The Enlightenment, and its rationality, whose vanguard was the natural sciences, became focused on metaphysics, and the Aristotelian syllogism. But, it is necessarily limiting, and unable to deal with reality, and its nature as one of perpetual change, which involves contradiction. For analysing semantics, and the internal consistency of arguments, the syllogism is fine, up to a point; for analysing fixed states, one with another (comparative statics) it is fine, but, as quantum theory has shown, the nature of reality does not conform to these requirements that A cannot simultaneously be -A.
Aristotle himself, like all the Greek philosophers, investigated and developed dialectical methods of thought. And, even within the philosophy developed during The Enlightenment, when confronted with the need to think concretely, rather than abstractly, its exponents were led to use dialectical methods of thought. As Lenin was fond of saying, “the truth is always concrete”. In Hegel, German philosophy reached its peak in restoring the dialectic.
Engels then sets out a summary of these two different modes of thought – metaphysics and dialectics – and their role and development in history. In Theories of Surplus Value, Marx looked at the development of economic theory in a similar way, showing that the development of its ideas were by no means arbitrary or accidental, but driven by the development of bourgeois production, and the new social relations it brought with it.
“When we reflect on nature at large or the history of mankind or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless maze of connections and interactions in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away. [At first therefore, we see the picture as a whole, with its individual parts still more or less kept in the background; we observe the movements, transitions, connections, rather than the things that move, change and are connected.]This primitive, naïve but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and also is not, for everything is in flux, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away.” (p 24)
This, however, only gives us a superficial description of the world. If we think of a car, we see it move from A to B, but, without investigating further, we do not know why it moves from A to B. Besides the fact that it may be out of gear, and with the brakes off, and is simply moved by gravity, we would need to examine all of its components, the engine and transmission, and the role of the driver, but that would then lead us to investigate the various components of the engine, the fuel and ignition system, and of the transmission, and so on. Only when we have identified all of these separate parts, and their relation to each other can we truly understand what we see when we observe the superficial image of the car moving from A to B.
Anyone who has studied Yoga, and its sutras, in relation to thinking, will also recognise these methods. First, there is concentration, a focus on the object itself, and its components, second is meditation, an examination of these parts and their relation to each other, and to other objects, thirdly contemplation in which all these parts, their interactions etc. are seen and understood simultaneously, as in an epiphany. As Ernest Wood describes it,
“If you were looking at a picture, and saying 'How nice it is. See this group of trees here, and this little stream there, and that light on the hillside...' you would be experiencing the delight of meditative examination, which would gradually build the picture into one unit, as you grasped these various interesting items clearly and then combined them into one, and discovered the unity of the whole. But if you 'took in' the whole picture at once, missing nothing, not flitting among the parts one to another, you would undergo ecstatic discovery and experience of the unity.”
(Yoga, p 59)
This is also the method of thought used by Marx and Engels, which differs from that of Hegel and the Greeks, because it begins with an analysis of the real world, of breaking down its actual material components, understanding their inter-relation, and laws of motion, just as does natural science.
“In order to understand these details we must detach them from their natural or historical connection and examine each one separately, according its nature, special causes and effects, etc. This is, primarily, the task of natural science and historical research: branches of science which for the Greeks of classical times occupied only a subordinate position on very good grounds, because they had first of all to collect the materials [for these sciences to work upon] [Only after a certain amount of natural and historical material has been collected can critical analysis, comparison, and arrangement of classes, orders and species be undertaken].” (p 25)
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