philosophical terms – Unity–Struggle–Unity

First principle

Comrade Editor J. Katsfoter — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 22:39:24 +0000

A first principle is a basic assumption or axiom about the world that cannot be deduced from logical arguments. First principles are generally the result of material conditions of individuals combining with their class interests and their particular psychological makeup and history.

Dialectical materialism

Comrade Editor J. Katsfoter — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 22:37:39 +0000

The study of phenomena and matter in motion and counterposed in the unity of opposites.

Materialism is a first principle which states that the material, actually-existing world is primary and conditions all other knowledge; that it conditions the “ideological” or “social” world.

Materialists recognize that ideas do have a material existence: they are electrochemical impulses that form the basis of all human interaction with the world and with each other. Therefore, the chiefest and most important difference between materialism and idealism is that, for the materialist, ideas and ideology are historical (they are conditioned by past material circumstances), contextual, and temporally contingent. Ideas are reliant on something other than human cognition; they also come about, gain value, and then pass away as conditions change.

Materialism rejects the idea of universals. Ideologies are created by material conditions in the world; they are temporal and bound by time; they are rooted in actually-existing relations.

If relations change, ideas change.

Marxism is not a psychological science that describes the motivations, desires, and behaviors of individuals. Our analysis is social and we perform that analysis across broad categories. Indeed, Marxism has very little to say about the individual. We, as Marxists, study events on a historical scale. We must therefore deal with great aggregates of society, and Marxism is the study of entire social classes. These vast, social forces are made up of many individuals. On this scale, the ideology or action of a single person does not register. Thus, while it is possible that, on the individual level, material conditions will result in individuals that fall far outside the cultural norm, that maintain ideas and ideologies that are not “supported” by the social or material relations of the society, Marxism is not concerned with the behaviors of those individuals. It is the social aggregate that moves history.

We can sum up all of the above with four main principles:

1. Nature is connected and semantically determined. No phenomenon or thing can be understood in itself, isolated from its context, but must be analyzed in its surrounding conditions; it is the network of relationships that we, as dialecticians, are interested in.

2. Nature is in a continuous state of motion and change. Phenomena must be studied in their movement, change, development, coming into being and going out of being. We can say that this is also a way of examining phenomena and things not in themselves, but in relation to their past and future.

3. Quantitative change leads to qualitative change. As a slow increase of temperature in water leads that water eventually to boil, changing its fundamental physical properties and as the slow increase of pressure on a glass will eventually shatter it, so development passes from insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes to massive and structural qualitative changes.

4. Contradictions are inherent in nature. The process of development is driven by the struggle between contradictions; it is not a harmonious unfolding of phenomena, but a struggle of opposites. Nature is the very embodiment of opposites, which interact to create new basic phenomena, which create new struggles, and so on.

Contradiction

Comrade Editor J. Katsfoter — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 22:37:03 +0000

A core analytical tool; contradictions are the inherently opposed logical extensions or compositions of any given state of affairs. Contradiction is what drives change as two or more incompatible propositions hold sway for varying periods of time and gradually resolve.

Contradictions may be antagonistic or non-antagonistic and may also be primary, secondary, or tertiary. They may also be internal or external.

Antagonistic contradictions are those contradictions which cannot resolve without systemic change. These are essentially contradictory.

Non-antagonistic contradictions are only in contradiction due to one or more temporary constellations of material conditions and may fall out of contradiction. These are accidentally contradictory.

Primary contradictions are the driving contradictions from which other pairs and clusters of contradictions arise during any given period. Without the resolution of primary contradictions, the underlying problems are not solved.

Whether a contradiction is internal or external is a matter of perspective. Internal contradictions are contradictions between elements or conditions that are within a single analyzed system or unit (internal contradictions of capitalism, say) and external contradictions are those which arise from outside that unit (contradiction between an element of capitalism and, for example, the environment). However, when performing material analysis, it is always possible to shift frame of reference and thus re-categorize contradictions are either internal or external.

Causes, the four

Comrade Editor J. Katsfoter — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 22:27:04 +0000

Aristotle posited four logical causes for any phenomenon to help analyze that phenomenon:

1. Material causes are those things which are caused by the underlying matter itself. The material cause of a table having grain is that it is made of wood;

2. A formal cause is something that is caused by the actual structure of a thing. The formal cause of a table standing up is that it distributes its weight on its legs;

3. An efficient cause is that which is performed by an agent other than the thing being examined. The efficient cause of the table is the carpenter carving it from wood;

4. A final cause is the ultimate outcome of a change. Aristotle’s example here is that the final cause of the seed is the tree – it is what is within the thing to become. This is better classified as the reason for which things are done.

A-priori

Comrade Editor J. Katsfoter — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 21:34:20 +0000

Knowledge that proceeds from axioms, whether logically or otherwise. Axioms are created through the gathering of a-posteriori information over time.

A-posteriori

Comrade Editor J. Katsfoter — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 12:14:46 +0000

Knowledge that comes from interacting directly with the world. A-posteriori knowledge is that which, in a Marxist sense, is assembled by the struggle of an individual with their material conditions, subject to their own personal psychological makeup. A-posterior knowledge comes from direct observation and from logical connections made between direct observations.

For instance, knowledge of the redness of a specific apple is a-posteriori knowledge; knowledge that “apples tend to be red” is an axiomatic deduction from many specific instances, another form of a-posteriori information.