From Hegel to Gap-DGB Philosophy
Canada Day, July 1st, 2006.
This forum is designed to build philosophical bridges between separate philosophical ideas, opinions, perspectives, lifestyles, organizations, structures, and processes.
For example, the forum aims to build a bridge between academic/historical philosophy and contemporary, pragmatic ‘street’ (home/family/work) philosophy. It aims to bridge the gap between the abstract and the concrete. Between philosophy and psychology. Between Hegel and Nietzsche. Between Anaximander and Hegel. Between religion and science. Between Enlightenment Philosophy and Romantic Philosophy. Between humanism and existentialism. Between conservatism and liberalism. Between capitalism and socialism. Between Freud and the feminists. Between Freud and Adler. Between Freud and Jung. Between Freud and Perls.
Everywhere we go there is going to be a ‘dialectical face-off’ between philosophy A and philosophy B, and there is going to be an underlying assumption that there is a mixture of truth and distortion, value and disvalue, in both philosophy A and Philosophy B, and there is often -- if not always -- creative value in aiming to reach an integrative, ‘homeostatic balance’ between the two competing philosophies/philosophers/perspectives/ideologies/lifestyles...
Thus, you can call this a post-Hegelian school and forum of philosophy. It is built on the Hegelian dialectical evolutionary theory of ‘thesis’, ‘anti-thesis’, and ‘synthesis’ -- and start over again at a different, hopefully better, level. Thus, also, we are trying for the most part to discourage most forms of righteous, narcissistic, , extremist, destructive ‘either/or’ philosophies, religions, organizations, etc. These types of philosophies usually generate ‘wars’ of any and every kind -- intra-psychic, inter-personal, civil, political, international…
However, this is not only a post-Hegelian forum of philosophy but also a post-Anaxamanderian, post-Spinozian, post-Darwinian, post-Nietzschean, post-Kierkegaardian, post-Derridian, post-Freudian, post-Adlerian, post-Jungian, and post-Gestalt forum as well. Call it a ‘Leap-Frog and Link’ forum of philosophy, or Gap Philosophy, or Gap-Bridging Philosophy, or Dialectical-Gap-Bridging (DGB) Philosophy, or Gap Multi-Integrative-Dialectical Philosophy...these names all aim to describe the same basic idea -- linking opposing philosophies and lifestyles together into a more harmonious multi-integrative-dialectical homeostatic balance.
We are looking for creative, integrative conflict resolutions that bring people together in a spirit of ‘dialectical-democratic unity’, appreciating our unique individual differences and multiple different perspectives -- and in fact embracing these differences as a vital part of our human essence, heritage, and future. As the great psychologist, Carl Jung, has written:
‘The greater the contrast, the greater is the potential. Great energy only comes from great tensions between opposites.’
In every case, the possibilities are contained within the opposites. What is required is their (creative, assertive, compassionate, democratic) interaction, so that the dialectic may be permitted to operate” (towards a successful ‘gap-bridging’ creative-integrative solution/resolution to the particular conflict). Joel Latner, The Gestalt Therapy Book, The Julian Press, 1973. (bracketed extensions mine).
In a world that seems to be rushing back towards the brink of nuclear war again, and in a world where friends, family, and foes alike all tend to take righteous, narcissistic, extremist, ‘either/or’ stances against each other, it would seem that this type of philosophy of ‘tolerance and creative evolutionary harmony of differences’ cannot be expounded, promoted, and applied any time too soon -- or too loudly.
-- David Gordon Bain (DGB), July 1st, 2006.
