Studies In The Hegelian Dialectic McTaggart 1896 Ch1 pt2.mp3

Hegel's theory that the world as a whole must be objectively true, so rational, and therefore, as he would continue, perfect, comes no doubt in rather rude contact with some of the facts of life. The consideration of this must for the present be deferred.

8. We have seen that the motive power of the dialectic lies in the relation of the abstract idea explicitly before the mind to the concrete idea implicitly before it in all experience and all consciousness. This will enable us to determine the relation in which the ideas of contradiction and negation stand to the dialectic. It is sometimes supposed that the Hegelian logic rests on a defiance of the law of contradiction. That law says that whatever is A can never at the same time be not-A. But the dialectic asserts that, when A is any category, except the Absolute Idea, whatever is A may be, and indeed must be, not-A also. Now if the law of contradiction is rejected, argument becomes impossible. It is impossible to refute any proposition without the help of this law. The refutation can only take place by the establishment of another proposition incompatible with the first. But if we are to regard the simultaneous assertion of two contradictories, not as a mark of error, but as an indication of truth, we shall find it impossible to disprove any proposition at all. Nothing, however, can ever claim to be considered as true, which could never be refuted, even if it were false. And indeed it is impossible, as Hegel himself has pointed out to us, even to assert anything without involving the law of contradiction, for every positive assertion has meaning only in so far as it is defined, and therefore negative. If the statement All men are mortal, for example, did not exclude the statement Some men are immortal, it would be meaningless. And it only excludes it by virtue of the law of contradiction. If then the dialectic rejected the law of contradiction, it would reduce itself to an absurdity, by rendering all argument, and even all assertion, unmeaning. The dialectic, however, does not reject that law. An unresolved contradiction is, for Hegel as for every one else, a sign of error. The relation of the thesis and antithesis derives its whole meaning from the synthesis, which follows them, and in which the contradiction ceases to exist as such. Contradiction is not the end of the matter, but cancels itself. An unreconciled predication of two contrary categories, for instance Being and not-Being, of the same thing, would lead in the dialectic, as it would lead elsewhere, to scepticism, if it was not for the reconciliation in Becoming. The synthesis alone has reality, and its elements derive such importance as they have from being, in so far as their truth goes, members of a unity in which their opposition is overcome. In fact, so far is the dialectic from denying the law of contradiction, that it is especially based on it. The contradictions are the cause of the dialectic process. But they can only be this if they are received as marks of error. We are obliged to say that we find the truth of Being and not-Being in Becoming, and in Becoming only, because, if we endeavour to take them in their independence, and not as synthesised, we find an unreconciled contradiction. But why should we not find an unreconciled contradiction and acquiesce in it without going further, except for the law that two contradictory propositions about the same subject are a sign of error? Truth consists, not of contradictions, but of moments which, if separated, would be contradictions, but which in their synthesis are reconciled and consistent.

9. It follows also from this view of the paramount importance of the synthesis in the dialectic process that the place of negation in that process is only secondary. The really fundamental aspect of the dialectic is not the tendency of the finite category to negate itself but to complete itself. Since the various relatively perfect and concrete categories are, according to Hegel, made up each of two moments or aspects which stand to one another in the relation of contrary ideas, it follows that one characteristic of the process will be the passage from an idea to its contrary. But this is not due, as has occasionally been supposed, to an inherent tendency in all finite categories to affirm their own negation as such. It is due to their inherent tendency to affirm their own complement. It is indeed, according to Hegel, no empirical and contingent fact, but an absolute and necessary law, that their complement is in some degree their negation. But the one category passes into the other, because the second completes the meaning of the first, not because it denies it. This, however, is one of the points at which the difficulty, always great, of distinguishing what Hegel did say from that which he ought in consistency to have said becomes almost insuperable. It may safely be asserted that the motive force of the dialectic was clearly held by him to rest in the implicit presence in us of its goal. This is admitted by his opponents as well as his supporters. That he did to some extent recognise the consequence of this the subordinate importance which it assigned to the idea of negation seems also probable, especially when we consider the passage quoted above, in which the element of negation appears to enter into the dialectic process with very different degrees of prominence in the three stages of which that process consists. On the other hand, the absence of any detailed exposition of a principle so fundamental as that of the gradually decreasing share taken by negation in the dialectic, and the failure to follow out all its consequences, seem to indicate that he had either not clearly realised it, or had not perceived its full importance. But to this point it will be necessary to return.

10. What relation, we must now enquire, exists between thought as engaged in the dialectic process, and thought as engaged in the ordinary affairs of life? In these latter we continually employ the more abstract categories, which, according to Hegel, are the more imperfect, as if they were satisfactory and ultimate determinations of thought. So far as we do this we must contrive to arrest for the time the dialectic movement. While a category is undergoing the changes and transformations in which that movement consists, it is as unfit to be used as an instrument of thought, as an expanding rod would be for a yard measure. We may observe, and even argue about, the growth of the idea, as we may observe the expansion of a rod under heat, but the argument must be conducted with stable ideas, as the observation must be made with measures of unaltering size. For if, for example, a notion, when employed as a middle term, is capable of changing its meaning between the major and the minor premises, it renders the whole syllogism invalid. And all reasoning depends on the assumption that a term can be trusted to retain the same meaning on different occasions. Otherwise, any inference would be impossible, since all connection between propositions would be destroyed. There are two ways in which we may treat the categories. The first is, in the language of Hegel, the function of the Reason to perform, namely, the dialectic process, and when that culminates in the highest category, which alone is without contradiction, to construe the world by its means. As this category has no contradictions in it, it is stable and can be used without any fear of its transforming itself under our hands. The second function is that of the Understanding, whose characteristic it is to treat abstractions as if they were independent realities. They are thus forced into an artificial stability and permanence, and can be used for the work of ordinary thought. Of course the attempt to use an imperfect and unbalanced category as if it were perfect and self-subsistent leads to errors and contradictions it is just these errors and contradictions which are the proof that the category is imperfect. But for many purposes the limit of error is so small, that the work of the Understanding possesses practical use and validity. If we take an arc three feet long of the circumference of a circle a mile in diameter, it will be curved, and will show itself to be so, if examined with sufficient accuracy. But in practice it would often produce no inconvenience to treat it as a straight line. So, if an attempt is made to explain experience exclusively by the category, for example, of causality, it will be found, if the matter is considered with enough care, that any explanation, in which no higher category is employed, involves a contradiction. Nevertheless, for many of the everyday occurrences on which we exercise our thoughts, an explanation by the Understanding, by means of the category of causality only, will be found to rationalise the event sufficiently for the needs of the moment.

11. To this explanation an objection has been raised by Hartmann. He emphatically denies our power to arrest the progress of the Notion in this manner. It might, he admits, be possible to do so, if the Notion were changed by us, but it is represented as changing itself. The human thinker is thus only the fifth wheel to the cart, and quite unable to arrest a process which is entirely independent of him. Now in one sense of the words it is perfectly true, that, if the Notion changes at all, the change is caused by its own nature, and not by us. If the arguments of the dialectic are true, they must appeal with irresistible force to every one who looks into the question with sufficient ability and attention, and thus the process may be said to be due to the Notion, and not to the thinker. But this is no more than may be said of every argument. If it is valid, it is not in the power of any man who has examined it, to deny its validity. But when there is no logical alternative there may be a psychological one. No intelligent man, who carefully examines the proofs, can doubt that the earth goes round the sun. But any person who will not examine them, or cannot understand them, may remain convinced all his life that the sun goes round the earth. And any one, however clearly he understands the truth, can, by diverting his attention from comparatively remote astronomical arguments, and fixing it on the familiar and daily appearances, speak of and picture the movement as that of the sun, as most men, I suppose, generally do. So with the dialectic. The arguments are, if Hegel is right, such as to leave the man who examines them no option. But for those who have no time, inclination, or ability to examine them, the categories will continue to be quite separate and independent, while the contradictions which this view will produce in experience will either be treated as ultimate, or, more probably, will not be noticed at all. And even for the student of philosophy, the arguments remain so comparatively abstruse and unfamiliar that he finds no difficulty, when practical life requires it, in assuming for a time the point of view of the Understanding, and regarding each category as unchanging and self-supporting. This he does merely by diverting his attention from the arguments by which their instability is proved. Although therefore the change in the Notion is due to its nature, it does not follow that it cannot be stopped by peculiarities in the nature of the thinker, or by his arbitrary choice. The positive element in the change lies wholly in the Notion, but that it should take place at all in any particular case requires certain conditions in the individual mind in question, and by changing these conditions we can at will arrest the process of the categories, and use any one of them as fixed and unchanging. Any other view of the dialectic process would require us to suppose that the movement of the categories became obvious to us, not as the result of much hard thinking, but spontaneously and involuntarily. It can scarcely be asserted that Hegel held such a theory, which would lead to the conclusion that everyone who ever used the category of Being that is everyone who ever thought at all, whether he reflected on thought or not, had gone through all the stages of the Hegelian logic, and arrived at all its conclusions.

12. Another difficulty which Hartmann brings forward in this connection arises from a misapprehension of Hegel's meaning. He affirms that, so far from stopping the dialectic process, we could not even perceive it when it took place. For we can only become aware of the change by comparing stage A with stage B, and how is it possible that we should do this, if A turns into B, beyond our control, whenever it appears? In the first place, we may answer, it is possible, as we have seen, to arrest the dialectic movement, in any given case, at will, so that the development of the categories is not beyond our control. In the second place the thesis is not held by Hegel to turn into the antithesis in the simple and complete way which this objection supposes. The one category leads up to and postulates the other but does not become completely the same as its successor. The thesis and antithesis are said no doubt to be the same, but the same with a difference. If we predicate A, we are forced to predicate B, but there remains nevertheless a distinction between A and B. It is just the coexistence of this distinction with the necessary implication of the one category in the other, which renders the synthesis necessary as a reconciliation. If the thesis and antithesis were not different, the simultaneous predication of both of them would involve no difficulty.

13. Such is the general nature of the dialectic as conceived by Hegel. How does he attempt to prove its truth and necessity? The proof must be based on something already understood and granted by those to whom it is addressed. And since the proof should be one which must be accepted by all men, we must base it on that which all men allow to be justifiable the ordinary procedure, that is, of thought in common sense and science, which Hegel calls the Understanding as opposed to the Reason. We must show that if we grant, as we cannot help granting, the validity of the ordinary exercise of our thought, we must also grant the validity of the dialectic. This necessity Hegel recognises. He says, it is true, that, since only the Reason possesses the complete truth, up to which the merely partial truth of the Understanding leads, the real explanation must be of the Understanding by the Reason. But this is not inconsistent with a recognition of the necessity of justifying the Reason to the Understanding. The course of real explanation must always run from ground to consequent, and, according to Hegel, from concrete to abstract. On the other hand, the order of proof must run from whatever is known to whatever is unknown. When, as we have seen is the case with the dialectic, we start from explicit knowledge of the abstract only, and proceed to knowledge of the concrete, which alone gives reality to that abstract, the order of explanation and the order of proof must clearly be exactly opposite to one another. The justification of the Reason at the bar of the Understanding, depends upon two facts. The one is the search for the Absolute which is involved in the Understanding, the other is the existence in the Understanding of contradictions which render it impossible that it should succeed in the search. The Understanding demands an answer to every question it can ask. But every question which it succeeds in answering suggests fresh questions. Any explanation requires some reference to surrounding phenomena, and these in their turn must be explained by reference to others, and nothing can therefore be fully explained unless everything else which is in direct or indirect connection with it, unless, that is, the whole universe, be fully explained also. And the explanation of a phenomenon requires, besides this, the knowledge of its causes and effects, while these again require a knowledge of their causes and effects, so that not only the whole present universe, but the of the past and future must be known before any single fact can be really understood. Again, since the knowledge of a phenomenon involves the knowledge of its parts, and all phenomena, occurring as they do in space and time, are infinitely divisible, our knowledge must not only be infinitely extended over space and time, but also infinitely minute. The connection of the phenomenal universe by the law of reciprocity has a double effect on knowledge. It is true, as Tennyson tells us, that we could not know a single flower completely without also knowing God and man. But it is also true that, till we know everything about God and man, we cannot answer satisfactorily a single question about the flower. In asking any question whatever, the Understanding implicitly asks for a complete account of the whole Universe, throughout all space and all time. It demands a solution which shall really solve the question without raising fresh ones a complete and symmetrical system of knowledge.