Dialectics

← Part I (Science as a symbolic description)

VIII

Science is a language. Where, then, does the word 'explain' come from? If science does not explain, who does, then, and what? Or is the word 'explain' itself empty? But is it possible for a word to be empty? Can a word mean nothing? Does not the word λόγος mean the activity and manifestation of the mind? And if it is true that thought itself constitutes a language, is the reverse, 'language constitutes a thought', false? Of course not.

Feeding from the same wide trough as Science, the word 'explain' has life to it. Yet if it is not empty, for a word cannot be empty, then Science as a method of description and Science as a method of explanation are one and the same. Yet description is language itself; therefore the word 'explain' can be nothing other than a modus of the word 'describe'. To explain is to describe, but to describe in a certain specific sense. The explanatory nature of Science lies in how precise, broad, thorough and consistent this description is. Explanation is a property of description; explanation is nothing other than a description of a certain density, of a certain thorough, thoughtful focus. Science is a language; the explanatory aspect of Science is a certain kind of language, with a very specific structure and density. Genius is in attention.

However, it has long been understood that the essence of an explanation is its breadth and internal coherence. 'Once a phenomenon is thoroughly understood, it is therefore explained, and this means science's job is done', said Julius von Mayer, the infamous founder of thermodynamics. But if that is true, then the precise meaning of the word 'explain' is to describe something thoroughly and fully.

IX.

This is how common misconceptions and questions about philosophy subside on their own. You start asking yourself: if philosophy does not explain, what, then, does it do? But yes, it does explain. You could even say philosophy alone explains in the true sense of the word, for philosophy alone aims to attain an all-encompassing, thorough understanding of reality.

Our day-to-day understanding of things is incoherent and inconsistent. It does not have a method, a specific subject and a defined worldview. It mixes all subjects and points of view, arbitrarily swapping one for another and hopping from one to another, unaware of its ever-shifting haziness. It has the all-encompassing fullness, but this fullness lacks order and form, and therefore self-awareness as well. It has everything, the full wealth of thought. Yet you cannot navigate this wealth. It is hard, and sometimes even impossible, to find a subject or point of view you need at a certain point. The day-to-day, common thought has explained everything already, and it no longer needs anything. Yet it is explained in some way, somewhere; it will be only by chance that you will find where and how exactly. This worldview is akin to a giant library that has no catalogue and is not organised.

X.

Science fights against this lack of method. It casts away the fuzzy vast array of subjects and concentrates on just one or a limited set of topics, harshly restricting its scope. It rebuffs all unconventional shifts and wanderings of thought; it puts an iron head-fixating apparatus on the observer and covers their eyes with a blindfold. Its method involves sifting through everyday wisdom and everyday perceptions, picking out only a few relevant pieces. It labels the rest as being outside its scope and therefore also outside its law, or at least the law of this particular science.

Each field of science has its own approach to this selection of thought. There are no bridges connecting the methods of one science to those of another. All the various branches of science operate in isolation from one another. There are no connections between them. That is also why there is actually no Science; there is a multitude of sciences that deny and denounce each other by their very nature. Yet they all have one thing in common, which is this mutual denial. The thing they all have in common is the unconditional, methodological (and therefore methodical) intolerance towards the subjects and perspectives that do not accommodate that science's aims and goals. Every given method, that is, every given way to limit your scope and set a fixed point for yourself, is considered to be the only one; that is its very nature. Every given science in its given present state is conceptualised as the only one. This particularity of each science forms the general outlook of all scientific activities, which is how we arrive at Science.

Yet this particularity is only a category, a figure of thought. Time and again life itself knocks science off the position it occupied and uncovers both the poverty of its chosen scope and the forced artificialness of its chosen point of view. Life itself, I say, washes away the artificially constructed dams that science would like to contain it with. Yet science keeps stubbornly persisting in its chosen approach. Upon watching the dams being washed away, it looks for a comfy way to conform and adjust to the new conditions, devise a new narrow scope for itself and pick a new fixed point. Both the contents and the form of science are changed by this. In essence, science is knocked off from precisely this beginning of its narrowness and stillness, for it was hoping to stay within its chosen scope and on its fixed point, yet it was forced to abandon both. Yet, prideful as it is, it will never admit to its failure. Even though it has lost in actual fact, it clings even more stubbornly to its aim to rule over life, even though it is forced to be content with its new position being only formally similar to the one it used to have before. It remains blithely unconcerned with the fact that the things it demanded stayed unchanging and unmoving have, in fact, changed and moved. Instead it tries to pass its demand for life to stay unchanging and unmoving per se as a factual witness to its unchanging unmovingness (?). Life changes science, and this change occurs despite its strictly conservative nature. Life drags science on a leash while it keeps refusing to budge. And science, although that is against its very nature and will, moves as inadvertently as the life that is dragging it. The history of science is not like if we were to slowly untangle a ball of yarn; it is not development or evolution, it is a series of major and minor upheavals, destructions, explosions, commotions, catastrophes. The history of science is a permanent revolution. Yet in this series of commotions there is one constant: Science's unceasing demand for a method, its demand for permanence and conservative rigidity. Bony and lifeless, science is a dry stick standing amidst the flowing, buoyant streams of life, triumphant in its prideful self-assurance. Yet life flows past it and washes away at its foundation. Every year science devises new approximate and emphemeral conceptions of permanence and rigidity. This series of palliatives, those would-be victories over life, all united in their claim to be one and the same, is called the history of science. As Goethe wrote in his diary on June 18, 1817: 'I reflected on fabrication and science. The damage they do comes solely from the need of the faculty of judgement to devise some kind of image to be used towards a certain aim, which is then constituted to be something real and objective. Thereby something that was useful and helpful for a time comes to distract and hinder.'

XI.

The opposites of disorderly wealth and impoverished life are orderly emptiness and death. If to explain means to provide an exhaustive description, then both the day-to-day worldview and the scientific systematic approach lack the ability to explain. If method per se was incompatible with wealth and life, it would not exist at all. Fortunately, this incompatibility not only has never been demonstrated, but it can also be easily disproven by this fact: philosophy exists, and therefore coherence is compatible with fullness. Philosophy exists, and therefore a description can be vivid and true to life. Philosophy exists, and the deadening, stultifying method of science loses its adamant rigidity. We attain this by means of time. 'Volentem ducunt fata, nolentem trahunt; fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant'. The leading Fate is Time. Time drags along the stubborn Science. Time crashes its cliffs. Time tears down each and every manifestation of Science's method. Time drags it along. But could you not learn to love Fate itself and make Time your method? It will pick up your arm and lead you where you chose. Then the dreaded Time will not be howling akin to the rambunctious Boreas; it will gently caress the thought akin to the soft Zephyrus.

When time aims outwards, it washes away and destroys. Yet directed inwards, it moves and gives life. To recognise the lie of Science means to say yes to Time, to say yes to Life; it means to make Time and Life your method. And to say yes to Life is to breathe life into your thought. Then its stiff limbs will start moving again; the thought will spread its wings and sear above the world. Socrates was the first to turn to this method, yet his contemporaries were wary and scared of the living thought.

Plato left us a telling testimony to their confusion. I mean the conversation between Socrates and Euthyphro. The poor prophet is thoroughly confused by Socrates's questions, but the latter does not relent and keeps demanding a definition.

Socrates pushes him: 'Say it directly'.

Euthyphro. I really do not know, Socrates, how to express what I mean. For somehow or other our arguments, on whatever ground we rest them, seem to turn round and walk away from us.

Socrates. Your words, Euthyphro, are like the handiwork of my ancestor Daedalus; and if I were the sayer or propounder of them, you might say that my arguments walk away and will not remain fixed where they are placed because I am a descendant of his. But now, since these notions are your own, you must find some other gibe, for they certainly, as you yourself allow, show an inclination to be on the move.

Euthyphro. Nay, Socrates, I shall still say that you are the Daedalus who sets arguments in motion; not I, certainly, but you make them move or go round, for they would never have stirred, as far as I am concerned.

Socrates. Then I must be a greater than Daedalus: for whereas he only made his own inventions to move, I move those of other people as well. And the beauty of it is, that I would rather not. For I would give the wisdom of Daedalus, and the wealth of Tantalus, to be able to detain them and keep them fixed.

This is how symbols of reality come to life. In other words, that is how dialectics emerges (in its etymological sense).

Philosophy rejects Science's method in what is most essential; it rejects and fights and melts its stiff rigour with the zealous fire of its Eros towards the true reality. The incompatibility between Science and Philosophy lies in the stark contrast between the thought that is stiff and refuses to move and the thought that keeps trying to run away and refuses to stand where it was put. This incompatibility is in the impossibility to reconcile the provisional approach and the genuine flexibility, slavery and freedom, a mummy and a living body. Philosophy can accept the absence of method in the day-to-day worldview with patience and meekness, yet it is ruthless to the distortion of life in Science's method. Philosophy extends its helpful hand towards the former. Yet it can only humble Science in its prideful claims, and it will not stop besieging Science until it enslaves it. The slavishness of Science is in how it constructs abstract schemas for the sake of it. Unaware of its spiritual poverty, it is blinded by the mirage of its own creations and is enslaved by itself. In being enslaved by itself, it becomes the enemy of life. Science is hostile to life. Yet the enemy of the enemy of life, the philosopher, comes back to life by means of negation of negation. Science seeks to be in the middle on anything, lingering at the line of indifference, which is why it never draws closer to the poles of creative excellence; it cannot understand either the life of nature or the inner tribulations of a person. The same limitation applies to the breadth of its scope as well. As Science scoffs at the concept of full and public communion, it is always at risk at being locked, trapped and self-absorbed to the point of losing self-awareness. It would then awkwardly float at the shallowest surface of thought and society. Science is always done by a small circle, a club, a caste whose opinion defines it entirely. Philosophy, on the contrary, is always of the people. Philosophy is the direct extension of the common day-to-day understanding of life, its immediate byproduct, its favourite child. Same as its parent, it also inherently needs to embrace its scope in its indefinite, infinite and full breadth. Same as day-to-day wisdom, philosophy demands to have a living, that is, moving, observer of life as opposed to stiff rigidity. Philosophy, to summarise, affirms wealth and life, agreeing with Science in only one thing: that it is necessary to choose a path. Philosophy does not content itself with just one degree of description, ever striving to achieve a higher level of fullness, for it continuoulsy deepens the field of its description. Philosophy has as its subject not just one specific outlook on life; its outlook is ever-shifting, it is observing the shifting plane of the sectional view of the world. It chooses an ever-adapting point of view not because it is forced to do so by history, but by its own free choice. Philosophy screws itself into reality one twist after another, gradually getting through deeper and deeper.

Philosophy is also a language; yet it is not one description but many descriptions that turn one into another. It is a drama, for its symbols are moving. Dialectics; that is the name of the description that has freely committed itself to seek to ever try to see deeper. In the same manner, all drama is visual dialectics. Fields of science always get pushed away by history; they always lose inner coherence and unity as soon as that becomes necessary. On the contrary, philosophy, despite its many points and fields of view, remains consistent and coherent in running towards life. That is because it made movement itself the beginning of its coherence, and it therefore maintains a unique claim to explaining life. I reiterate that it is not up to the sciences to explain in the fullest sense of the word, with all their allegedly unchanging points of view and illusory premises, classifications, terms and methods. That is up to philosophy, with its ever-adapting, attentive and living treatment of the object of knowledge; for only philosophy chose dialectics as its method.

XII.

To do dialectics is to touch reality. The philosopher does not discuss the symbols of reality that he created; he shows the symbols themselves, as they are borne of reality. He does not lecture; he conducts experiments on reality in front of us. Dialectics is an ever-ongoing experiment on reality that seeks to sequentially penetrate its deepest layers. 'The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing' (Ecclesiastes 1:8). Dialectics is to peek into reality, to listen to its words carefully and never feel satiated.

Permeating the dead shells of our subjectivity, the philosopher's thought stems entirely from experience, for it always operates not on symbols per se, but with symbols on reality itself. As long as they do their job, they are allowed to keep it; yet when they inevitably dry up and die, they fall away from the golden tree of lie akin to an autumn leaf. The mind then blows them away, seeking to be reunited with life anew. Science, however, contents itself with anecdotes. Having designed a scheme and wrapped it around an anecdote, it then proceeds to work on this scheme. Philosophy seeks the unfading, pristine experience, and its thought restlessly wanders from itself to Life and back. This wandering is dialectics, the philosophical method. 'All method is rhythm', said Novalis. The rhythm of questions and answers, we shall add. No answer is final. When faced with reality, it leads to new questions, and the answers to those new questions will not be final also.

Plato's Socrates says: '[Thought] is the talk which the soul has with itself about any subjects which it considers. You must not suppose that I know this that I am declaring to you. But the soul, as the image presents itself to me, when it thinks, is merely conversing with itself, asking itself questions and answering, affirming and denying. When it has arrived at a decision, whether slowly or with a sudden bound, and is at last agreed, and is not in doubt, we call that its opinion; and so I define forming opinion as talking and opinion as talk which has been held, not with someone else, nor yet aloud, but in silence with oneself.'

In a different dialogue, Plato's Stranger asks Theaetetus: 'Are not thought and speech the same, with this exception, that what is called thought is the unuttered conversation of the soul with herself?' (οὐκοῦν διάνοια μὲν καὶ λόγος ταὐτόν: πλὴν ὁ μὲν ἐντὸς τῆς ψυχῆς πρὸς αὑτὴν διάλογος ἄνευ φωνῆς γιγνόμενος τοῦτ᾽ αὐτὸ ἡμῖν ἐπωνομάσθη, διάνοια;).

And so the philosopher's thought pulses with questions and answers, with theses and antitheses. Destruction and creation weave the luminous garment that embraces and reveals Isis at the same time.

In Lebensfluten, in Tatensturm
Wall ich auf und ab,
Webe hin und her!
Geburt und Grab,
Ein ewiges Meer,
Ein wechselnd Weben,
So schaff ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit
Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid.

In the tides of Life, in Action’s storm,
A fluctuant wave,
A shuttle free,
Birth and the Grave,
An eternal sea,
A weaving, flowing
Life, all-glowing,
Thus at Time’s humming loom ’tis my hand prepares
The garment of Life which the Deity wears!'

(from Goethe's Faust)

Science and Philosophy have completely different tasks, not only on the surface, but also at their very root. The worldviews that beget Science and Philosophy are themselves incompatible, even though they originate from the same impulse, the impulse of reality. Yet when struck by this impulse, Philosophy absorbs the motion, the acute sense of novelty that we call wonder, and, perceiving it as desirable, nurtures the life in it. Philosophy is the never-wilting blossom of wonder. On the contrary, Science is indifferent and thankless towards impulses. It does not see reality as an angel, a messenger of life that looks and sees right through us. It perceives this impulse as a malevolent alien, as a violator of its morose rigidity and self-assuredness. And if it shall befall Science to experience wonder, it will not interpret this wonder as anything other than an unforeseen mishap. Yes, an unforeseen mishap that it shall henceforth try to prevent to the best of its ability.

Philosophy's maxim is a perpetually youthful feeling of Wonder. Yet it is Horatio's 'Nil admirari', 'wonder at nothing', that appeals to Science. While Philosophy seeks to rejuvenate all that is stiff and blocks the living light of reality, Science only ever seeks to preserve those schemes and images that have long been obvious or obsolete.

Here is this contradiction expressed in literature:

Prince Hamlet and Dostoevsky express the noble humility of mind; there is no philosophy without it. Yet it is the self-assured, prideful spirit of Science that speaks through Mrs. Prostakova and Leo Tolstoy.

XIII.

[to be continued]