To put it very simply, the Hegelian Dialectic is G.W.F Hegel’s theory that the progress of cultural views toward truth is anything but linear. Instead, the conventional thesis causes rebellion and, therefore, the birth of an anti-thesis. Belief patterns oscillate between those two extremes, both of which have certain particulars correct but are out of touch with general truth. People are split into those two camps at once until the anti-thesis eventually becomes the new thesis. That causes a new anti-thesis to arise, and the cycle repeats with each new thesis’ being slightly closer to the overarching truth but which may still overcompensate regarding the specifics. Imagine a pendulum swinging where belief is split between one peak of the swing and the other, truth itself is the force of gravity, and as the pendulum slows down, ideally, people should come together in submission of the truth at the pendulum’s resting point in the middle. This process, according to Hegel, takes at least three moves.
There is a political application of this theory — a cultural misinterpretation, in my view — that suggests that this dialectic process begins with a pragmatic agenda (usually control, power, and money), and instead of each step’s getting closer to the truth, it rather gets closer to fulfilling that goal. The problem here is metaphysical: pragmatism alone cannot provide a ground to account for the contents of the theory, nor for the act of theorizing itself. What grounds the goal toward which the dialectic aims? Is it nature? Is it a common value among the participants? Is it their conscious agreement? Each of these is logically unsound, for truth is neither determined by mere survival (naturalistic fallacy) nor by consensus (argumentum ad populum). It still requires we fallen, mortal beings to have faith in something as a grounding for that goal, just as we must appeal to something higher than ourselves in discerning truth. We will leave that here for now, however.
We can certainly observe the Hegelian Dialectic in microcosmic form when we observe the evolution of an individual’s beliefs. It is not our first impulse, when we are confronted with new information that challenges how we think, to simply observe that information and our responses to it — to watch the pendulum swing as well as to be self-aware, that is. No, it is our first impulse to map that information onto our preconditioned pattern of thinking, whether that means to accept and adopt the conventional thesis or to rebel against it. The former is the result of one’s being temperamentally more agreeable, and the latter less agreeable, from a Big-5 trait perspective. So, regardless of our temperament, the same holds true: we tend to ride the pendulum to the other end and back again, repeatedly, as to learn most of life’s lesson’s by trial and error. I don’t intend to commit the composition fallacy here — i.e. that what is true of individual parts should be true of the whole — but rather to draw an analogy between individual psychology on the specific level and the Hegelian Dialectic on the general.
An example of this would be the case of someone’s growing up with an inadequate Christian education or family life, and they overcompensate for that in young adulthood by becoming an atheist, perhaps because they read “The God Delusion” by Dildo Dawkins or something. With growth and wisdom, and after many debates with friends and family members, they eventually evolve into adopting a more stoic mindset and grateful attitude, and they find their way back to a more focused, spiritual (even Christian) perspective on reality and life.
I want to place emphasis on the grateful attitude that is required to see the truth. It is one thing to be able to interpret facts, and even to see higher patterns of truth, correctly. But, in doing so, there is no guarantee that one will know what to do with that information. An authentic, stoic mindset involves gratitude. There is power in indifference, yes. It allows one to remove emotion from the initial analysis and see things clearly. Without gratitude, this will cause apathy, for one can see and understand truth on a mechanistic level yet still feel some desire to correct what is to what one thinks should be the case. This is an interference of the ego. To be grateful is to understand and to consciously, in every necessary moment, control that ego response rather than to act on it in an attempt to control the world. Gratitude, not indifference, allows for true acceptance of that which is out of the individual’s control. From there, one is not bogged down in the negative attitude that the ego would create in reaction to the truth, but rather, a world of higher learning opens up to one.
Community roles and individual relationships are crucial both for development and as a test for one’s true attitude. It is also a product of ego for one to consciously decide “I am grateful.” It is another thing to test that against social pressure. An example would be in letting go of a romantic relationship and being “grateful” that one’s former partner will move on to other things and people that are better suited to them than one is. One can experience a feeling of unhealthy possessiveness over other people as well over their environment. In fact, people are simply part of that environment that the untamed ego seeks to control. They are mere objects — means to one’s end. Regardless of that end, one should not treat others merely as a means, but rather as ends in themselves. True love is expressed, perhaps more often than not, after that relationship is over with. It comes with the acceptance that the former lover has freely moved on — and in being grateful for that. Romantic relationships are the ultimate test of gratitude because they are so muddied by emotion. It is the context in which the line between intuition and emotion is the least clear. Intuition knows that to be grateful is to be free, and that is to be loved. That is true compassion. Emotion, empathy included, is the chemical response that the ego impulsively triggers when it does not accept what is.
To dilate back out to the general, the Hegelian Dialectic is the cultural context for ego expression. It is the natural result of group-based thinking which is, in fact, submission to cultural fashion at the expense of based, critical thinking. It can be consciously and systematically directed by a government entity’s appealing to the pity and emotion of the public, and persuading them that those impulsive, involuntary responses are virtuous. Therefore, it takes one absolutely no work to join the team of “the good”. One must only remain a slave to one’s emotions and be able to call out anyone who does not share that sentiment, no matter how well-reasoned their opponent’s position may be. The reward for this, in today’s technocratic culture, is not personal or spiritual fulfillment, but rather material convenience which one would, in reality, be better off finding a way to provide oneself. Whether Hegel’s claim that there is unity in truth at the end of the road, however, regarding the core things that are near and dear to us as individual, spiritual beings — e.g. what should be normalized regarding family, love, sex, beauty, etc. — remains to be seen.
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