The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts is theĀ essenceĀ (one of the āessentials,ā one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics. That is precisely how Hegel, too, puts the matter (Aristotle in his Metaphysics continually grapplesĀ with it andĀ combatsĀ Heraclitus and Heraclitean ideas).
The correctness of this aspect of the content of dialectics must be tested by the history of science. This aspect of dialectics (e.g. in Plekhanov) usually receives inadequate attention: the identity of opposites is taken as the sum-total ofĀ examples and not as aĀ law of cognitionĀ (and as a law of the objective world).
[...]
Such must also be the method of exposition (i.e., study) of dialectics in general (for with Marx the dialectics of bourgeois society is only a particular case of dialectics). To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., withĀ anyĀ proposition:Ā the leaves of a tree are green; John is a man; Fido is a dog, etc. Here already we haveĀ dialecticsĀ (as Hegelās genius recognised): theĀ individualĀ is theĀ universal. Consequently, the opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with otherĀ kindsĀ of individuals (things, phenomena, processes) etc.Ā Here alreadyĀ we have the elements, the germs, the concepts ofĀ necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say: John is a man, Fido is a dog,Ā thisĀ is a leaf of a tree, etc., weĀ disregardĀ a number of attributes asĀ contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other.
Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as in a ānucleusā (ācellā) the germs ofĀ allĀ the elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general. And natural science shows us (and here again it must be demonstrated inĀ anyĀ simple instance) objective nature with the same qualities, the transformation of the individual into the universal, of the contingent into the necessary, transitions, modulations, and the reciprocal connection of opposites. DialecticsĀ isĀ the theory of knowledge of (Hegel and) Marxism. This is the āaspectā of the matter (it is not āan aspectā but theĀ essenceĀ of the matter) to which Plekhanov, not to speak of other Marxists, paid no attention.
izzy806
germansingergirl
prguitarman
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
