Dialectic Reasoning

The Beauty of Conflict

J. A. McCreery

It is difficult to establish truths about society, or morality, or anything these days. 

It is just as hard to look back at history and try to understand how people believed their respective ‘truths’. How could a pagan believe a thousand God’s roamed the Earth, an Aztec that he must sacrifice man at the altar or politicians that women shouldn’t vote? None of these people believed they were wrong, it was normal, accepted – no one believes they are the bad guy. 

What things will our ancestors look back on and find a sour taste in their mouth? Your every act, your very existence, could well be in defiance of the moral codes of those that come after you. So, how can one reconcile, or at least understand, this process. 

Georg W. F. Hegel posits that it is in fact the discourse between intergenerational, or just differing, ideas which gives rise to development in philosophical thought and refinement of prevailing worldviews. The contrast is what creates beauty, and this contrast is perpetual, another idea, another challenge will inevitably face existing thought. 

The fight is outlined as follows; 

The thesis – status quo, the viewpoint that is currently accepted and widely held 

Comes into conflict against

The antithesis – the contrast, the challenger, perhaps a bit extreme, perhaps unacceptable, perhaps eristic; but revolutionary nonetheless

Shifts the thesis to produce

The synthesis – the midpoint between the ideas; the antithesis brings challenge to the thesis, forcing development, change and compromise in an effort to find balance. 

Does this process not govern personal development as well? Pressure makes diamonds (or dust). 

A broad example of this is the Russian shift from Tsarism, to Communism, to democracy. 

The thesis – Tsarism, autocracy, single and sole rule of the House of Romanov. 

Faces disrepute and disrepair as its ways become untimely

*Comes into conflict against

The antithesis – Soviet Rule, power to the people, Communist and Marxist reign

Is inefficient and unpragmatic, failing to produce its goals

*Shifts the thesis to produce

The synthesis – Democracy, federative, law-based systems with a republican government

Two extremes collide to produce a more nuanced, stable final outcome. 

Conceptualize it as a pendulum. It swings back and forth, from left to right, big sweeping movements – one extreme back to another back to the middle – then eventually, slowly, swing after swing, the pendulum will slow and gently settle in the middle. No one can push the pendulum and leave it perfectly in the middle and as such, no philosophy can be perfect in a vacuum, it must be challenged to test its metal; and although the swings may be viscous, given time it will come to rest in the middle. The middle which should represent the final truth. 

Until the pendulum is swung yet again…