Closing the dialectic
We hear a lot of talk today about the importance of openness, but hardly any about the importance of closedness. But closedness is part of the nature of thought and discovery—dialectics—itself. Without closing, the dialectic means nothing, and nothing can be learned, gained, discovered. Dialectics takes something, opens it up, finds all the parts, but it has to be completed and closed. The process goes from unity to plurality, back to unity, but it’s a new unity. The new unity created by dialectics only is what it is because it is closed off within itself, separating itself off from the world—holding itself distinct.
It’s not even really a synthesis. Dialectics is not really the thesis anthesis synthesis stereotype. At no point does Plato or Socrates ever offer that formula; indeed the idea of a formula for dialectics is absurd. Dialectics is a method for producing an unknown result; a formula is precisely something that produces a known result. And even Hegel, the modern god of dialectics, at no point uses the phrase thesis antithesis synthesis. That comes from Fichte, a lesser known figure in the philosophical tradition of German idealism.
But somehow, that formula became synonymous with dialectics, and is seen as somehow adequately explaining it in totality, when it really doesn’t at all. Dialectics isn’t about taking an idea and then colliding it against its opposite to create some new idea that contains parts of both of them. You’re taking one thing, and then seeing what it’s made of, as completely as possible—you’re opening up an idea, or a value or concept, and seeing what it’s made out of, like a scientist, dissecting some kind of specimen in a lab. And when you are finished, the specimen is new, changed because of your understanding of it.
In one of Plato’s best books, the Timaeus, you see this done as explicitly as possible. He goes through the organs of the body—down to the liver, spleen, and intestines—and imbues them with a philosophical significance. The intestines are so long and coil around so that food takes a while to process—otherwise, if our stomachs were more directly designed, we would process food immediately, and do nothing but eat constantly, and never have any time or inclination for philosophy or culture. He gives the same spin of deeper meaning to all the major organs—showing that he himself must have studied the body like a physician, down to the organs themselves, learning about them, and filling them with philosophical signifance. Literally opening the human body up to his philosophical eye, and then closes it back up—but now imbued with higher meaning. This is the ultimate example of dialectics.
Dialectics only has meaning if it produces a usable result—something that can be wielded. And only closed things can be wielded.