Graham Priest on Hegel and Marx: Dialectic and Dialetheic

https://philpapers.org/rec/PRIDAD

created by iunoionnis on 19/06/2018 at 12:05 UTC

4 upvotes, 1 top-level comments (showing 1)

Comments

Comment by iunoionnis at 19/06/2018 at 12:06 UTC

2 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Download link available in PhilPapers description or here on Priest's website

Abstract:

THIS ESSAY ARGUES FOR an intimate connection between dialectics and dialetheism. Dialectics, I will not at- tempt to define here; nor will I attempt to discuss all the uses that have been made of that notion. Rather, I will concentrate on the use that Hegel and, later, Marx made of it. Dialetheism requires a little more comment. A dialetheia is a true contradiction, where "contradiction" has its ordinary, logical, sense. Thus, a dialetheia is a true statement of the form A&~A. Dialetheism is, consequently, the view that there are true contradictions. In modern form, dialetheism is a somewhat novel and as yet unorthodox position. Typically, those who accept it

have been driven to it by consideration of the logical paradoxes and connected problems.[2] The burden of this article is, however, that although the name may be novel, the view itself is by no means so. In particular, Hegel's and Marx's dialectics is based on dialetheism. With the benefit of historical hindsight we may not, perhaps, find this overwhelmingly surprising. For no one before this century tried harder than Hegel to think through the consequences of thought thinking about itself, or of categories applying to themselves. And this is just the kind of self-referential situation that gives rise to the logical paradoxes