Dialectics and World Politics: The Story So Far … 

Abstract

The question ‘What is dialectics?’ is notoriously difficult to answer. Theoretical obfuscation and ideological baggage have fostered widespread misunderstandings of the concept. This article is intended to go some way in providing an answer, though one offered as a heuristic in which further developments can be made, rather than as doctrinaire statement of first principles. This introductory account of dialectics proceeds in four steps. It begins with a basic definitional and conceptual outline of dialectics before offering a brief philosophical history of dialectics in Eastern and Western philosophical traditions; its re-emergence from scholasticism through Kant and Hegel; its vivification in Marx’s thought (and subsequent decline under ‘Diamat’); and its development in Western Marxism and on into contemporary political philosophy. The third part then explores the more modest engagements with dialectics that have taken place within IR theory before closing with a discussion of some of the ongoing tensions and key themes in dialectical thought. These center on the question of understanding dialectics as a process of reflection and an objective logic traceable in human praxis, highlighting the ongoing critical and revolutionary essence of dialectics.

EXTRACTO

El interrogante de “Qué es la Dialéctica”? es marcadamente difícil de resolver. La ofuscación teórica y el lastre ideológico han albergado desacuerdos ampliamente difundidos sobre el concepto. Este artículo tiene el propósito de, en alguna manera, proporcionar una respuesta, si bien ofrecida como heurística y en la que se pueden lograr futuros desarrollos, más que como una declaración doctrinaria de primeros principios. Esta cuenta inicial de dialéctica se lleva a cabo en cuatro pasos. Comienza con una base de definiciones y una presentación resumida de la dialéctica antes de ofrecer una breve historia de la dialéctica en las tradiciones filosóficas orientales y occidentales; su reaparición en los escolásticos a través de Kant y Hegel; su vivificación en el pensamiento de Marx (y su subsecuente ocaso bajo “Diamat”); y su desarrollo en el Marxismo Occidental y en la filosofía política contemporánea. La tercera parte explora entonces sus más modestas relaciones con dialécticas que han tenido lugar en el contexto de la teoría de las Relaciones Internacionales, para luego cerrar con una discusión de algunas de las actuales tensiones y temas clave del pensamiento dialéctico. Estas se centran en el tema del entendimiento de la dialéctica como un proceso de reflexión y una lógica objetiva que puede ser percibida en la praxis humana, resaltando la actual esencia crítica y revolucionaria de la dialéctica.

Keywords:

• dialectics
• history of ideas
• contradiction
• relation
• transformation
• praxis

Notes

1 Most recently Fort (2014) has raised this concerning the racial tensions and inequalities in Ferguson, USA.

2 This is attributed to Heraclitus by Seneca (1925, VI, pp. 23, 58).

3 The question of the dialectics of nature is contentious, to say the least. The key issue centres on the tendency of such a proposition to fall to law-like predictions and determinism. Engels' Anti-Durhing (1987) and Dialectics of nature (1987) were largely responsible for rendering this turn in the positivistic language of the natural sciences. Nevertheless, there have been some recent attempts to use dialectical analysis to study nature, not as an objective ground but as the dynamic movement of the whole and its parts (see Levins & Lewontin, 1985). In distinction, Bookchin (1996) has offered a broader conception of dialectics and nature, emphasising the ontological relation of human and nature/ecology and social transformation.

4 For an excellent reference that charts the use of dialectics in IR theory through Alker and Biersteker's (1984) piece, see Marlin-Bennett and Biersteker (2012, 3ff).

5 I must thank Damian Gerber for posing these thought-provoking questions and sharing with me an in-depth discussion on these matters. His work has provided a great impetus to my own reflections on dialectics.

6 ‘Mere Understanding’ (or Verstand) is Hegel's key ‘villain' in the Logic (see Jameson, 2009, p. 82) and he consistently demonstrates its one-sidedness. It corresponds to those forms of thinking that reside in simplistic binaries and forced dualities between things—or what Hegel identifies as ‘either–or' determinations of things (1975, §96, §140).

7 I thank Daniel Levine for a discussion on this point. For more information, see his excellent co-authored article Levine and Barder (2014).

8 I have written on this elsewhere (see Brincat, 2012).

Additional information

Shannon Brincat is a Griffith University Research Fellow. He has been the editor of a number of collections, most recently of Recognition, Conflict and the Problem of Ethical Community (forthcoming, Routledge, 2015) and the three volume series Communism in the Twenty-First Century (Praeger, 2014). He is also the co-founder and co-editor of the journal Global Discourse. His current research focuses on recognition theory and cosmopolitanism; dialectics; tyrannicide; climate change justice; and Critical Theory. He has articles published in the European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies and Constellations, amongst others.