virus: McFadzean on Popper on Hegel

T. Harms (tracy_harms@nile.com)
Fri, 20 Oct 1995 12:45:13 -0700


> Hegel is saying that criticism is essential to rationalism,
> and that out of the critical process new ideas are synthesized. Popper
> is saying (I think) that science depends on logic which does not allow
> contradictions. Both are right, but they aren't talking about the same sorts
> of contradiction.

You misunderstand Hegel. Hegel's "synthesis" does not resolve the tensions
of contradiction by devising a new position which addresses problems of
said contradiction, it establishes a new position which _encloses_ both
thesis and antithesis, including the contradictions between them. The
motif Hegel relies on is not _selection_, it is _transcendence_. It is
simply anti-evolutionary in this regard. This is in line with Chris
Stefaniw's comment that "here you have an atheist reducing philosophy to
the level of handmaiden to theology!"

-----T