Tuesday, October 10, 2023

THE DANGER OF IRRATIONALISM IN DIALECTIC

Nothing much is needed here, just the warning that dialectics must never come to occupy the space of an axiom. If all things are compared to it, if it becomes an autonomous standard, then it runs the risk of functioning as a form of irrational idealism that stands above reality, thereby distorting reality. (The same incompleteness charges it levels against other procedures of logic).


If dialectic is placed into a category that puts it beyond all criticism, it means the concrete death of thought to those who wield dialectic in such a way; it means that which began as a continuation of the enlightenment has morphed into an enemy of enlightenment. Such a regression cannot be allowed to stand, a dialectic that functions on the basis of authority functions against the progress of human knowledge. The authority of dialectic must be derived from its functional power as an agent of rationality, as an expansion of rationality, but this means that dialectic must still be subject, not only to revision, but also negation. The student who wields dialectic as an infallible authority has both betrayed and forsaken dialectic. (If such a thing can be said to be consistent with dialectic, on the other hand, then it would mean that dialectic itself fails, manifesting itself in its development as a form of advanced irrationality). 

Some people wield dialectic irrationality, from it, they end up locked in a dogmatic irrationality that stifles the progress of thought, of this they are unconscious, thinking they have arrived at the Ultimate Rationality, when in fact, they have locked themselves out of the rational process with their dogmatic use of dialectic. 

A dialectic that remains beyond all criticism is no longer a tool of rationality, but a defeater of rationality.

The danger is for the student to retreat into a formulaic structure and then wield the supremacy of this structure against all opposition, without actually considering the content of the opposition, the student then dismisses this content because it contradicts the structure of his dialectic. 

In the worst case, the student learns from dialectic to no longer consider content and merely to note the opposition of form, that is, the student thinks he has arrived at the highest rational authority and thereby proceeds to refute things on the basis of whether they conform to the orthodoxy of this form, opposition is dismissed as opposed to rationally engaged. This is a sure sign that one has fallen into irrationalism through dialectic. A process of reason is required for rationality, but in the student who has embraced irrationality through dialectics, this process is replaced with mere dismissal and evasion on the basis of thought's departure from the orthodoxy or affirmation of dialectic at the axiomatic level. This means that objections against dialectic are not considered. The student has merely learned to (stop thinking!) reject and dismiss anything that departs from his dialectical orthodoxy. This is the danger of irrationalism in dialectics.
 
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