What Is Dialectics, Really? Part 3: Understanding Opposition and Identity
From what we observe and feel, all things change, and some pass away altogether and turn into something else. They do not seem to be truly real; they seem to have some defect, because they seem unable to hold on to themselves.
And indeed, all things carry an inborn defect, a destiny of change and passing away. All things are self-contradictory: purely because of what they are, and not because of anything from outside, they are in a condition in which they cannot last. But why is this so? Where do this inborn defect and this self-contradiction come from?
To understand this, we must first understand two concepts, difference and identity. Clearly, they are opposites.
Let us start with difference. Difference is simply the way two things are not the same. A cat and a stone, for example, are very unlike each other; there is a difference, a distinction, between them.
Philosophy means examining, in depth, the concepts we take for granted. Here we need to look closely at the concept of “difference” and see what happens to it.
A. Difference at first is the difference between things that seem to have nothing to do with each other: an “indifferent” difference, which only makes up “the many”, a diversity. The cat and the stone truly have nothing to do with each other. Their difference is the kind that does not care at all what the other is or does: when the stone crumbles to dust, the cat is still a cat; and even if the cat dies, the stone is still a stone, entirely unconcerned. The difference our everyday thinking sees is this diversity: to us, the world is a collection of all sorts of things.
B. But we soon find that this indifferent difference does not hold up logically; the two are not absolutely indifferent to each other after all. Different as the cat and the stone are, by comparing them we find that they still have something in common, something that is the same: both are things on Earth, for instance, and both are made of atoms, and both contain a great many oxygen atoms.
When we examine difference in this deeper way, we say that true difference is difference within a relation, difference established by comparison; it is therefore relative difference, difference that has a relative character. Difference is no longer two isolated individuals having nothing to do with each other; it is defined within a shared frame of reference (what they have in common, their points of sameness). It is difference grounded in sameness. Things that differ have points where they differ, but also points where they are the same, and some connection between them. On this basis, nowhere in the world will we find things that are absolutely different, with nothing at all in common. This relative difference, difference within a relation, is a higher form of difference. But it is not enough. We can go deeper still, until we find the real secret of difference.
C. Our thinking in A and B has not yet found the essence of the two things that differ, or, put another way, the essential difference between them. Clearly, their essential difference is the difference between the living and the non-living. Of the cat and the stone, one is life and the other is non-life. Only when we see this essential level do we find true difference, the truest form of difference.
Life and non-life are an opposition, and an opposition has these features:
- The two sides confront each other, negate each other and exclude each other. Life is living and non-life is dead; life is never non-life, and non-life is never life. In the same way, positive is absolutely not negative, and subjective is absolutely not objective. And yet,
- they also depend on each other and pass into each other. Positive has meaning only in relation to negative; without negative, the very concept of positive collapses. The concept of non-life exists only by virtue of the concept of life within it: it defines itself by life. And life, as what is not “non-life”, likewise depends on the concept of “non-life” within it. This holds not only in concepts but in reality: all life really does need non-living things (nutrients and minerals), all life contains non-living things, and all life turns into non-life (death); and all non-living things contain within them the seed of life: when stone weathers into sand and soil, it can nurture life.
We have now found a very special kind of difference: a difference whose two sides negate and exclude each other, yet pass into each other, define (affirm) each other and attract each other. This is the truest form of difference, the form in which difference has gone into itself. We call it opposition. Each side of an opposition exists only because it excludes the other (it is not X), and precisely through this exclusion it is related to the other (it contains X). So opposition is a deeply connected difference, a difference that is at the same time an identity; it contains identity within it.
Opposition is both absolute distinction and one and the same thing. Assets and debts, for example, are the same sum of money; the road going west and the road going east are the same road. Likewise affirmation and negation, the S and N poles of a magnet, the inorganic and the organic, nature and spirit, are in essence one and the same thing, precisely because of the identity that opposition contains.
To see things truly is to see their essence, and when we study difference we must likewise look at its essence. What we find is that behind every difference there is an opposition: that is the essence of the difference, the essential difference. This essence is opposition, the truest difference: life and non-life, positive and negative, assets and debts, affirmation and negation, the inorganic and the organic, nature and spirit, and so on.
To understand identity, we must first understand difference, and the truest and deepest difference, which is opposition. Only in opposition does difference become thoroughgoing and inward: the existence of one side rests entirely on the negation of the other. Difference is no longer “you are one, I am two”, but “I am what you are not”. This tightly interlocking difference, at once complementary and mutually exclusive, is the most inward difference. By comparison, the external difference between the individual cat and the individual stone is unrelated, external and accidental. Only in the difference from its own opposite, that is, in the opposition of X and non-X, does difference reach its highest form, and this form of difference contains identity. Here we also see what true identity looks like. It is not sameness of the kind A = A; it is identity through difference and opposition, identity between things that are distinct from each other: a self-identity that comes about through self-distinction.
Let us look back over the journey difference has made:
At first, the distinctions between things only produce diversity. In pure diversity, things are merely “many”, and the distinctions between them are merely external. But external distinction is a problem, and must move on, because pure “indifference” does not hold up logically. The moment you look at the things, the reflection of thinking has already run an invisible thread through them. As soon as thinking begins to examine them, it finds itself making an unavoidable reflective move: these external things are the same in some respects and not the same in others. Once the determinations “same” and “not the same” are brought in, external distinction collapses. For not being the same is no longer simply each going its own way (indifference); it rests on sameness. The things begin to mirror each other within a web of relations: because they share a common ground (sameness), their difference (not being the same) becomes a difference at all. This is the step from external diversity to relative distinction.
But relative distinction is still not thoroughgoing. Same and different are related, but they are still seen as two independent things with a bridge (a relation) built between them; neither has truly entered the other. Opposition is the final form of difference: its two sides constitute and define each other. X and non-X (or positive and negative, the north and south poles of a magnetic field, and so on) are different, yet each owes its existence entirely to the other. Without positive there is no concept of negative at all. Here, external distinction has become wholly internal. Under the microscope of dialectics, the isolated things of diversity, which we took to have nothing to do with one another, show their true face: they are what they are precisely because they stand in an essential difference. They contain an essential difference; they contain their opposite within them, and with it their own negation.
Opposition, then, as a closely connected distinction, a distinction whose sides can hardly be told apart, an inseparable distinction between opposites, is no longer the abstract, external distinction between external things, nor the relative distinction either. It is a distinction that contains identity, and so is a distinction of a thing from itself; it can therefore also be called self-distinction, or self-difference. This distinction is both distinction and identity: it is both self-distinction and self-identity. A thing contains within itself both itself and its own opposite. This strange relation, this strange form, is the core of dialectics.
We call this fundamental condition, in which a thing contains within itself its own opposite and the element of its own negation, contradiction. All things are contradictory. This is an inner contradiction, a contradiction belonging to their essence, and so it is self-contradiction. It comes from their close connection and identity with their opposites. In their essence they exist by depending on their opposites, and their essence contains their identity with their opposites. This contradiction looks like a contradiction between a thing and its opposite, but it is really a contradiction between the thing and itself, a self-contradiction, because of the identity between the thing and its opposite.
All things are self-contradictory. This is a truly startling discovery, but it is the plain truth. It is the nature of all finite things: they cannot be separated from their opposites. Each side of an opposition negates itself within itself; each side is, within itself, its own opposite. This is why all life turns into non-life, why everything living dies; and it is why every building collapses and every river runs dry: they contain within themselves their own opposite, their own negation. A building bears down on its own foundation; a river keeps carrying away the very water that makes it a river. Each is negating its own ground, negating itself. So every building will collapse in the end, and every river will in the end run dry. Their self-contradiction and finitude are laid bare.
Contradiction is the nature not only of finite things but also of the thinking of the understanding. Our everyday thinking, and the thinking in the various sciences, all belong to the thinking of the understanding. What is in the thinking of the understanding also has inner negativity; it too is contradictory. Every concept, every idea in our thinking turns into its opposite, and the root of this is that these elements of thought cannot be separated from their identity with their opposites. For example, the understanding holds honesty to be a fine quality, yet in some situations honesty is as bad as a lie, or even worse. Telling a gravely ill relative the plain truth about their illness can strike them a heavy blow, colder and crueler than a lie. Or take a person who, to be absolutely safe, chooses never to go out, never to meet anyone, never to take any risk of any kind. In the end this absolute safety weakens their immune system, isolates them psychologically, and reduces their ability to act and to cope with risk to zero. The pursuit of absolute safety produces exactly the most fragile and dangerous way of living. These are examples of the thinking of the understanding turning into its opposite because of its own contradiction.
The contradictory character of finite things and finite thinking, this tendency and destiny of negating themselves and turning into their own opposite, is in fact the soul by which things move themselves. For if things did not negate themselves and turn into their opposites, but could simply keep themselves in being, the objective world and the world of thought would sink into absolute stagnation and deadness. Nor could things ever interact or influence one another, because an opposition of total separation would cut off their identity with one another; they would be utterly alien and strange to each other, with no channel of connection left. Life would then never appear, because life needs non-life; life comes from non-life. Life could develop out of nature only through the opposition and identity of the inorganic and the organic, of life and non-life. If non-life were simply non-life, with no identity with life, there would be no life, and no life could live on nourishment from non-living things.
In everyday thinking we always feel that “I am a person, and around me are air, water, animals and everything else”, as if all things were scattered and separate and had merely come together by chance. The aim of philosophy is to remove this illusion of indifference between things, and to recognize the necessity that binds them and the identity within them. It does this chiefly by showing each thing in its opposition and identity with its opposite.
This content is based on the author's own manuscript; all rights reserved by the author. No person or organization may republish it, use it, or use it to train AI without the author's written permission.
