A Basic Understanding of Understanding

After the first two pages of Zizek's 'The Sublime Object of Ideology' - I have come to notice I am strongly lacking in a lot of areas.

But surprisingly, I am not at all deterred by this. Quite the opposite - in fact, it gives me reason to post content that I was planning to post about when beginning this blog.

Case in point: Logic. I would like to do a basic analysis of logic (as a prelude or rather, a prerequisite, to deciphering Zizek's thought process).

As with all things, I shall begin with a basic definition:

Logic: The system or principles of reasoning applicable to any branch of knowledge or study.

Given this definition, it is clear that Logic is an essential tool in attaining understanding about anything - which is why it is so important to 'understand understanding'.

Let's begin a few thousand years ago with traditional logic set out in classical form by Aristotle.

Aristotle perfected a form of deductive argument called the syllogism.

Syllogism is a kind of logical argument where one proposition (the conclusion) is inferred from two or more others (the premises).   

A categorical syllogism consists of three parts: the major premise, the minor premise and the conclusion.

Major premise: All men are mortal.

Minor premise: All Greeks are men.

Conclusion: All Greeks are mortal.

 

There are four types of Syllogisms:

code

quantifier

subject

copula

predicate

type

example

a

All

S

are

P

universal affirmatives

All humans are mortal.

e

No

S

are

P

universal negatives

No humans are perfect.

i

Some

S

are

P

particular affirmatives

Some humans are healthy.

o

Some

S

are not

P

particular negatives

Some humans are not clever.

 

Hegel tried the bridge the gap between traditional logic and his very own form of dialectical thinking.

For Hegel, only the whole is true. Every stage or phase or moment is partial, and therefore partially untrue. Hegel's grand idea is "totality" which preserves within it each of the ideas or stages that it has overcome or subsumed. The totality is the product of a process which preserves all of its "moments" as elements in a structure, rather than as stages or phases.

These moments, or elements within the structure is rather like the interrelated architecture of a fractal - immensely detailed, yet immensely large at the same time.

The Artistolean focus on deduction is rather like zooming into the Mandelbrot set:

Aristotle's logic is concerned with a reductive, separate and discrete (self-)identification through a deductive pattern (getting closer and closer into the details as per the above animations).

Hegel, on the other hand, dissolves this classical static view in a dynamic movement towards the whole. The whole is an overcoming which preserves what it overcomes. Nothing is lost or destroyed but raised up and preserved as in a spiral. Think of it as the reversal of the above animation:

 This is an organic rather than mechanical logic. Hegel's special term for this "contradiction" of overcoming and at the same time preserving is Aufhebung/Aufheben, sometimes translated as "sublation".

Disciplines and lines of thought like Quantum theory, postmodern cosmology, chaos theory, computer interfacing and ecology all essentially subscribe to this view of "totality".

Hegel deals with a sequence of logical categories that are examined in turn and made to reveal their own inadequacies and internal tensions. Each category is made to generate another more promising one which in its turn will be subject to the same kind of scrutiny.

eg: The two concepts Being and Nothing are each both preserved and changed through sublation in the concept Becoming.

Hegel calls this dynamic aspect of his thinking the power of "negation". It is by means of this "negativity" of thought that the static (or habitual) becomes discarded or dissolved, made fluid and adaptable, and recovers its eagerness to push on towards "the whole".

Dialectical thinking derives its dynamic of negation from its ability to reveal "contradictions" within almost any category or identity.

By negation or contradiction, Hegel means a wide variety of relations difference, opposition, reflection or relation. It can indicate the mere insufficiency of a category or its incoherence. Most dramatically, categories are sometimes shown to be self-contradictory.

I think a connection can be made here to Zizek's term Ptolemization on the first page of the preface of 'The Sublime Object of Ideology."

Ptolemization -  is the adding of complications and changing of minor premises to maintain or supplement a discipline/category within the terms of its existing framework.

Ptolemy was an Earth-centred Astronomer and when data clashed with his existing framework for the Earth being the centre of the universe he introduced additional complications to account for the discrepancies.

Ptolemization, then, is the reverse of Aufheben in the sense that instead of revealing contradictions, it functions to conceal them.

It is however, the process of revealing contradictions that lends so much power to Aufheben as a logical process:

There are three kinds:

1. (Being) A pair of concepts at first seem flatly opposed, as if they would have nothing at all to do with one another: e.g: Quantity and Quality. Only by means of analysis or deduction can they be shown to be intimately interrelated.

2. (Essence)A pair of opposed concepts immediately imply one another. e.g Inner and Outer.

3. (Notion) And finally a set of concepts that are conceptually related. e.g: identity whose component parts, Universality and Particularity, are conceptually interrelated.

Finally, there is the idea of the dialectical Triad

THESIS                   -->	ANTITHESIS              -->	SYNTHESIS

In classical logic, this double negation ("A is not non-A") would simply reinstate the original thesis. The synthesis does not do this. It has "overcome and preserved" (or sublated) the stages of the thesis and antithesis to emerge as a higher rational unity.

I must attest; I'm quite worried that two pages of Zizek's book has lead to possible my longest post on this web log yet. Do I sense this website turning into a Zizekian shrine?

Stay pruned..

Sources: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/easy.htm