• source :: Dialectics by Why Theory | Free Listening on SoundCloud

Notes

Dialecticsis either:

1. Contradictionis the driving force of thought and maybe being

2. Identity is always involved in what negates it

Dialecticsoriginates in Plato which for him was a form of argument. It was the idea that you could arrive at a form of truthby identifying contradiction.

Aside: Ryan makes a point in this episode that sophistryseems to have won out. In the court of law, the truth does not win out, but the best argument does.

Dialectics comes back onto the scene in philosophy with Kant#39;s "transcendental dialectic.", which for him is the idea that we can know the limits to reason at the points where we run into contradiction, e.g. "does the universe have a beginning and an end?" We cannot know the fixed beginning and end.

Hegelintervenes at this point, believing that we can say something about these moments. "The failure of knowledge indicates something on the level of being." It becomes an ontology for Hegel.

• sense certainty:: "all I can trust are my senses"

Aside from Ryan: we're not "post-truth", we're pre-Enlightenment because of the prevalence of conspiracy thinking

For Hegel identifying something means to identify all the things it is not. Todd says that Adornois wrong, then, because for Hegel, every position ultimately undermines itself if you simply play it out.

Hegel unlike Platoand Aristotle didn't think one should simply get rid of a concept because it's contradictory.

The dialecticalapproach sees things as interconnected, in contrast to the analytic approach which sees things in isolation.

Todd and Ryan believe that Lacanis a dialectical thinker, because he rejects the subject-object divide This is best illustrated in his concept of objet a or the "object cause of desire", because it's something "external" to the subject but something that's important to the subject, affecting the external world.

The link between Lacanand Hegelis the idea that the concept of driveis one of self-undermining.