this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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I went on a tear at one point trying to really understand, rigorously (I'm a computer and maths person by trade and training), what dialectics are and how, specifically, the material dialectic (the foundation of Marxist thought!) should work.
I was a bit dissapointed to understand that they can't really be "rigorous" in that fashion and that they're really more of a philosophical and rhetorical tool. I do still get a lot of use from them, and in discussions with other people the framework of the dialectic ("Ok, what if we took these two ideas and put them on opposite ends of a spectrum, how does that look?") is very useful for explaining and expounding upon ideas.
Its usefulness never made me disappointed despite this drawback.
I'm a physicist at heart, which might explains it... To me the use in philosophy is just as important, especially in philosophy of science and metaphysics.
Simply put I couldn't imagine studying how reality works without ever wandering what it is and how to best study it.