The True is True for Plato precisely because both it and our ability to comprehend it through Reason doesn’t change. Plato grants that the world of the senses is in a state of constant flux, but True reality for Plato lies in the unchanging world of Forms, grasped by unchanging Reason. To paint a very broad picture, if philosophy has always been concerned with grasping the Truth of reality, then prior to Kant and Hegel - but more importantly, prior to the development of modern, bourgeois society - this Truth was understood to be eternal, essentially static and unchanging. ![]() The character of this change - how the object is changing - is of deep significance and something I will address later. My central claim is that Hegel finds his dialectics necessary because he is attempting to more adequately comprehend an object in a process of change and transformation. Perhaps a more fruitful but less straightforward way of getting at the matter is by way of a different question: not what, but why dialectics for Hegel? If we can agree that Hegel was doing more than intentionally trying to be edgy or mystifying, we must ask ourselves why Hegel thought dialectics was necessary. ![]() Adorno astutely asserts that dialectics eludes definition by its very nature, that it is better demonstrated than defined. ![]() Perhaps the first question that may come to mind for anyone making the daunting attempt to understand Hegel is, what is Hegelian dialectics? I could provide a one-line definition, such as “the interpenetration of opposites,” but such a definition might not elucidate much.
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