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Hegel - Science topic
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Hegel's Science of Logic involves a trinary process: understanding -> dialectical reasoning -> speculative reasoning -> understanding at a higher level. This is analogous to a period 3 orbit, a return to self mediated by the other A -> B -> C -> A.
A direct consequence of a really strange theorem in dynamical systems due to Sharkovskii is that for any continuous function on the reals f: R -> R, if f has an orbit of minimal period 3 then it has orbits of any minimal period (because 3 is the first number in the Sharkovskii ordering). This happens in particular for certain values of lambda for the logistic map, exhibiting the phenomenon of 'chaos'.
The graph of successive higher iterations of the logistic map exhibit self-similarity, a fractal-like nature. This again mirrors the structure of the logic in which each part is similar in its trinary structure to that of the whole, i.e. Being -> Essence -> Notion, but in Being we have Quantity -> Quality -> Measure. In Concept we have Subjective Notion -> Objective Notion -> Absolute Notion. At a further finer level inside Quantity we have for instance Pure Being -> Nothing -> Becoming, etc.
Who else notices a contrast in Hegelian and Marxist politics? How? Why? My answer: Hegel stressed more obedience while Marx clearly did not.
"The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will find the first galaxies that formed in the early universe" - confidently claimed NASA! If the universe is infinite then how NASA or anybody can find a limit, not to speak of the so-called "early universe"? This foolish aim of official theoretical physics and cosmology arises from the utter ignorance of "The Infinite"; the lack of understanding of the source of matter and motion; and the defective theories of gravitation, pointing to a so-called "Big Bang Creation"!
"The Infinite - As a Hegelian Philosophical Category and Its Implication for Modern Theoretical Natural Science" :
"The Philosophy of Space-Time: Whence Cometh Matter and Motion?" :
"KEPLER -NEWTON -LEIBNIZ -HEGEL Portentous and Conflicting Legacies in Theoretical Physics, Cosmology and in Ruling Ideas" :
"The Mystery of the Lorentz Transform: A Reconstruction and Its Implications for Einstein's Theories of Relativity and cosmology" :
Now please enjoy the fun of seeing the "progress" of JWST in the following videos:
The thought is this: suppose we wanted to ask what non-human creatures might have--or have the pre-conditions for having--a 'self-conception'. How might we go about investigating this? The proposal: could the capacity to enter into monogamous relations be a pre-condition for having a 'conception of self'? (I do recognize that this would have somewhat counterintuitive consequences given which creatures have been known to exhibit monogamy and which do not).
So why this question? What is the significance of monogamy and why might it illuminate questions concerning the self?
· To engage in a monogamous relationship seems to presuppose the capacity on the part of one individual to pick out another individual qua individual. That is, it seems to presuppose the capacity to recognize an individual as the same individual despite changes in physical appearance, variations in character over time, and all the other myriad changes an individual organism may undergo throughout the course of its life.
The capacity to recognize an entity as the same entity over time seems also to presuppose the capacity to distinguish that entity from another entity of the same kind. That is, if I am an Emperor penguin and I enter into a monogamous relationship with some other Emperor penguin, then surely I must be able to distinguish the penguin I am in a relationship with from other penguins which I am not in a relationship with. For, if I can recognize ‘you’ as you, then I must see or recognize others as not-you.
I am thinking about this along Hegelian lines, as mutual recognition being a possible
precursor to the development of a self-conception. If anyone is interested in pursuing this idea, please contact me I and will share my notes so we can discuss this further!
Currently writing a paper about Hegel with particular reference to his 'Phenomenology of Spirit'. Just wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction with this? Really appreciated.
Understanding reflection in an ontological way, as in Hegel, and from the standpoint of the boundaries of J. Spencer Brown (N. Luhmann), onto-reflection is the basic category for understanding a person.
Can a person realize the truth? Hegel
Hegel holds self-consciousness and self-knowledge to be identical.
How popular are Hegel's ideas in the USA? Can we say that his influence on Communism indicates his being marginalized in American philosophical circles?
Hegel Dealictic
Thesis
antithesis
Synthesis
Along Hegelian, Hegel is famous Gemany philosopher and founder of dialectical logic, viewpoint: logic must represent variant, dynamical process drived by contradictions. This philosophy opinion is called as dialectical logic. Now the problem is that as a logic reseacher, do you think of dialectical logic? Or dialectical logic never be a logic?
The fundamental separation between self and other, (by 'other' I mean the outside world or what is non-self) is an assumption? Isn't the idea of noumenon is a phenomenon? I am searching for literature for discribe the cause of separation (or illusion of separation) between self and other. What theory or logic do you recommend me?
Hegel was happier dealing with big structures than with individual particulars. He preferred "the state" than individual people: "only in the state does man have a rational existence." A version of totality which all the component parts express the essence of that whole. (Georg Hegel; The Hegel Reader, 414)
Hegel's Logic of Science discusses the quantity-quality changes, his dialectical world view represents a possible approach to understanding phenomena of both the natural and social world. However, the application of Hegelian dialectic in world politics seems rare. I am currently working on a project that draws on this philosophical insight. I would like to know the application of quantity-quality relationship in the study of international politics, i.e. the existing literature. Thanks!
I asked this question in relation to specific issues in RG forums. I would like to bring it to a more general attention.
One cannot adequately understand the quantum phenomena based on the world view of modern official theoretical physics; be it Newtonian, “continuous field” of Minkowski-Einsteinian and quantum fields; or the path integral based Quantun Electrodynamics (QED) of Feynman. All of these (including all of natural science generally known so far) are based on a world view (epistemology), which G.W.F. Hegel called “the view of understanding” or very crudely speaking “causality"; to differentiate it from another world view, which Hegel termed as “the view of reason” or simply dialectics. Dialectics represents a qualitative leap in epistemology – a discrete and quantum jump and not a continuous transition from one to the other!
The classical and Newtonian dynamics deals with matter and motion that are the gross, averaged out or a crude representation of the internal micro-level processes that are defined by totally different and even conflicting laws conforming to the laws of quantum physics and dialectics, but are absolutely meaningless or senseless from the point of view of causality and “good old commonsense” of everyday life experience. Through historical or evolutionary processes, we (or any form of life) are instinctively tuned (at human level) to “the view of understanding” or causality; that is based on certainty, continuity, determinism etc., that conform to formal logic, obeys the laws of conservation of energy and mass, the principle “Ex nihilo nihil fit” and is mediated by a cause followed invariably by an effect.
Classical mechanics and to some extent Newtonian physics works in the terrestrially bound human scale and can be understood (at a gross level) as a satisfactory representation of objective reality. But beyond the narrow human scale, i.e., in the realm of the cosmic macrocosm and sub-atomic microcosm causality breaks down and is totally useless for any understanding of these realms. Only the dialectical world view based on chance and necessity can deal with these realms. But official theoretical physics (conforming to theology and economic class society) insists on extending causality to the macrocosm and microcosm; using contrived and arbitrary theories and mathematical tricks and “proving” these theories with equally contrived “experiments” to give these (causality based) fantastic theories the veneer of “science”. The epistemology of this world view jumps from one polar end of one extreme to the exactly opposite extreme end: from absolute chance to absolute necessity; but not the two together like dialectics!
For more than a decade; I have criticized the official theories (except the early version of QED of Heisenberg, Dirac et al., which conforms to dialectics) in various publications (books, journal articles, comments in various public forums including RG) from a dialectical world view: referred to in my RG profile including the following two current forums of RG; in which I have taken on some experts of (mainstream) official theoretical physics: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_Any_Effective_Refutation_of_Einsteins_Theories_of_Relativity_Possible https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_special_relativity_be_categorized_as_metaphysics
The dialectical world view is the exact opposite of causality; most importantly at the quantum level. Also, dialectical laws do not obey the conservation laws. Instead of cause and effect; dialectics is mediated by chance and necessity. The quantum phenomenon is an aspect of objective reality that nobody, no thinkers or philosophers could even anticipate in their wildest imagination; before its discovery at the turn of 20th Century. Only Hegel’s philosophy of Space and Time very vaguely anticipated the quantum phenomena. I have attempted a QED interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of Space-Time-Matter-Motion based on the "Virtual Particles" of the quantum vacuum in my booklet: “The Philosophy of Space-Time: Whence Cometh Matter and Motion?”
In few of my works in the realm of cosmology and quantum physics I have used the quantum interpretation of Hegel's philosophy and a materialist dialectical perspective drawing inferences, which are in direct contradiction to the officially and generally accepted theories like Relativity, Big Bang etc. Please see for example my article, "Ambartsumian, Arp and the Breeding Galaxies:
The whole causality based Big Bang cosmology of modern physics is negated by the dialectical view of the Infinite:
The characterization of objective reality as "continuous fields" ("Matter is a Myth") both at cosmic level ("Spacetime") and at quantum level (Quantum field theories) and the use of arbitrary mathematical idealism to describe those fields, is a gross violation of materialism - the very foundation on which natural science was built.
Even matter particle based QED of Feynman’s path integral is an arbitrary rationalization of a situation that anti-dialectical modern official theoretical physics (using idealized mathematics) has no clue about. It uses equally arbitrary “renormalization” - a trick that seems very ingenious, but it is a crude trick none-the-less – you cancel a set of so-called infinities by invoking another set of infinities to get a result that you wanted to have in the first place; or the one you really want! Paul Dirac referred to this sleight of hand as "brushing infinity under the rug."
In contrast to Feynman’s arbitrary “path integral”, I made a humble attempt to interpret wave/particle duality based on dialectics:
Of course, this question is not phrased in the proper Hegelian terms, but I am quite sure that he makes this point (though not in the expected master and slave chapter). Any ideas?
Many thanks!
Franz
There has been much criticism of teleological perfectionism, a concept of perfectionism defended by many scholars of philosophy, and much criticized by others. I need to know how far relevant is this idea to apply it to modern aspects of organizational work culture and adaptation, since, modern knowledge-organizations have acknowledged perfectionism as one of the variables of organizational routines and performance appraisal. Spinoza, Hegel, and Nietzsche expressed their views which related to perfectionism, and as such, how far this concept is correct?
Today, human excellence is gradually being overtaken and outstripped by machine excellence, and modern hi-tech industry thrives on automation and perfection. It has now become more of an objective criteria or determinant rather than a subjective one which it used to be so when human excellence and perfectionism were once considered the pillars of human endurance and success. What are your views?
In a personal interpretation of Plotinus' dictum, the method of exchange of ideas: the 'dialectics -' is used to define and classify logically all reality, describing it not only in itself, but also in relation to its opposite. The appearance of logic of dialectics thus has mainly a negative value, in that it allows to go back at the origin of the truth of something, through the knowledge of its opposite, i.e. the negative: falsity.
The origin of this method in the discussion of philosophical theses can be found already in Zeno of Elea, who defended the theory of the immutability of Being refuting the antithesis of opponents by a ‘reductio ad absurdum’. That is he used dialectics as a means of contrast that arrives indirectly to the truth on the basis of the principle of non-contradiction, using the paradoxes.
A similar method can be found in Plato's dialogues, where Socrates tries to find the inner contradictions in the argument of the interlocutor, decomposing the statements and comparing them with higher levels of knowledge. The early advantage left to the weaker interlocutor is the dialectic instrument by which emerges - brightest and final -the opinion of the master.
While the aim of Socrates was a refutation of the false knowledge that implied a need for moral elevation, and the search for truth, for the Sophists dialectics coincides with the art of winning in the discussions, refuting the claims of the opponent regardless their intrinsic value of the truth.
In dealing with the main evolutionary stages of the concept of dialectics, at the end of the eighteenth century, Kant devoted new studies to it, defining dialectics as the logic of appearance, which aims at highlighting the illusory character of transcendental judgments, putting us on guard against deception of reason, that is deception of all, the illusion with which man seeks to overtake the world of phenomena on the level of knowledge. But the appearance of dialectics, as transcendental, is inherent to human reason and therefore continues to give the illusion of being true even when the falsity is proved. The dialectics in Kant is the study and criticism of this natural and unavoidable illusion.
Kant's conception of dialectics, as the critical exercise of recognition of its own limitations, was picked up by the idealists Fichte and Schelling, who attributed the capacity not only to recognize, but also to create or to put such a limit. Thus, dialectics becomes the trascendental instrument that comprise the activities of the ‘I’, with which the subject on the one hand limits itself subconsciously, but on the other hand sees the error inherent in the common sense, which led him to exchange the appearance of phenomena for the true reality.
For Fichte, in fact, the dialectics ‘I’ / non-‘I’ makes us aware that the ‘non-I’ is not an absolute reality, but limited and relative to ‘I’. As in the Neo-platonists, dialectics is only a means, with which ‘thought’ tends to return to its origin, canceling itself. It keeps a critical or negative value because does not allow to grasp the Absolute itself: not if it did, the philosophical thought would be creator, as it would coincide with the creative act of the Absolute. Dialectics, instead, merely reconstructs theoretically the process by which the ‘I’ creates the world.
Moreover, with Hegel, dialectics transformed itself from a philosophical tool into the aim itself of philosophy. Unlike the neo-Platonism, Hegel assigned to dialectics a positive value, rather than negative: while for the Neoplatonists dialectics served in order to reach the truth, but it was left over (at a transcendent level and well distinct from that), Hegel made it coincide the truth with dialectics, i.e. with ‘becoming’. Even on the ontological level Hegel reversed the previous outlook: now dialectics is no longer the process by which God denied (and hid) himself generating the world, but with which asserts himself, coming to coincide with the world and history.
While classical logic started from a point A completely ‘a priori’ in relation to the outcome of the reasoning (B), in the Hegelian dialectics the logical flow that goes from A to B turns back to validate the initial thesis in a comprehensive synthesis (C).
For Hegel, in the final synthesis all reality is at the same time its opposite: X coincides with Y, black coincides with white. Then it would not need to refer to a transcendent principle: black and white, in our example, do not spring from a higher and common ideas of color, but would result one from the other, to give place only in the end, through their contrast, to the Idea that includes them. This is made in a spiral characterized by the so-called triad: thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The Absolute is not at its origin but in the end, and flows from the mediation of the two opposite terms.
Schelling agrees in conclusion; this way of understanding dialectics was challenged in particular by the “last” Schelling, whereby Hegel took for objective - instead - what is subjective: it is our perception of objects to emerge from their difference and diversity, not the objects themselves . In our example, the subjective perception of the white (X) comes from the comparison with the black (Y), but no one can say why the white stems objectively from black. Dialectical thinking can theoretically determine the manner in which something can exist, but can not replace the Absolute, creator.
Schelling agreed that the contradictions of the dialectics are very important because they are the spring of ‘becoming’, the reason why God makes Himself history and defeats the darkness present in His own dark ground; but that for Schelling does not mean that because the contradictions are important then there is no need to avoid them. They are still a limit, representing a negative element, which is called upon to act as a counterbalance a positive philosophy.
The categories are the attribution of a predicate to a subject. They are specifically supreme classes of every possible predicate, with which it is possible to order the whole reality.
For Aristotle, the categories are groups or primary genres which collect all the properties that may be the explanation of ‘being’. They are the predicaments of ‘being’, which refer to primary qualities (the immutable essences of objects), or secondary (the mishaps that may change).
The categories of Aristotle have an objective value, because they refer to concrete entities. Our judgments use them not only according to a relationship purely logical, typical of syllogism, but assembling them owing to the intuitive capacity to effectively grasp the relationship between the real objects. But beyond that, to each of the categories it relates a part of those semantic constructs of the discourse that have to do with the real world: for example, a name or a noun refers to the category of substance; the adjectives to quality, those indefinite to quantity, or to the relationship etc. It is therefore assumed that for Aristotle categories are a classification of the components which make a discourse.
Starting from the distinction between the objective level and the semantic one, that was not missed in Aristotle, who, however, would not know what to attribute to one and what to the other, Immanuel Kant admits that to judge, source of all objective discourse, is a 'multifaceted activity, which arises from the application of different categories or pure concepts, through which the intellect unifies multiple data from sensitive intuition.
These concepts, however, are transcendental, namely that they need starting data in order to activate, without which they would be empty: it's because of the sense organs that an object is "given," to us becoming a phenomenon; with categories then it is "thought".
Then, unlike Aristotle, for whom categories belonged to the ontological reality of ‘being’, the Kantian categories fit in to the intellect; that is, they become the ‘a priori’ functions, or means of working of our thought that frame reality according to its own preconceived scheme. They do not apply to reality in itself, but only to the phenomenon.
As in Aristotle the categories needed judgment to be used, then in Kant they require a supreme activity, of a thought in the process of being created, to exercise their unifying function of the manifold. The categories are the multiple facets of a prism which is called thought; they are unifying acts, but not yet active, only potentially activated.
This opens the question of the deduction of the categories, that is, how to justify the use we make of them: for example, is it legitimate to assign different categories to the same object?
This is the problem faced by Kant in the Transcendental Deduction of Critique of Pure Reason, to unify categories, finding a principle from which they can all derive. This principle will be found in the ‘I think’ or transcendental apperception.
Kant will be accused of having locked himself up in a subjectivism with no way out, given that his categories do not serve to know the reality as it is in itself, but only as it appears to us.
With Fichte they assume a different role: while Kant had intended to unify the multiple, for Fichte they assume the inverse aim of multiplying the uniqueness of the ‘I’, bringing it to divide and produce unconsciously the ‘non-I’. Thus the categories of the intellect have also a real or ontological value, albeit unconscious. The ‘thinking’ is to create, but only at the level of intellectual intuition.
In Hegel, instead, it is the same logic that becomes creative. The cognitive categories of Kant, which were merely "formal", become together "form and content": they are logical-ontological categories, determinations of the Idea as it proceeds dialectically. An object exists to the extent that it is rational, that is, only if it falls within a logical category.
For Nietzsche, finally, categories become the result of the evolution of the breed: their effectiveness would be given not by the ability to reflect what is true, but by the utility in aiding survival. Concepts taken and endorsed by ethological-philosophical studies of Konrad Lorenz, who defined the categories the 'apparatus image of the world. "
SHORT VERSION
As I said in a previous RG occasion, the notion of space is not easy to define. Some philosophical questions concerning the notion include:
• Space is absolute or purely relational?
• Space has an inherent geometry, or the geometry of space is just a convention?
Many scientists have taken part in this debate: Isaac Newton (space is absolute), Gottfried Leibniz (space is relational) and Henri Poincaré (the spatial geometry is a convention).
Great progress was the formulation of the theory of relativity ("restricted" in 1905 and "general" in 1916) by Einstein, according to whom time is not absolute but depends on the speed of light which is a universal constant and on the spatial reference taken into consideration. According to Einstein it is more correct to speak of space-time, because the two aspects (chronological and spatial) are inseparably related to each other; it is modified by the gravitational fields, which are able to deflect the light and slow down time (general relativity). So, from Einstein on, the two bodies that seemed primitive become intrinsically linked.
Quantum theory gave rise to numerous disputes regarding its philosophical interpretation. Since the early developments, its systems contradicted many accepted philosophies. However, its mathematical predictions matched the observations.
In the track of Newton, most scientists agreed on the assumption that the universe was governed by strict laws of nature, which could be discovered and formalized through scientific observation and experimentation. This position is known as determinism.
We recall that In philosophy determinism is that conception of reality according to which all the phenomena of the world are connected to each other and occur in an order necessary and invariable (which excludes the presence of free will).
Determinism concerns the relationship between cause and effect, between universal natural law and single specific phenomenon. According to this relation, in nature, given a cause or a law, a certain effect or a particular phenomenon can only occur, and nothing else. So there is no space in the Universe for the pursuit of goals freely chosen.
On the path leading to the prevalence of these theses about a unified space, two scientific contributions should be remembered: those given by the two Byzantine philosophers: John Philoponus and Damascius. The first opposed to the Aristotelian definition his own description of place as a three-dimensional "interval", corresponding, as a measure, to the volume of the object "located"; this empty repository, in which the body is contained, is immaterial and remains unchanged if the body would come out.
At the opposite point of view, that is the doctrine of space as quality relative to the position of material objects, it was the analysis of the neo-Platonic Damascius. For him, in fact, the place or space is nothing more than a measure of the position of the different parts of an object or of the whole object in relation to others. Contrary to the ambiguous thesis of Aristotle, that while not having an empty place, it is still "different" from its content and 'remains' the same should it move away. In the more rigid analysis of Damascius relative to the position of a body in motion, it never becomes the site of another object for how many new positions it assumes.
With the Newtonian theory of absolute space, the views on the space as a universal container of bodies seemed to mark an important achievement, though not unchallenged. His main opponent was, as is well known, Leibniz, who to the notion of absolute space contrasted the concept of space as an ideal preparation that rises from the consideration of the change of mutual relations of the bodies, to which only improperly it can confer an objective reality.
With Lebiniz and Locke, it began to take shape a new perspective in the analysis of space which placed in the foreground the way this concept is part of the world of knowledge of the subject. A road, this, which would have walked with Berkeley, the maximum theorist of empiricism, for whom the problem of space was situated in a epistemological and psychological perspective. It would have been Berkeley, in particular, to draw the extreme consequences of this line of reflection, radicalizing the position of Locke - for whom the overall idea of
space arises from the mental correlation of simple ideas coming from visual and tactile sensations.
With these arguments, a way is opened for the Kantian critical solution. The need to react to this subjective-empirical dissolution of the concept of space and to give a certain foundation to geometry, mechanics and Newtonian astronomy, led, in fact, Kant to investigate the space itself as a transcendental condition of knowledge.
Refuting the nature of the absolute reality of space, Kant conceived it as a pure form of the insights of the external sense, and then as a necessary condition of human knowledge, having the function, together with time, of organizing the manifold of sense in view of its unification under the pure concepts of intellect.
On the other hand, studying the antinomies, Kant did nothing but renew, in his new perspective, the argument with which Zeno showed the contradictory finity-infinity of each manifold and each space (as was aptly noted by Hegel).
During the nineteenth century, the reworking of the Kantian concept of space was in jeopardy from the dual attacks of which he was subject, on the strictly philosophical side. Proponents of objective idealism, requiring to the activity of the spirit the ability to produce by itself the true content of knowledge, reinterpreted space as a moment of dialectical development of the idea; so, in the Hegelian system, space becomes the first determination of the philosophy of nature. This is because of "abstract universality of its being-outside-of-itself," the sheer quantity existing in the outer world, characterized by the absolute continuity.
In the twentieth-century philosophy reflection on space was unconstrained by epistemological problems. We may recall, e.g., the theory of Bergson, who considered the spatial mode as its proper modality of positive sciences with which time is objectified, projecting the continuous flow of pure life in space.
LONGER VERSION:
As I said in a previous RG occasion, the notion of space is not easy to define. Some philosophical questions concerning the notion include:
• Space is absolute or purely relational?
• Space has an inherent geometry, or the geometry of space is just a convention?
Many scientists have taken part in this debate: Isaac Newton (space is absolute), Gottfried Leibniz (space is relational) and Henri Poincaré (the spatial geometry is a convention).
Great progress was the formulation of the theory of relativity ("restricted" in 1905 and "general" in 1916) by Einstein, according to whom time is not absolute but depends on the speed of light which is a universal constant and on the spatial reference taken into consideration. According to Einstein it is more correct to speak of space-time, because the two aspects (chronological and spatial) are inseparably related to each other; it is modified by the gravitational fields, which are able to deflect the light and slow down time (general relativity). So, from Einstein on, the two bodies that seemed primitive become intrinsically linked.
Quantum theory gave rise to numerous disputes regarding its philosophical interpretation. Since the early developments, its systems contradicted many accepted philosophies. However, its mathematical predictions matched the observations.
In the track of Newton, most scientists agreed on the assumption that the universe was governed by strict laws of nature, which could be discovered and formalized through scientific observation and experimentation. This position is known as determinism.
We recall that In philosophy determinism is that conception of reality according to which all the phenomena of the world are connected to each other and occur in an order necessary and invariable (which excludes the presence of free will).
Determinism concerns the relationship between cause and effect, between universal natural law and single specific phenomenon. According to this relation, in nature, given a cause or a law, a certain effect or a particular phenomenon can only occur, and nothing else. So there is no space in the Universe for the pursuit of goals freely chosen.
On the path leading to the prevalence of these theses about a unified space, two scientific contributions should be remembered: those given by the two Byzantine philosophers: John Philoponus and Damascius. The first opposed to the Aristotelian definition his own description of place as a three-dimensional "interval", corresponding, as a measure, to the volume of the object "located"; this empty repository, in which the body is contained, is immaterial and remains unchanged if the body would come out.
At the opposite point of view, that is the doctrine of space as quality relative to the position of material objects, it was the analysis of the neo-Platonic Damascius. For him, in fact, the place or space is nothing more than a measure of the position of the different parts of an object or of the whole object in relation to others. Contrary to the ambiguous thesis of Aristotle, that while not having an empty place, it is still "different" from its content and 'remains' the same should it move away. In the more rigid analysis of Damascius relative to the position of a body in motion, it never becomes the site of another object for how many new positions it assumes.
Descartes, in its rigorous reduction of the physical world to the characteristics of geometry, came to the reduction of matter to pure three-dimensionality, thus identifying it with the extension in length, width and depth. This allowed him, once freed matter from any other quality, to describe its behavior in purely mechanical terms, but the identification of extension and matter prevented him to conceive the existence of vacuum and then to understand the movement except in purely relative terms.
In a world full of extended matter, the motion can not be other than change of relation of position of bodies. When two bodies are changing their mutual relationship It is the result of pure convention to affirm that one of them moved, and the other remained motionless. Reconnecting to the speculative current of Neoplatonic ancestry represented by Patrizi, one of the most distinguished representatives of the Cambridge school, More, developed his theory of space that influenced that, far more famous, of Newton; against the Cartesian identification of matter and extension, More said the ‘imputableness’ of extension also to the spiritual substances that otherwise would be denied, as existing "nowhere."
The immaterial extension where all tangible and intangible substances are located, the infinite space, uniform, indivisible that contains everything, is the still benchmark against which you can identify the "true" motion of a body and the 'real " quiet of another, thus solving the problem that Descartes had opened with his theory of the relative motion. This space then had a number of features (infinity, indivisibility, unity, indispensability) that allowed to assume the identification with the God's infinite, real extending in the world.
From a similar polemic against Descartes, Newton came then to the definition of absolute space, infinite, homogeneous, isotropic, indivisible, motionless base of rectilinear inertial motion of material bodies, the only possible parameter of measurement of real and absolute movements, and medium by which it transmits the gravitational force that holds together the planetary cosmos. And from the analysis of this function that space assumes in relation to gravity, Newton came to his definition of absolute space as "sensorium Dei", by which the deity perceives the world and acts on it.
With the Newtonian theory of absolute space, accepted by a large part of physicists of his time as an incontestable dogma the point of view concerning space as a universal container of bodies seemed to mark an important achievement, though not unchallenged. His main opponent was, as is well known, Leibniz, who to the notion of absolute space opposed the concept of space as “order of coexistence” an ideal preparation that rises from the consideration of the change of mutual relations of the bodies, to which only improperly an objective reality can be conferred.
With Lebiniz and Locke, it began to take shape a new perspective in the analysis of space which placed in the foreground the way this concept is part of the world of knowledge of the subject. A road, this, which would have walked with Berkeley, the maximum theorists of empiricism, for whom the problem of space was situated in a epistemological and psychological perspective. It would have been Berkeley, in particular, to draw the extreme consequences of this line of reflection, radicalizing the position of Locke - for whom the overall idea of
space arises from the mental correlation of simple ideas coming from visual and tactile sensations.
With these arguments, a way is opened for the Kantian critical solution. The need to react to this subjective-empirical dissolution of the concept of space and to give a certain foundation to geometry, mechanics and Newtonian astronomy, led, in fact, Kant to investigate the space itself as a transcendental condition of knowledge.
Refuting the nature of the absolute reality of space, Kant conceived it as a pure form of the insights of the external sense, and then as a necessary condition of human knowledge, having the function, together with time, of organizing the manifold of sense in view of its unification under the pure concepts of intellect.
On the other hand, studying the antinomies, Kant did nothing but renew, in his new perspective, the argument with which Zeno showed the contradictory finity-infinity of each manifold and of each space (as was aptly noted by Hegel).
In the twentieth-century philosophy reflection on space was unconstrained by epistemological problems. We may recall, e.g., the theory of Bergson, who considered the spatial mode as its proper modality of positive sciences with which time is objectified, projecting the continuous flow of pure life in space.
The philosophical system of Hegel falls within logical idealism or panlogism since reducing all reality to rationality, it excludes and represses the individual aspects, and particularly the emotional ones, of human existence and therefore opens to a totalitarian world.
Dialectics is the process through which Reason is implemented. This process is divided into position, negation, negation of the negation - passing and preservation, unification of the two opposites in a higher determination, in which the first two, taken in isolation are abstract. Each synthesis is "temporary" because it becomes a position of a next triadic process.
Hegel claims the cognitive value of dialectics, indeed as the supreme form of knowledge. Compared to the classical dialectics he reforms it in a dynamic sense. Because reality is ‘becoming’, it is movement and dynamism (for Hegel a static concept, because being static it can not be true) the dialectical movement can not be other than a circular or spiral movement with a triadic rhythm.
Hegel explains the particular reality deducing it from an absolute principle, considering the subject of knowledge not the facts and actual individuals, but the categories and abstract principles.
Moreover, Hegel says: absolute is not static, it is not substance, but it is in the making. What does it mean to be in the making? That can not be grasped in its essence by a punctual intuition, but through a discourse, that is, through reason.
At this point we must refer to the distinction between intuition and discourse. Intuition, which philosophy mostly limits to the sensible, is an act of knowledge, is a unique act of apprehension, stationary in time: seizing this glass in hand or seeing it with a single glance I have an intuition of this object . Intuition mostly confined to the sensible, is an act on time, it does not have a development over time. Schelling extends the concept of intuition to the supreme knowledge of the absolute which is a point of distinction of I and non-I and is caught with an intellectual intuition, similar to the aesthetic one. Hegel, instead, argues that the absolute, being ‘becoming’, can not be captured by a single act of intellection, but must be understood as a series of acts, that is, by reasoning, by a discourse.
The absolute can not be seized immediately, but only through the sequence of mediations in which it develops. "Mediation" seems an abstract term, strange, but it is present in all reasoning. Every argument implies starting from a premise and develop precisely the threads of the discussion through intermediate terms - hence the word "mediation" - to come to prove its own point.
The speculative-dialectical process, namely the formation of thought gives rise to concepts. The procedure consists in discussing not only what follows by a certain premise, but also what follows from the opposite one. And this corresponds to the principle of dialectic overcoming, by which the conduct of the self-development of the concept does not stop at its immediate location, but raises also the take off of this and move on to the opposite, to remove also this other, and so return in itself. On the contrary, any knowledge of single determinations taken by itself, ends always with the result that "each of them pierces into its opposite ', since in this way one stays at the one-sided consideration of negation for itself (as it would in skepticism) .
The resolution of the contradiction is in fact only a moment of self-development of the concept, because all the movement is caused by constant contradictions, which always renew themselves. Of course each of them is always exceeded, but then in the next category it rises again, to be overcome and then recur and so on. What is certain is that you never return to Non-Contradiction, either temporarily or, a fortiori, definitely. The resolution, however, is always a return, in the "return to self", but in such a way to protects the "switch" that, as Hegel says literally, "is the" essential ", and that is the reverse of the mutual opposites.
Plato, especially in the dialectic dialogues (f.i. Sofists), moving from the eleatic opposition of ‘Being’ and not ‘Being’ or, more exactly, of «what it is» to «what it is not », recognizes that, in this second term of the antithesys, the «not Being» is resolved in Being something else. "It is thus solved the mere negativity of each idea than the other, recognizes that, in this second term of the antithesis, the "not" will be resolved in '' be more. "It is thus explained the mere negativity of each idea than the other”.
Aristotle distinguishes alterity (understood generically as diversity, whereby all things are usually different) from the difference which is the dissimilarity between things of the same kind.
For the philosopher of idealism, ‘the something’, being characterized qualitatively, is in a negative logic contrast with'"other" than himself; he is not the other and then suffers the limit but, at the same time, this limitations kicks off a progressive alteration of its quality indefinitely (such as it happens in chemistry).
The term ‘alterity’ is often used in existentialism understood as alienation, division of the individual from himself.
On the contrary, for philosophers like Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995) alterity not only is not a negative value, but it is the highest ethical one.
In particular, for Levinas, the first principle of ethics that, in this context, becomes metaphysical: If I do not violate my overarching categories, the mystery of the other, that is, if I do not bring it to a pre-determined and pre-judged essence, I get to a kind of knowledge that is real because it is a track of infinity.
Alterity is totally alien to the ego (split between self and the other) and, therefore, my experience will never be comparable to that of another person. I can not live the pain, joy and other limit experiences of another individual. For the Lithuanian philosopher ethics is the capacity of exit from the understanding as comprehension of the ‘other’ who is generally assimilated to himself and dispossessed of his alterity and diversity.
For many scholars, the reflection of Levinas on the ‘Other’ is one of the theoretical foundations of contemporary multiculturalism; that is it suggests a new and different vision of the relations between individuals and between cultures: as relations between diverse individuals, that - as such - should be recognized and valued. Only through this recognition it is possible to turn on an authentic communication between cultures, without hegemonic claims on each other. This is a fruitful perspective, through which, for example, it is possible to look in a new way the problems of relations between cultures that are caused by the migration processes taking place on a global scale.
The thought of Emmanuel Levinas developed, then, on two privileged sides: the 'phenomenological exercise of which he was among the first representatives in France and the Talmudic readings, inspired by Biblical and Hebrew themes. Starting from Heidegger, Levinas calls into question the primacy of the problem of Being, dominated by the principle of totality, to look in the appeal of alterity for the foundation of an authentic subjectivity.
Conducive to positively evaluate the alterity is the philosopher Salvatore Natoli (1942) who, reworking the Aristotelian concept of magnanimity, judges considering the good of the ‘other’ the best of all virtues: "The magnanimous person does not look down on others not because he underestimates them, but because he finds in the task he has set his measure "and" in this kind of self-control he becomes, paradoxically, more accessible to others; he becomes indirectly generous.
From Hegel on the problem of alterity and its relationship with the denial remained between the capital issues of dialectics. Different is the problem of alterity as a matter of the '' other person ', i.e. of the multiplicity of consciences.
