I will try to clarify what I mean by 'the only Ultimate Synthesis being death'. Every minute we are alive both the mind and the body are both constantly thrown into imbalance or dis-equilibrium. It is the nature of life. If I step up from my chair here, my body is thrown into imbalance until something happens in my brain, or more specifically I believe, in my inner ear, to restore the balance.
In the language of Gestalt Therapy, we are constantly 'creating' and 'destroying' or 'opening' and 'closing' -- 'new gestalts'.
If I am hungry, my body is thrown out of balance until I eat -- and then my body is restored to balance. Both internally and externally, we spend our whole lives seeking to 'restore lost balance' and for every person this perception of 'what we want and/or need to restore our sense of personal balance -- is different. On the grandest of all scales, we can say that this is our personal and philosophical quest for 'Utopia'.
Plato chased his own particular vision of Utopia, Aristotle his, Kant his, Fichte his, Schelling his, Hegel his, and today, I am pursuing my own particular 'Utopian Vision' on Hegel's Hotel, while you, Niki, pursue yours over here on Living Outside The Dialectic.
Communitarianism, for some people, might be viewed as a name that they give to their own personal quest for Utopia, and dare I say it, 'Anti-Communitarianism' -- for those of you who don't like the vision and/or the taste of how they perceive 'Communitarianism' -- becomes a rebellion, an anti-thesis, and an counter-vision, a counter-Utopia against both Hegel and his ideal of 'The Ultimate Synthesis' as well as the whole vision of a 'Communitarian Ideal Utopia'.
One of the problems is that 'Communitarianism' becomes such a huge abstraction that it could/can easily imply 8 billion different 'sub-Communitarian Utopias'. I like my personal freedom and rights just as much as you obviously do Niki, and I do not support any type of 'Utopian System' that decreases my personal liberties and rights in the name of 'Big Government'.
But more to the point is this: As long as we are living and breathing, there will never, every be any 'Absolute Synthesis and Harmony' -- even within ourselves, let alone in the context of trying to find any kind of 'perfect harmony' with our spouse, our family, our neighbors, other countries, and all levels of municipal, state or provincial, and federal government.
'Like the sound of one hand clappin', it just ain't going to happen.' (Bob Dylan).
So when I say that the only 'Ultimate Synthesis' is death, what I mean is that as long as people are living, breathing, eating, and trying to make a living, there will always be both personal and civil 'disharmony' in constantly changing proportions -- it is the nature of the beast of living.
So for any one person to say that there is any one 'Final, Ultimate Conflict Resolution and/or Synthesis' out there (i.e., Hegel), that person simply does not understand the dynamics of living and man's constant quest for equilibrium (balance) as long as he/she is alive and breathing.
Thus, the only 'Final Synthesis' -- is death.
I hope that helps to clear things in terms of what I mean.
-- dgb, Nov. 18th, 2009
-- David Gordon Bain
