'The truth is the whole.' Hegel said that. Here is its partly larger context borrowed from the online Hegel Glossary.
The Absolute (a.k.a. "God")
"The Absolute is Mind (Spirit) - this is the supreme definition of the Absolute." Philosophy of Mind § 384.
"The truth is the whole. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only at the end is it what it is in very truth; and just in that consists its nature, which is to be actual, subject, or self-becoming, self-development." Preface, Phenomenology of Mind 81-82."The Absolute is Mind (Spirit) - this is the supreme definition of the Absolute." Philosophy of Mind § 384.
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Now, there are a number of points that we can take issue with here. Hegel had a habit of 'getting lost' in in his own words and contradicting himself in the process. Let's take Hegel's first assertion. 'The Absolute is Mind (Spirit) -- this is the supreme definition of the Absolute.'
This is a non-starter. We define words significantly in terms of contrast. 'The Absolute' should, by definition, include everything except 'the non-absolute'.
'The mind' does not include everything. It is a 'non-absolute' concept and/or phenomenon. For example, it doesn't include 'the body'. 'The mind' doesn't include 'the world' (except as we represent it inside our mind). It may or may not mean the exact same thing as 'Spirit'. Usually, we mean something a little different than 'mind' when we use the term/concept 'spirit'.
Similarily, 'the mind' does not usually mean the same thing as 'God'.
So, in my opinion, Hegel gets off to a rather rocky, confusing, overgeneralized start when he describes/defines 'The Absolute as Mind.' No -- Professor Hegel, that does not work for me. How about this. 'The Absolute is 'Mind-Body-Spirit-World-God' -- with 'God' probably being the most 'nebulous' of these five entities. Does/did the world have a 'Creator'? Quite possibly -- the world is so 'intelligently designed'. Can we call this 'Creator' -- 'God'? Sure, why not. Most people who believe that the world has/had a Creator usually refer to this Creator as -- 'God'. Does this 'God' still rule over us and determine our fate? Maybe. Probably unlikely.
My skepticism rules here -- and says 'no' -- but I do believe in 'coincidental non-coincidences' or alternatively, 'non-coincidental coincidences' that subjectively seem to have 'Fate' or 'God's Hand' steering what just happened....That is about as 'metaphysical' or 'religious' as I will get unless it is down a 'deist's-pantheist's path'....Sometimes in the most breath-taking and/or intimate of encounters, I do feel what I would call a 'Godly presence' in such an encounter....
Anyway, here is the first major difference between Hegelian Classical Dialectic Philosophy and DGB Multi-Dialectic (Pluralistic), Humanistic-Existentilal Philosophy. Hegel uses a '1 Star' definition of 'The Absolute' (The Mind) -- and I use a '5 Star' definition of 'The Absolute' (Mind-Body-Spirit-World-God).
Now, let's get back to Hegel's assertion that 'The truth is the whole.' Hegel is creating a 'historical paradigm' here meaning that 'the truth' can only be ascertained -- historically, i.e., through the historical, evolutionary development of some phenomenal process.
Here, Hegel contradicts himself again.
"The truth is the whole. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development.'
Well, if 'the whole was or is the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development' -- then 'the whole' can only mean 'death' because 'death' is the only thing that can mark the completeness of 'a thing's essential nature reaching its own completeness'. Either that, or you probably have to argue that a thing -- including a person -- never 'fully actualizes its own essential nature to its own completeness'. I like the latter idea better actually, but otherwise, you have to declare that death marks the end of a thing's/person's 'essential nature' trying to complete itself unless you want to try to argue that 'our spirit' can keep trying to 'complete itself' in 'heaven' or in 'hell'. I take myself out of that argument.
So, according to Hegel, if 'the truth is the whole' and 'the whole is the essential nature of a 'thing-in-itself' taken to its own 'completeness' -- then it would seem that Hegel has to be saying that 'a thing' can only be defined 'in its wholeness' -- at death.
I don't like that idea.
In contrast, when Spinoza tried to argue the same essential principle -- the idea that the truth is the whole, he meant something quite different -- Spinoza meant that the truth has to be determined 'contextually in relation to the rest of the world (and God) as opposed to contextually within the course of its historical evolutionary development (Hegel).
If I were to argue that 'the truth is the whole', I would start with Spinoza's definition and then add in Hegel's idea of 'evolutionary self-development' at any one point in time and place, as opposed to Hegel's idea of defining the truth, as the whole, at the time of a thing's 'evolutionary completeness' -- which essentially, in my books, either means 'death', or it means 'evolutionary completeness' never arrives in 'time and space'....because man, both as an individual, and as a species, is always evolving -- this process never stops except to the extent that our individual and/or species evolution is stopped by death. And this I would hardly define as 'the completeness and the truth of the whole'.
Thus, in defending the idea that 'the truth is the whole', I would be arguing this assertion, first and foremost, in a Spinozian, wholistic, pantheistic sense, and secondly in a modified, Hegelian historical, evolutionary sense -- frozen in time (if we could do this) at the point in time that has specifically captured our most intense, interest....
Even then, we would have to look at the 'subjective, epistemological gaps' in our own 'sensory-perceptual-interpretive-evaluative' ('spie') process when compared and contrasted against 'the world in itself' as no man or woman on earth would be able to 'completely comprehend and/or capture the world's full 'essence -- frozen in time, and/or evolving in time' apart from our own narcissistic biases and epistemological imperfections....and also our process of dividing and classifying the world into different conceptual and theoretical paradigms.
Paradoxically, this is both 'necessary' from a 'survival' point of view, but also 'always insufficient' from a Kantian perfectionistic perspective, as man -- both individually and collectively -- will always come up 'epistemologically short' in 'sensing-perceiving-interpeting-evaluating' the world from any perspective, any paradigm'...
As Kant forcefully stated (with my own modifications and amplifications): We Kant know the world-in-itself -- except through the lenses of our own epistemological imperfections which, at times, may be 'good enough' for us to live, healthy, meaningful lives despite these epistemological imperfections, while at other times, and/or for other people, the more severe contents of their epistemological imperfections may 'cost them their lives' or 'drag them through the mud of the nastier part of human existence'.
Nothing is deterministic. Chaos meets predictability. Co-operation meets competition. Narcissism meets altruism. Love meets hate. The world -- and man's mind and spirit -- operate in terms of opposites both attracting and/or repelling -- setting up the existence of phenomenological and conceptual dichotomies, paradoxes, contradictions, often hypocrisies....Spinoza meets Schopenhauer....in a romantic world -- or potentially romantic world -- that can be both beautiful (Spinoza) and brutally nasty (Schopenhauer).
None of us is smart enough to know every possible paradigm....and all the possible permuations between the different paradigms...as well as all of the different possible conceptual and/or theoretical modifications/extensions/extrapolations of any one paradigm...
Conceptual and theoretical paradigms can have meaning -- important meaning -- but they should not be confused with 'the wholistic-world-in-itself'.
Every conceptualized paradigm is partial truth and partial fiction....'man-made, conceptual constructionism' which is not the same as the 'thing-in-itself' or
'the process-in-itself'...or the 'structure-in-itself''....anything we see and generalize about, abstract about, associate about, classify about, involves 'man-made, conceptual constructionism' which is not the same thing as what we are representing inside our head that is a 'map' or 'model' or 'theory' or 'paradigm' for something else that it is supposed to stand for, that we can never fully know all the endless characteristics about.....That is my 21st century interpretation of Kantian epistmology and metaphysics...
However, emerging beyond Kant's epistemology and metaphysics is the fact that we can all be 'good enough epistemologists' -- metaphysics or no metaphysics -- to live a long and meaningful life where we don't have to metaphorically or literally 'jump off a building' just because Kant said -- and rightfully so -- that we can't be, or won't ever be, 'perfect epistemologists'... Let's just say that our 'epistemological knowledge' in any one subject area is going to be somewhere between an 'empty glass of water' and a 'full glass of water'....depending on how much time, energy, and intellect we have invested into our realm of investigation, with certain epistemological generalizations generally helping us to be better epistemologists rather than worse....
Here is one set of principles that I have synthesized from Kant and Korzybski....
We live in two 'subjective-epistemological' worlds and 'one objective-metaphysical' world at the same time:
1. Our always partly mystifying, objective, metaphysical world beyond our senses and abstractions that we can never completely know, and sometimes we don't know at all -- even if or when we think we do;
2. Our 'Subjective-Sensory-Perceptual-Interpretive-(Empirical) World' that we can utilize to know most directly 'Our Objective-(Noumenal)-World-In-Itself-Outside-Our-Senses' that we -- presumably -- are trying, under most normal, healthy circumstances, to try our best to 'accurately understand and represent';
3. Our 'Abstactive-Assumptive World' -- i.e. Our World of 'Assumptions, Abstractions, Beliefs, Biases, Classifcations, Concepts, Discriminations, Dreams, Ethics, Evaluations, Factoids, Generalizations, Stereotypes That We Often See As Total Truisms When They Are Sometimes Better Described As Treasonary Truths...'
We all have to live in all three worlds....at the same time...or within seconds or minutes apart from each other....
But we should aim to tred most carefully in our Abstractive-Assumptive World because this is the world inside our head (Korzybski called it our 'intensional world')that is most likely to be most disconnected from 'The Objective-(Noumenal) World In Itself'.... that can have a monumental effect on our lives if one of our 'assumptive disconnects' leads us spinning into chaos from a dangerous abstractive precipice...
Stepping inside and outside of different abstractive paradigms -- trying different ones on for 'size' and 'fitness' -- and often, even better, synthesizing and synergizing these different paradigms -- can often leave us 'more free' in terms of 'more conceptual flexibility' in our ongoing, personal, evolutionary development.
If one paradigm doesn't work well in one particular context -- say, a certain clinical case -- then, we can step out of the particular theory or paradigm by which we were trying to better understand the client's case history, and perhaps work inside a different paradigm, or perhaps even better still, a mixture of synergizing different paradigms...
At least that is the paradigm that I am presently working within...and will continue to develop....both philosophically and psychologically...
-- dgb, May 18th-22nd, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain...
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in process....
