Just finished...Nov. 1st, modified Nov. 3rd, 2009.
I have said this before and I will say it again in different words: I do not follow Hegel every place he goes -- nor do I want to. There is a point at which Hegel 'loses contact' with solid epistemological philosophy, numerous other philosophers and philosophies have critiqued him on this matter before me-- particularly relative to his theory of 'Absolute Knowledge' which has far too much of a Platonic/Spinozian influence attached to it -- and I want to add my own significantly unique epistemological critique to this subject matter, which should give a much more solid 'rational-empirical base' to my particular brand of DGB Post-Hegelian Humanistic-Existentialism.
For starters, I follow a long line of rational-empirical Pre-Enlightenment, Enlightenment, and Post-Enlightenment philosophers including: Heraclitus, Aristotle, Occam (see 'Occam's Razor'), Sir Francis Bacon, John Locke, parts of David Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, parts of Kant, parts of Nietzsche, parts of Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein, Alfred Korzybski and S.I. Hayakawa, Erich Fromm, Ayn Rand and Bertrand Russell, and important parts of Foucault and Derrida...
Notably not included on this list are: Parmenides, Plato, Spinoza (I like Spinoza's spiritualism, romanticism, pantheism, wholism -- just not his rational-empirical epistemology or lack thereof because like his two predecessors listed above, his philosophy is all 'rationalism' and 'rational idealism'; not rational-empiricism with an emphasis on the solidly grounded sensory empirical base) -- and the post-Kantian German Idealists, most notably Hegel.
You see, Kant epistemologically did what philosophically needed to be done -- he clearly separated the 'subjective' from the 'objective', and he clearly separated the 'physical' (or sensory empirical) from the 'metaphysical'.
What Kant said is still true to this day -- or at least significantly so -- specifically, we cannot 'perfectly know' our so-called 'objective world' around us, and inside of us, because our senses are not perfect, they are continually subject to the possibility of error and distortion -- even more so, when we rise above the level of 'sensory observation' and get into the domain of 'individual perception, interpretation, inferences, theories, generalizations, associations, assumptions'...which are all before we get to the even more clouded issue of 'evaluation, judgment, narcissism and ethics'.
Now it seems that none of the Post-Kantian German Idealists -- most specifically, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and the one main 'counter-idealist', Arthur Schopenhauer -- wanted to hear or at least accept what Kant was trying to tell them. It is like they all went into a state of 'epistemological denial'. Each, in their own way went into what might be called a massive, post-Kantian 'white washing' (or in Schopenhauer's case a 'black washing'), a 'Compensatory Grand Narration of 'Cosmic Subjective-Objectivism' -- and Denial of the Epistemological Propensity for Human Fallibility, (Accidental or Purposeful) Distortion -- and Error.
No one seemed to want to admit that as human we all make epistemological -- and ontological -- errors. And we make a lot of them, each and every day of our existence, both individually and collectively.
The epistemological answer for philosophers like Aristotle and Sir Francis Bacon and John Locke and David Hume (who went to skeptical excess) and later philosophers like Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Alfred Korzybski, S.I. Hayakawa, Erich Fromm, Foucault and Derrida, Ayn Rand and Nataniel Branden, was how to teach epistemology in such a way as to reduce the probability of human error. None of these philosophers would ever argue that human civilization -- and/or some ideal individual 'philosopher-king' -- would ever get to a point in their personal and/or collective evolution where 'error and distortion' (and particularly narcissistic bias) would cease to happen. Furthermore, none of these philosophers would ever argue that you could ever get to this fantasized state of 'idealistic cosmic, epistemological and/or ontological bliss' by essentially 'closing your eyes to the world of sensory things and processes (Plato) or even through 'the dialectic' (Hegel).
In effect, 'epistemological and ontological idealism' robbed Hegel of his ability to see that 'the dialectic' -- a process of people engaging in, and negotiating, their differences, and their different perspectives and theories -- would never, ever get any one ideal philosopher or human civilization as a whole to a state of 'Absolute Knowledge' (Epistemology) and/or 'Absolute Being' (Ontology).
I feel like I have to repeat Kant's essential message all over again -- I feel like the little kid who has to tell everyone that the Emperor has no clothes on: There is, or never will be, any state of 'Absolute Knowledge or Being'. Not through Rational Idealism. Not through Empiricism alone. Not through the Dialectic. Not through anything. The closest we will ever get -- epistemologically speaking -- is through learning to the best of our ability, individually and collectively, the art and science of 'Rational-Empiricism'. (Think Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo, Sir Francis Bacon, and in the field of fictional crime think famous detectives like Sherlock Holmes and Herculet Poirot -- the latter being Agatha Christie's famous private detective...)
We cannot escape Kant's essential message.
We cannot escape the famous Kantian Split, the Kantian Gap, The Kantian Schism, The Kantian Great Divide...Wishing it weren't so doesn't make the Subject-Object, Mind-Body, Man-World, Physical-Metaphysical Schisms go away. They are still there. They are still here. All we can do is become 'good Rational Empiricists' to minimize the epistemological damage often caused by the Subjective-Objective, Physics-Metaphysics, and Observation-Inference-Value Judgments Splits...that the following German Idealists (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) and the one 'counter-idealist (Schopenhauer) essentially aimed to 'deny'.
Try as each of them certainly did, each in their own unique way, aiming to arrive at some 'Post-Spinozian-Post-Kantian Cosmic Unity', when all was said and done, the Kantian Splits were still staring them in the face, undisturbed by each of their efforts. Abstract metaphysics didn't make them go away. Nor did confusing the Self with the rest of the Cosmic Universe -- good, bad, indifferent or all three together -- make them go away.
As listed above, there are at least two Kantian Splits that we can identify and distinguish from each other, as well as a host of other such 'dualistic' splits both before and after Kant's famous subjective-objective and physical-metaphisical split, most of which the German Idealists mentioned above (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) tried their hardest to either bridge or deny. Below I have listed my top 25 'dualistic splits'.
The 'dialectic' is a point or process of engagement, ideally designed to negotiate and achieve a more 'wholistic, integrative, harmonious union' between any bi-polar, dualistic, and/or differential splits. But in no way should any result of dialectic engagement ever be construed as being 'Absolute Knowledge' because the point of homeostatic balance and imbalance will always change and with it will come a new necessity for a return to the dualistic and dialectic bargaining table. The best that we might call any such 'conflict resolution' is 'integrative sensory and interpretive knowledge' resulting in an 'integrative value judgment', a 'decision' or 'set of decisions', in effect a 'game plan', perhaps a 'rule' or 'law', and a 'course of action' -- all of which may be 'right' or 'wrong', or anywhere in between. Indeed, 'dialectic evolution' can often result in 'regression', 'suppression', 'repression', and/or 'oppression' that will take man back to a 'worse state of affairs' either individually and/or collectively. Nothing is written in stone. Self-correction is never guaranteed. Self-destruction may occur before self-correction. And 'Absolute Knowledge' may become further away rather than closer to us with any and/or every dialectic, evolutionary step. Again, life is existentially unpredictable and indeterminate; not historically or teleologically determined. Here is where Hegel and I seem to most disagree. This is perhaps the most important difference between Classic Hegelian Philosophy and DGB Post-Hegelian, Enlightenment-Romantic, Humanistic-Existential, Constructive-Deconstructive Philosophy.
Nothing is written in stone. And as I learned from Heraclitus, General Semantics, and Gestalt Therapy -- 'Everything is subject to change.' Everything is subject to both progressive and/or regressive evolution.
Here are 25 -- no, make that 30 -- of the top 'dualistic or bi-polar splits' that have just freshly come to the top of my consciousness:
01. The Subjective-Objective (or 'Phenomenal-Noumenal' in Kant's terminology) Split;
02. The Physics-Metaphysics Split;
03. The Religion-Science (Faith-Reason) Split;
04. The Enlightenment-Romantic Split;
05. The Humanistic-Existential (Liberal-Conservative; Compassion-Accountability) Split
06. The Capitalist-Socialist (Adam Smith-Karl Marx) Split;
07. The Mind-Body (Mind-Brain) Split;
08. The Genetics-Social Learning Split;
09. The Apollonian-Dionysian Split (Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy);
10. The Male-Female (Husband-Wife, Boyfriend-Girlfriend) Split;
11. Racial and Ethnic Splits;
12. Religious Splits;
13. Political Splits;
14. Territory/Boundary Splits;
15. Class and Economic Splits;
16. Employer-Employee Splits;
17. The Superego-Id Split (Freud);
18. The Personna-Shadow (Public-Private, Wall-Essence) Split (Jung, DGB Psychology);
19. The Topdog-Underdog Split (Perls, Gestalt Therapy);
20. The Exciting Object-Rejecting Object Split (Fairbairn);
21. The Parent-Child Split -- Both Externally and Internally (Transactional Analysis);
22. The Nurturing Parent-Critical Parent Split -- Both Externally and Internally (Transactional Analysis);
23. The Approval-Seeking Child-Rebellious Child -- Both Externally and Internally (Transactional Analysis);
24. The Observation-Inference-Value Judgment Split (Korzybski, Hayakawa, General Semantics);
25. The Man-World (Environment, Nature) Split;
26. The Prescription Medication-Natural Health Split;
27. Geographical Splits;
28. The Government-Citizen Split;
29. The Government-Business Split;
30. The Essence-Wall Split (DGB Psychology).
Going back to epistemology (the study of knowledge), the best epistemological school of thought that has ever followed this path -- in my humble opinion -- is General Semantics (See Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity; and/or S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action).
Indeed, my nomination for the best epistemologist in the history of Western Philosophy is the largely unheralded Alfred Korzybski in his masterpiece, 'Science and Sanity'. S.I. Hayakawa simplied Korzybski's ideas in Hayakawa's classic General Semantic book, 'Language in Thought and Action', that has been republished numerous times over about a 50 year period from the 1940s to the 1990s (with his son Alan involved in the last one).
My 1979 Honours Thesis in Psychology leaned heavily on Korzybski and Hayakawa in a paper that created and developed a model that in Freudian terminology would probably be labeled as 'Central Ego Functioning and Dysfunctioning'.
We will come back to that model very shortly and see how it fits into the larger model being constructe here under the name of 'Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics...'
This is where I will leave my little rant on epistemology today.
As disoriented as things seem to have been lately, I finally see Hegel's Hotel starting to come together again as one 'wholistic, multi-dialectic, humanistic-existential, enlightenment-romantic, deconstructive-constructive Post-Hegelian treatise'.
-- dgbn, Nov. 1st, Nov. 3rd., 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations
-- Are Still In Process...
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