RE: [OPE] Diversity and Unity

gerald_a_levy@msn.com

Dogan:

This definition of dogmatism fits well into Hegel's world 
view. Using it, one could claim that just about _everyone_ 
other than Hegelians (_including Marx and Marxians_) are
dogmatic!   Note well that it is the hallmark *in practice*
 of dogmatists to claim that everyone else with a contrary 
perspective is dogmatic. 

Marx might be seen by Hegelians as dogmatic 
because of (among other things)  his materialism and atheism: 
i.e. which is an allegedly 'one-sided' conception "which draws a hard 
and fast line between certain terms and others opposite to them"
(Hegel's Logic, OUP, 52).  Clearly, from a Hegelian perspective 
there is an incomplete and one-sided conception of Spirit in Marx;
from a Hegelian perspective  "the totality" can not be grasped by 
denying Spirit.

But, one could turn this criticism around and point it at those who 
make it: did Hegel _really_ challenge and interrogate all of the
presuppositions of his world view? I think not.  Indeed, it was
Hegel's *religious view which was presupposed* and then the 
rest of his doctrine was unpacked and explained systematically
and dialectically so that the end would accord with his presuppositions,
i.e. that Absolute Spirit appears to be deduced when it in practice was
presupposed. In that sense - the sense in which the Hegelian world
view can not be divorced from Hegel's religious conceptions - his theory 
could be said to be dogmatic. 

In solidarity, Jerry

By this I refer back to a long-standing debate on identity and diversity since Leibniz's critique of the concept of identity in Locke.Put into one sentence I mean by this the relational approach as evolved since then and used in the works of Adam Smith, G. W. F. Hegel, Marx and in the works of Rosa Luxemburg. Relational approach differs fundamentally from methodological individualism. And I take methodological pluralism just as another form of methodological individualism. Leibniz's argument against Locke is that we cannot take the concept of identity as an absolute concept. Otherwise we cannot explain the motion, development and change. To account for the diversity (since this is what the concept of identity suggests: difference is absolute) we have to refer to the concept of unity . The concept of identity takes parts of a whole as isolated and absolute - in relation to the parts as well as in relation to the whole. This static mode of thinking I call dogmatism and methodological pluralism as I understand it refers to this mode of thinking.  The concept of dialectical unity of diversity takes  the concept of identity as relative and understands the whole as something that underlies as a whole to all parts. It can therefore refer beside to particular (difference) to the concept of the universal (identity) as the genesis of the difference. This concept is explored in Hegel's Science of Logic in various forms. So for example when he explores the relationship between the universal and the particular or when he explores the relationship between the whole and parts. However, there is another reason why I call methodological pluralism dogmatic. It rejects in various forms to account for truth. If you want to see what I mean by that please refer to Rosa Luxemburg's discussion in the first, say, 10 - 15 pages in her Introduction into Political Economy. There Luxemburg is criticizing methodological individualism as well as methodological pluralism. I mean exactly those passages where she explores different units and spheres of production as parts of the whole (totality).

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