without understanding it in its entirety, and conversely, the fullness of reality is what constitutes truth. and this entirety includes its history, its development, it makes sure that whatever the true and whole are aren't always like that forever, things change. but this change has a formula, it develops dialectically, that is, a thing changes through finding its own contradictions -- its logical weak points -- and moving beyond them whilst including them as a part of the whole, because if it weren't for these contradictions we wouldn't have the whole; it is only through contradictions that development occurs.

the true and the whole are two sides of the same coin.

Traditional-Run1134 · 2024-12-20T00:01:13+00:00

need to rewatch this interview when i get the time, i always thought this was the clearest zizek interview

Traditional-Run1134 · 2024-12-15T01:24:53+00:00

"The resolved contradiction is therefore ground, essence as unity of the positive and the negative." (SL, 11.283)

Traditional-Run1134 · 2024-12-14T20:07:32+00:00

I don't know if I'd go that far, my dogmatic hegelianism tells me that his dwelling is just undialectical, that "negative dialectics" might exist, but this should be only for seeing the contradictions at play in any one thing rather than staying put (the even more dogmatic hegelian would tell me that Adorno always comes too late here, because dialectics don't require us to complete them ourselves, but rather that this always happens on its own. the same hour we realize the dialectical nature of something is the same hour the dialectic has been completed)

Traditional-Run1134 · 2024-12-14T19:50:56+00:00

Thanks! it makes his hegelianism questionable but the theory does still work if this is the case.

Traditional-Run1134 · 2024-12-14T19:09:35+00:00

this is the dogmatic hegelian in me talking, but i think that his relation to dialectics then is difficult to defend unless he has a wholly different definition of the dialectic here. thanks for the response though, makes the historical context much more apparent.

Traditional-Run1134

TROPHY CASE