t there are harsh criticisms that the book has inspired fascism, communism, and overall totalitarianism — Dermot Griffin

Is democracy not a benevolent tyranny? I don't think one person having power, authority or influence is necessarily a bad thing but such a persons character must be up to the mark. If elected there, chosen by the people, for the persons demonstration of certain desirable attributes in a leader, I wouldnt have any issue serving his or her tyranny as I know that ultimately they are actually serving us.

I wouldnt be happy with an evil tyranny - with someone who stole power by manipulating democracy and eroding it with propaganda. Taking away people's choice of whether to empower them or not.

If your master is a person who cares for you dearly, who wants to raise you up to your full potential using their "mastered wisdom"... Would you mind being their servant?
I think that is the only difference between being a slave and being a servant.

It's not about whether power dynamics can exist. They always exist. It's about how they "should" exist.

Throughout history there have been movements, and counter-movements. Eventually they settle down to a compromise. We see ample evidence of this all the way through from ancient Egypt to early 21st C western politics. Trump's presidency was self-evidently a disaster, so the Dems won control of the House at the mid-terms. Hegel's mistake was to imgine this kind of development as a mystical metaphysical progression, when it's really just human psychology.

Hegel's social and political philosophy cannot be adequately addressed without discussing his Philosophy of Right.

I think a lot of Hegel's arguments do have 3 parts

Fichte introduced into German philosophy the three-step of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, using these three terms. Schelling took up this terminology. Hegel did not. He never once used these three terms together to designate three stages in an argument or account in any of his books. — Dermot Griffin

He may not have used those specific terms, but they can be interpreted in a variety of ways, just as the terms Hegel did use for his triadic dialectic structure can be understood in different ways.For instance, one can translate the triad as understanding, negation-opposition and unification. Do these present a different meaning than thesis-antithesis-synthesis? It seems to depend on one’s interpretation.

“Hegel provides the most extensive, general account of his dialectical method in Part I of his Encyclopaedia of
Philosophical Sciences, which is often called the Encyclopaedia Logic [EL]. The form or presentation of logic, he says, has three sides or moments (EL §79). These sides are not parts of logic, but, rather, moments of “every concept”, as well as “of everything true in general” (EL Remark to §79; we will see why Hegel thought dialectics is in everything in section 3). The first moment—the moment of the understanding—is the moment of fixity, in which concepts or forms have a seemingly stable definition or determination (EL §80).
The second moment—the “dialectical” (EL §§79, 81) or “negatively rational” (EL §79) moment—is the moment of instability. In this moment, a one-sidedness or restrictedness (EL Remark to §81) in the determination from the moment of understanding comes to the fore, and the determination that was fixed in the first moment passes into its opposite (EL §81). Hegel describes this process as a process of “self­sublation” (EL §81). The English verb “to sublate” translates Hegel’s technical use of the German verb aufheben, which is a crucial concept in his dialectical method. Hegel says that aufheben has a doubled meaning: it means both to cancel (or negate) and to preserve at the same time. The moment of understanding sublates itself because its own character or nature—its one-sidedness or restrictedness—destabilizes its definition and leads it to pass into its opposite.
The dialectical moment thus involves a process of self-sublation, or a process in which the determination from the moment of understanding sublates itself, or both cancels and preserves itself, as it pushes on to or passes into its opposite. The third moment—the “speculative” or “positively rational” (EL §§79, 82) moment—grasps the unity of the opposition between the first two determinations, or is the positive result of the dissolution or transition of those determinations (EL §82 and Remark to §82).
( Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Whatever the dialectic is, it is not logic in the modern sense.

Whatever the dialectic is, it is not logic in the modern sense — Banno

And, of course, neither is Husserl’s or Kant’s transcendental logic, Deleuze’s logic of sense or Derrida’s logic of the trace. Maybe we should distinguish the modern Analytic philosophical sense from the modern Continental sense.

Maybe we should distinguish the modern Analytic philosophical sense from the modern Continental sense. — Joshs

Such a distinction would imply that what is loosely called continental philosophy does not use the developments of logic since Frege. While I have some sympathy for that view, it would surprise me if you shared that sympathy.

Stanford has some interesting, if perhaps overly sympathetic stuff on this topic.. At the least, Hegel's rejection of non-contradiction. Such considerations fuel my own scepticism towards Hegel, although I do enjoy the use of dialectic as a rhetorical tool, is say Žižek.

I guess that's one approach - dialectic as rhetoric rather than logic.

Whatever the dialectic is, it is not logic in the modern sense. — Banno

Modernism is so 1920s. We are post modern now. :grin:

Hegel's social and political philosophy cannot be adequately addressed without discussing his Philosophy of Right. — Fooloso4

Indeed. Hegel's representation of the ownership of property being an integral component of our experience as free agents is the fault line of the many disputes over what his view of development requires. In the section immediately following the dismissal of slavery as ever being a right in a society of free agents, Hegel says this:

In relation to external things, the rational aspect is that I possess property, but the particular aspect comprises subjective aims, needs, arbitrariness, abilities, external circumstances, and so forth (see §45). On these mere possession as such depends, but this particular aspect has in this sphere of abstract personality not yet been established as identical with freedom. What and how much I possess, therefore, is a matter of indifference so far as rights are concerned.
Remark: If at this stage we may speak of more persons than one, although no such distinction has yet been made, then we may say that in respect of their personality persons are equal. But this is an empty tautology, for the person, as something abstract, has not yet been particularised or established as distinct in some specific way.
‘Equality’ is the abstract identity of the Understanding; reflective thought and all kinds of intellectual mediocrity stumble on it at once when they are confronted by the relation of unity to a difference. At this point, equality could only be the equality of abstract persons as such, and therefore the whole field of possession, this terrain of inequality, falls outside it. The demand sometimes made for an equal division of land, and other available resources too, is an intellectualism all the more empty and superficial in that at the heart of particular differences there lies not only the external contingency of nature but also the whole compass of mind, endlessly particularised and differentiated, and the rationality of mind developed into an organism.
We may not speak of the injustice of nature in the unequal distribution of possessions and resources, since nature is not free and therefore is neither just nor unjust. That everyone ought to have subsistence enough for his needs is a moral wish and thus vaguely expressed is well enough meant, but like anything that is only well meant it lacks objectivity. On the other hand, subsistence is not the same as possession and belongs to another sphere, i.e. to civil society. — Hegel, Philosophy of Right, section 49

I guess that's one approach - dialectic as rhetoric rather than logic. — Banno

Hegel maintains the unity of thinking and being. Dialectic is the movement of thought and being in time, from becoming to being, from knowledge to self-knowledge, from development to completion.

A few quick comments:

Hegel's logic is the sublation or aufheben of earlier concepts including the different senses of Greek logos - to gather together, to speak to give an account, to syllogisms, and later to John's logos, and Kant's formal logic.

The process of sublation both negates and preserves. It takes up and develops earlier incomplete concepts.

It addresses the ancient problem of change. How can what is the same thing be different over time? It is both same and other, identical and different.

The whole is both one and many. A self-realising unity through difference.

Hegel only rejected the law on non-contradiction because he thought all contradictions were paradoxes in nature and that contradiction was an empty term. He went for the big fish, trying to unite all human thought in a system that still maintained the reality of truth. The East has dependent origination (interdependent coarising) and if all is one then truth is interdependent. That happens to be what Hegel thought as well!

, Thanks. Yep, rhetoric over logic it is.

Adorno's negative dialectics is more on point political-economically than Marx-Engel's "dialectical materialism" (i.e. inverted dialectical idealism).

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/699682

Hegel's social and political philosophy cannot be adequately addressed without discussing his Philosophy of Right — Fooloso4

:clap:

:up:

It may be faulty metaphysics but it's still logic, unless you're going to say no faulty metaphysics is logical

Perhaps. I found your post obscure.

Hegel only rejected the law on non-contradiction because he thought all contradictions were paradoxes in nature and that contradiction was an empty term. — Gregory

There's a difference between a paradox and a contradiction. "Contradiction" is not an empty term - it has a clear use.

He went for the big fish, trying to unite all human thought in a system that still maintained the reality of truth. — Gregory

I've an allergy to big fish, such explanations are more likely to be wrong than right. Nor have I any idea what "real truth" might be. What could it mean to say of a. truth that it is unreal? The word "real" doesn't seem to be doing anything.

The East has dependent origination (interdependent coarising) and if all is one then truth is interdependent. — Gregory

What does the East have to do with this - are you talking about geography or compass direction, and why? "interdependent coarising" is like "T'was brillig" - “It seems very pretty,” [Alice] said when she had finished it, “but it's rather hard to understand! … Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas–only I don't exactly know what they are!”

That happens to be what Hegel thought as well! — Gregory

So there's the problem. Some folk seem to find Hegel satisfactory, but to me his work is associated with a most unpleasant odour.

So no, I don't see it as logic.

Hegel's social and political philosophy cannot be adequately addressed without discussing his Philosophy of Right
— Fooloso4
:clap: — 180 Proof

What are you applauding?

I applauded @Fooloso4 pointing out that the OP is mistaken in assuming that interpretations of Hegel's political philosophy are/were (mostly) based on the Phenomenology of Mind rather than the Philosophy of Right, etc. Do you disagree?

Do you disagree? — 180 Proof

Not at all. Just settling a certain puzzlement at an erroneously perceived acquiescence.

The dialectic of lordship and bondage, most commonly called the master-slave dialectic — Dermot Griffin

I've never read any of Hegel's writings, but somehow I came to associate his name with the notion of a historical (or natural) Dialectic summarized in terms of Thesis - Antithesis - Synthesis. I just read the novel by Ken Follett, World Without End, set in late medieval England, when the long-running semi-stable Feudal System of Lords & Serfs was beginning to unravel. The author doesn't analyze the situation philosophically, but describes it in such visceral detail that the reader feels like a first-hand witness to man's inhumanity to man, and especially to women. In light of our modern -- enlightened, but less than perfect -- system, that darker era feels depressing, especially when compressed into a single story-line.

The period Follett describes is in the centuries following the 1215 Magna Carta*1, when the King was forced to define in writing the legal rights of his subject nobles (Barons, Counts, Earls, etc). Those rights were not directly extended to the Serfs, who were bound to Land & Lord. Yet, they continued to incrementally resist & rebel against the Master-Slave relationship. And since the Lords were dependent on those who provided their food & material, they were eventually forced to pass-on some of their own "individual rights" to those under their authority. As Follett's book illustrated, the historical power struggle leading up to more general democratic rights, as defined in the 1787 US Constitution, followed an excruciating (for both those on top & bottom) zig-zag path of ups & downs, back & forth.

Likewise, the "Class Struggle" that Marx summarized as the Logic of Nature, has not yet been fully resolved. Even the US Constitution and most Parliamentary systems, still accept a natural bicameral order of Lords/Senators (the few) and Commons/Congressmen (the many). Marx's ideal of egalitarian communal politics has proven susceptible to the motivating power of abstract money. Hence, the new Feudalism of Capitalism : Billionaire Oligarchs ruling the bare-survival masses.

If the 3-stage Dialectic is truly the logic of Nature, we must assume that the power-pushing-politics will continue to dance to the Cha Cha rhythms of one step forward, one step back, then both step forward together : as rulers & ruled court the favor of each other in coy pursuit & evasion. The question is, can we consider this erratic process as upward progress toward a more harmonious world? Science Fiction presents both Utopian and Dystopian views of the future. But, if current movies are any indication, dystopian & apocalyptic futures seem to be more common in our "enlightened" era. :meh:



*1. Magna Carta :
"the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

Hegel's logic is a logic of developmental change. A logos or account of the whole.

Are the acorn and the oak tree the same thing or different things?

I can pick up an acorn and put it in my pocket, but I cannot do the same with an oak tree. In this sense an acorn is not an oak tree. But the acorn and the oak tree are stages in the development of the same thing. They are both the same and not the same.

Are subject and object the same thing or different things?

Here too there is a development. The development of knowledge through its different stages. What is to be known is not simply knowledge of things or objects but knowledge of knowledge, knowledge of the knower, self-knowledge. Here he takes a step beyond Kant, a step beyond the distinction between the phenomenal and noumenal. Subject and object are both the same and not the same.

Hegel's logic is a logic of developmental change. — Fooloso4

So it's of use in examining biological growth? It explains the way cities expand? It has uses in the design of computers?

It seems not.

In each of these cases there is a logical development. The development is intelligible, that is, rational.

Hegel continues the philosophically formative dispute between Parmenides and Heraclitus. With Heraclitus he asserts not simply flux or change but logos.

In each of these cases there is a logical development. The development is intelligible, that is, rational. — Fooloso4

You seem to think logical, intelligible and rational are synonyms...

It is not a question of what I think but of understanding what Hegel thinks. This is why in previous posts I pointed to the development of the concept of logos.

It should be pointed out that

logic in the modern sense. — Banno

supports Hegel's insight into the importance of the recognition of historical development.

Sure. Thanks.

Developmental psychology.
Game Theory.
Models of urban planning.

All built on the view of process as an interaction of conflicting goals.

Seems a bit of a stretch to link these back to Hegel. Suit yourself.

What do you understand Hegel to be saying to be so confident in your dismissal?

"Seems" is confident?

Have you a history of, say, game theory that explains how the work of von Neumann and Nash derives from Hegel? Doubtless there is one out there...