Question

Define Hegel’s dialectical process. Explain its significance in relation to Marx’s theory of history. Also explain its significance on Marx’s basic theoretical orientation.

Answer 1

• First described by Enlightenment German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the Hegelian Dialectic is a mechanism to arrive at a final truth or conclusion.
• Hegel explained a process where truth is instead arrived through the friction and conflict between one force (the thesis) and its opposite (the antithesis). The final result from that clash, the synthesis, is the best conclusion.
• Essentially, to approach a certain issue or in the context of some idea there is a first percpective and approach, namely the thesis. Then, in contradistinction and response to that approach is the total opposite extreme on the other end of the spectrum called the anti-thesis.
• Then this conflict is resolved and develops into the synthesis which is the meshing and synthesizing of the two extremes into a new (and improved) thesis. From here the cycle repeats.
• In plain terms, the Hegelian Dialectic is the battle of two extremes to get a result that is somewhere in the middle. That result will develop an opposing force of its own and the ensuing battle yields another result.
• The objective reality we have right now has incorporated within it all previous “battles” of thesis and antithesis since the beginning of time, meaning that according to the theory we are living in a progressive arc to absolute truth and world perfection.
• This concept primarily appears and explains historical phenomenon and intellectual history. Marx famously used this to argue why inevitably society will come to Communism, what he believed to be the ultimate and final political synthesis.
• For Hegel history were a process in which the Absolute progressively unfolds itself revealing more of its true nature in later periods than in earlier, and this more in the national state than in primitive communities. The dialectic provided clue to this development.
• Marx borrowed this concept of dialectic from Hegel and applied it to the explanation of society. He also said that dialectic was also the clue to progress but this progress is not history and the culmination of progress is neither history nor Absolute Idea not even the National State of Germany.