Balance Is the Temporary and Relative Unity of Opposites

Abstract

The category of balance should be interpreted in a much broader sense; that is, there is not only balance in the sense of equal quantities or amounts, but also balance of two or more quantities or amounts maintaining a certain proportion. Then there is structural balance, meaning the mutual adaptability, coordination, and complementarity of different factors and parts inside the same structure. These two manifestations of balance, quantitative and structural, are mutually conditioning and defining. Balance is the temporary and relative unity of opposites. This philosophical generalization reveals the essence of balance, explaining that its existence has an objective universality while pointing out its relative character. Balance and imbalance are in opposition, but each is the prerequisite and intermediary of the other, and each contains the other. Balance can only be achieved with imbalance as its prerequisite and intermediary. Historically, balance has played a dual role: before the decline of a contradiction, it is the demand of and condition for the existence and development of this contradiction; after the contradiction starts to decline, balance preserves the old unity of opposites and becomes the conservative force obstructing progress. Hence we should adopt a dual attitude toward balance: to promote or break it up as the occasion demands. We should not regard balance as unchangeable.