Hegel man to put SA’s chaos in perspective
LET me tell you about Hegel. You may never have heard of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, but his contribution to philosophy is all around us.
If you want to impress your friends you will speak about Hegel’s dialectic. It is impressive.
What Hegel grasped back in the day (1770-1831) was that all things tend towards unity, but in the process they create oppositional energy. This oppositional energy interacts with the original thing and out of that interaction a united and improved new thing at a higher level comes into being.
Hegel called the first “thing” (it really can be any thing which I will explain in a minute) the “thesis”. The oppositional energy created he named the “antithesis” and after their interaction the unified and transcending product he called the “synthesis”, which in time becomes the next thesis and the dialectic begins again.
Hegel often spoke about the “unity of opposites” which sounds impossible because how can opposites unite? But we all say “it takes two to tango” because it is impossible to tango alone. It requires a unity of opposites. There can be no game if one side doesn’t run onto the field. Thesis and antithesis are the basis of any competition. The synthesis effect emerges when one realises that no team leaves the field the same as when they ran on. No lover ends a tango the same as when the music began. Interactions change people. The synthesis may be incremental and very slow, but it is there.
The process of evolution is nothing other than Hegelian dialectics. Friedrich Engels who was a fan of Hegel (1820-1895), suggested that this dance of opposites creates spirals. Look at some of the Hubble pictures of the galaxies in space and you will see the spirals.
In case you thought Engels sounded familiar, he was the founding partner of communism with Karl Marx. The political system they pioneered is referred to as dialectical materialism and grew out of Hegel’s philosophy. You have the capitalists (thesis) and the workers (antithesis). Their interaction called a revolution (a spiral word) develops the emergent state (synthesis).
Now that you know Hegel and can speak Engels, take a look at South Africa.
The inclusive rainbow nation of Nelson Mandela (thesis) is currently the antithesis of all he stood for. The xenophobes, the self-serving corrupt civil servants, the abductors of innocent women, and the statue smashers are waging a revolutionary struggle of values and norms that are antithetical to our constitutional democracy as a civilised nation.
It may seem the spiral of this dialectic is a downward one, but if Hegel is correct and history has proved him to be accurate, a unity and transcendence will emerge that will help us be more than we currently are in this state of turmoil.
I know it is a scary and heady dance with casualties along the way, but that’s how evolution has been happening for millions of years. May we soon transcend this chaotic tango.
Peter is a pastoral therapist and conflict mediator.