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The unbridgeable gulf between the various forms of idealism and materialist dialectics centres upon the objective material content of sensuous reflection. Materialism declares that sensation is an image of the external world, and that the latter exists independently of its image.
As Lenin explains in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism [1], “an image cannot exist without the thing imaged, and that the latter exists independently of that which images it”. He further emphasises this point when he writes: “The recognition of objective law in nature and the recognition that this law is reflected with approximate fidelity in the mind of man is materialism.” [2] [emphasis GH]
The objective IDENTITY of the source of sensation is simultaneously negated into its relative finite DIFFERENCE. As a self-related concept it constitutes the “antithesis” in dialectical thought: the unity of this antithesis of negative IDENTITY into a POSITIVE image on the negative of difference which contains contradiction is Essence.
The “antithesis” drives on to negate the negation into the theory of knowledge.
Lenin approvingly reproduces the following quotation from Hegel’s Logic which describes the antithesis as follows:
“It is the simple point of negative self-relation, the internal source of all activity, vital and spiritual self-movement, the dialectic soul which all truth has in it ...” [3]
In the side margin, Lenin describes this as the “kernel of dialectics”. Hegel continues:
“... for the transcendence of the opposition between the Notion and Reality, and that unity which is the truth, rest upon this subjectivity alone. – The second negative, the negative of the negative, which we have reached, is this transcendence of the contradiction ...”
Lenin comments on the side margin, “the criterion of truth” and in brackets he explains this “truth” as “the unity of the concept and reality”.
Lenin further approvingly comments on this paragraph from Hegel:
“Important here is:
Lenin is here explaining the “coincidence” of dialectical nature, society (class struggle) and thought which apprehends the external world (dialectical logic) and the “theory of knowledge”.
Concepts are terms which enable us to use the method of dialectical logic to analyse the relation between the universal and the individual and vice versa. For the idealist, only the sensuously perceived image of sensation is concrete.
Materialist dialectics analyses the “antithesis” or “thing-in-itself” negated into the “theory of knowledge”; concepts establish the concrete relation between the universal and the individual in the form of internal contradictions in dialectical abstract thought.
Lenin emphasises that:
“The abstraction of matter, of a law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely. From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice, – such is the dialectical path of the cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality.” [5]
Living perception of the “universal whole” must be the content of our reflection, and not sensations as an image of that “whole”. However, mere IDENTITY of the object or objects which provide the source of our “sensations” is inadequate for establishing their interconnection in the external world and in dialectical thought. Only abstract scientific thinking in concepts reveals the real living unity of things in the external world which in their constant interaction are concretely connected through the operation of the dialectical law “from the abstract to the concrete”.
The process of cognitive interaction manifests itself most clearly when an object at the source of sensation in the external world discovers in an adjacent object something which it itself needs. Whilst our starting point is the material universal “whole” existing independently outside of us, we reflect the many-sidedness of the source of our sensation in the particular relation between the universal and the individual. The “in-itself” unity of opposites contained in the “antithesis” will be negated into the theory of knowledge through the law of the negation of negation.
The “thing” contained in the “antithesis” is an individual manifestation of the universal external source of sensation. Concepts of these “parts” (particulars) emerging in phenomena must be understood concretely through their interaction in abstract dialectical thought.
Concepts scientifically exist and interact as phenomena with one another only through the self-relation between the universal and the individual and through the individual back to the original source of sensation in the external world. Therefore, the individual concept of the “part” contains the “universal” as its content. Both are in constant interaction with one another and in continuous change. The universal external source of sensation constitutes the material connection of all the parts at the source.
Concepts, seen in this dialectical way, theoretically manifest the external world, scientifically apprehending it through the concepts of its “parts”. In this way the abstract analysis of those “parts” is reproduced in new concrete “wholes”, although since “time is a form of being of objective reality” [6], they are opposites. Therefore a “new whole” is a “unity of opposites”.
They express, what Lenin describes in his essay on Dialectics when he writes:
“The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts ... is the essence (one of the ‘essentials’, one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics. That is precisely how Hegel, too, puts the matter...” [7]
Determinations of Reflection enable us to analyse through the use of concepts the abstract internal contradictory sides of living perception. Lenin, again quotes Hegel approvingly when the latter writes:
“If now the primary Determinations of Reflection – Identity, Variety and Opposition – are established in a proposition, then the determination into which they pass over as into their truth (namely Contradiction) should much more so be comprehended and expressed in a proposition: all things are contradictory in themselves, in this meaning, that this proposition as opposed to the others expresses much better the truth and essence of things.” [8]
These Determinations of Reflection firstly “express the concept of things and their relations” in the external world as the IDENTITY of the sensation. We shall explain this further in the next section on the “union of analysis and synthesis”.
“Thinking reason (understanding) sharpens the blunt difference of variety; [second determination – insertion & emphasis added GH] the mere manifold of imagination, into essential difference, into opposition [third determination – insertion GH]. Only when raised to the peak of contradiction, do the manifold entities become active (regsam) and lively in relation to one another, – they receive/acquire that negativity which is the inherent pulsation of self-movement and vitality.” [9]
Lenin writes:
“The result of the negation of the negation, this third term is ‘not a quiescent third term, but, as this unity’ (of contradictions), ‘is self-mediating movement and activity ...’” [10]
So far we have had 1) the Negation of the Identity of the source of sensation into 2) Difference as a negative containing the positive image of Identity together with Contradiction as a result of the first Negation 3) The transition of DIFFERENCE into CONTRADICTION which drove forward to Negation of the Negation.
In analysing Hegel, Lenin says:
“The result of this dialectical transformation into the ‘third’ term, into the synthesis, is a new premise, assertion, etc., which in turn becomes the source of a further analysis. But into it, into this ‘third’ stage, has already entered the ‘content’ of cognition (‘the content of cognition as such enters within the sphere of contemplation’) and the method is extended into a system.” [11]
“The beginning,” emphasises Lenin, “of all consideration, of the whole analysis – this first premise [proposition – insertion GH] – now appears indeterminate, ‘imperfect’; the need arises to prove, ‘derive’ it and it turns out that ...”
Lenin immediately goes on to quote Hegel approvingly:
“‘this may seem equivalent to the demand for an infinite backward progress in proof and derivation’ but, on the other hand,” writes Lenin, “the new premise drives forward ...”
He returns to Hegel who writes:
“... Thus, cognition rolls forward from content to content. This progress determines itself, first, in this manner, that it begins from simple determinatenesses and that each subsequent one is richer and more concrete. For the result contains its own beginning, and the development of the beginning has made it the richer by a new determinateness.” [12]
Content to content is “antithesis to antithesis”. “Simple determinateness” is the first “antithesis” which through negation of negation (third term) is now the “theory of knowledge”. This is negated back to the external source of the original sensation and negated as a new “part” of that “external source”, with the result that, as Hegel puts it, “each subsequent one is richer and more concrete. For the result contains its own beginning, and the development of the beginning has made it the richer by a new determinateness.” [13]
The dialectical conception of the union of analysis and synthesis is expressed in the following process.
Analysis enables us to identify the properties at the external source of sensation, that make it a “part” of a new emerging “whole”, while in Synthesis the “new whole” is understood as consisting of these parts as a unity of opposites standing in certain relation to one another. Thus synthesis is carried out through analysis and analysis through synthesis. Both synthesis and analysis are interdependent upon each other.
Cognition of the “new whole” and its “parts” is a simultaneous process. By dialectically reflecting the parts from “the concept of things and their relations” in the external world, we analyse them as “a unity of opposites” in a new “whole”. This “new whole”, therefore consists of a summation of “parts” which are opposite, being negated from the Identity of the original source of sensation at different times.
1. Lenin: Collected Works, Volume 14, Progress Publishers, 1962, p. 69.
2. Ibid., p. 155.
3. Volume 38, p. 229.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 171.
6. Ibid., p. 228.
7. Ibid., p. 359.
8. Ibid., p. 138.
9. Ibid., p. 143.
10. Ibid., p. 230.
11. Ibid., pp. 230/231.
12. Ibid., p. 231.
13. Ibid.
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Last updated: 26.10.2012