What Is Dialectics, Really? Part 2: Understanding Objective Thought
What keeps us from entering the world of philosophy is a certain difference, or opposition: the opposition between the objective and the subjective, which is at the same time the opposition between matter and spirit. For example, the phone in my hand and the phone in my thinking are utterly different things. Our everyday thinking tells us that material things and spiritual things are completely different: material things are visible and real, while spirit is invisible and unreal. At the same time, what is objective has objective certainty and solidity, whereas what is subjective seems to vary from person to person, and even to change constantly. This is what we mean when we say, “Be objective, not subjective.”
Of course, we must acknowledge the difference between the objective and the subjective, between matter and spirit. They really are different; this difference really exists. But it is only one side of the matter. These ideas are so deeply rooted in our minds that we have never even imagined it could be otherwise. In fact, however, they are one-sided: they speak only of the side of difference and fail to see the other side.
Indeed, some of what is in our thinking really is purely subjective — the flights of our imagination, all kinds of groundless conjecture, even fantasies and the like. These truly lack objectivity. But besides them, there is much in our thought — perhaps even most of it — that is in fact objective. Take the scientific knowledge we have learned, the laws of physics we know. On the one hand they belong to our thinking; they are its content. But at the same time they are the laws and regularities of the objective world, something entirely objective, because no one can change them; they are laws the physical world strictly obeys, and their objectivity is beyond all doubt. And yet, wonderfully, they are at the same time something in our minds, the content of our thinking — they are thoughts. What is more, it is by thinking that we discovered them.
Here we find that the absolute opposition between matter and spirit (thinking), between the objective and the subjective, cannot actually hold. Matter and spirit, the objective and the subjective, are indeed different, but they are neither sharply divided nor unrelated to each other. We used to think that thinking and spirit are merely subjective, and only the material world is objective. Now we find that this is a mistaken stereotype: the content of thinking, that is, thought, can also be objective, and is not merely a thought belonging to our inner life. At this point, the absolute separation and opposition between subjective and objective, thinking and being, spirit and matter, no longer seems to hold.
The objectivity of these thoughts lies in this: they are not merely our thoughts, but at the same time something inherent in things and objects themselves. They are the objective laws of the world, the principles that govern the world and the movement of all things, independent of human will; they are the true essence of things. We call such thoughts objective thoughts. This is our first great discovery, the key that opens the door to the world of philosophy. In fact, what we have discovered here is not only that the laws, regularities and essence of things are objective thoughts, but also that our thinking can know, understand and discover these objective thoughts. All that scientific knowledge, all those laws, were discovered by our thinking; they are beyond doubt our thoughts, and beyond doubt the laws, regularities and essence of objective things.
Our world truly is governed by laws and regularities. Whether it is the birth of the universe, the motion of the heavenly bodies, or the propagation of light and electromagnetic waves, everything strictly follows the laws of physics and mathematics. These laws are simple and beautiful, and they keep all things in our world in good order: from galaxies to stars and planets, to the geology and weather of planets, to the world of inorganic and organic matter, until life appears. The lifeless and the living interweave and work together, filling the planet we live on with vitality. Then animals appear, and finally, in one animal species, self-consciousness and spirit emerge. They can think; they begin to explore the mysteries of the universe and their own nature, and they create a brilliant civilization. It looks like a vast cosmic theater, and the script of this drama — its content is what we call objective thought and objective reason.
Objective thought is thought in which the opposition between subjective and objective has been overcome. Subjective and objective, spirit and matter, are indeed different, but they can be fully joined and can pass into one another. Clearly, then, the everyday assumption that subjective and objective are absolutely opposed is a limited kind of thinking. We call it the thinking of the understanding. Like elementary mathematics, it cannot grasp the principles of higher mathematics; it cannot grasp that things which seem opposed are inwardly identical, the same, continuous with one another. For example, in the understanding’s elementary-mathematics way of thinking, a straight line is a straight line and a curve is a curve; they are absolutely opposed, as incompatible as fire and water. But in higher mathematics, within the infinitely small, a curve can be treated as a straight line; the straight and the curved pass into each other in the limit. The identity of the straight and the curved is the foundation on which mathematicians built calculus.
The objective thought we speak of here resonates directly with the idea of the Logos put forward by an ancient philosopher.
To explain the great question of why the world is not a chaos but displays a certain order, Heraclitus (c. 535 – c. 475 BC), who lived in the Greek city of Ephesus, put forward the famous concept of the Logos as the highest principle of the motion and change of the cosmos. In ancient Greek, logos originally meant “speech”, “reckoning” or “proportion”. Heraclitus gave it an ontological meaning: the Logos is the inherent, objective proportion, order and law that runs through all things. Heraclitus is the sage famous for the saying “No one can step into the same river twice.” He held that all things are in flux, but that this flux is not blind; on the contrary, the motion and change of all things follow inner laws and regularities, and this rational law is the Logos. Heraclitus held that the sensible embodiment of the Logos in nature is “fire”, the “ever-living fire”. Fire ceaselessly kindles and goes out, representing change; yet fire burns according to a certain “measure”, and this measure is the Logos. Note especially that the measure is inherent in the fire: it is the fire’s own principle or law, contained within the fire itself, not a rule imposed from outside. So it is with the Logos: it is the things’ own, inner principle and norm.
The idea of the Logos marks a pivotal stage in the leap of human understanding of the cosmos from the sensible to the rational. Before it, philosophers mainly explained all things by objective, perceptible things, taking water, air or earth as the first principle of the cosmos. From Heraclitus on, people at last realized that what truly determines the origin, motion, change and development of things is reason, something of the nature of thought; it is objective reason and objective thought, and at the same time it can be known by human beings — it is the content of human thought. Heraclitus’s fire is, of course, also something perceptible; the difference is that for Heraclitus fire is only the embodiment of the Logos, while the true principle is the measure the fire follows, the Logos.
If we call laws that can be thought reason, then we may say that reason is present in nature and matter, governing their motion as laws, regularities and relations of every kind. Reason is in the world as its inner essence, its guiding force and its soul. Reason of this kind is objective reason.
When we say that thought, as objective thought, is the inner essence of the world, it may sound as if we were saying that natural things have consciousness, while on the other hand we say that what distinguishes humans from natural things is that humans think. In fact there is no contradiction. The reason contained in natural things is a thought and reason that has not yet become aware of itself, a reason not yet awakened; our thinking and reason, by contrast, is reason that has awakened and become self-aware. We may therefore say that nature is a system of thought without consciousness — or, metaphorically, reason and thought in a state of sleep.
The difference between this objective thought and objective reason and our own thinking and reason lies only in this: they have not yet reached self-consciousness, not yet risen to spirit. The thought and reason contained in nature appear only as laws and regularities; they are potentially self-consciousness and spirit, they can develop into real self-consciousness and spirit, and we human beings are the result of that development. Laws, regularities and essence, consciousness, self-consciousness and spirit are all of the same nature — all are reason of some kind — but they differ in their degree of development, in their degree of self-awareness. Nature itself does not know any of this. Nature is still asleep; it does not know that it is a system of reason or thought, nor that it will develop consciousness and spirit. Only once that consciousness and spirit have developed (once we exist) can we look back at nature and discover that it is such a system of thought — that what determines nature’s motion and change is this system of thought, the Logos, objective thought and objective reason.
The laws and regularities of nature and of all things in the universe are both the content of our thought and the laws and principles by which nature and the universe operate; they are the inner essence of things. They are objective thought. The entrance to philosophy is to understand objective thought — to understand that human thought can be objective thought, and that human thinking can therefore grasp the essence of things and know the truth. The world is a system of thought; nature is a system of thought without consciousness, and we are thought that has reached consciousness and self-awareness. For this very reason, thought and being can be united, and by the same token matter and spirit are identical rather than absolutely opposed. Dialectics is the thought that studies this identity and unity.
We call the reason that governs all things in the world — the reason and objective thought contained in things — the essence of things. Since the essence of a thing is what determines the thing, it is what comes first. A thing is what it is solely by virtue of the activity of its essence, which dwells within the thing and manifests itself in it. We say that the essence of a thing is its master, the driving force of its change and development.
If we call our own thinking and reason subjective reason, and the thought and reason contained in nature and the universe objective reason, then we can say that these two are one and the same reason. That is, subjective reason and objective reason are the same reason, only in different forms. We have in fact already said why. First, subjective reason can discover, know and think objective reason; there is no insurmountable gulf between them. Second, humans were born of nature, and subjective reason was born of objective reason. Subjective reason can be seen as a higher form of the objective reason in nature, the form in which it becomes aware of itself — objective reason awakened. We human beings are nature’s awakened mind.
At this point we find that the opposition between subjective and objective has been completely broken down: subjective reason is in essence objective reason. This reason that is both subjective and objective, that can exist in nature and matter as well as in spirit and mind, we call absolute reason. We may say that both objective reason and subjective reason are forms — or moments in the development — of absolute reason. Though they differ in form and in degree of development, they are in essence one and the same, and we can regard this reason as the inner essence of the whole universe.
Some readers may have noticed that we have used the word “absolute” twice. Earlier we spoke of an “absolute opposition”, which seems pejorative; here we speak of “absolute reason”, which seems laudatory. Indeed, when “absolute” is applied to difference and opposition, it means a difference or opposition that cannot be crossed, bridged or dissolved. That is bad, because it is a misreading of the truth. But when “absolute” is applied to reason, it means that reason has gone beyond the opposition of subjective and objective: whether as subjective reason or as objective reason, it is itself. In this way it becomes something truly complete, something free. It is no longer bound by the one-sided forms of the subjective or the objective, nor cut off by the opposition between them; it lets subjective reason discover objective reason, and lets objective reason inspire subjective reason. Only reason that has reached this stage can be called absolute reason. The thought that explores the course of this reason’s development is dialectics, and the first and foremost feature of that course is the identity and unity of opposites. And the discovery of objective thought — a discovery that embodies the identity of subjectivity and objectivity — is the gateway into the great hall of dialectics.
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