Dialectical Position Research Articles

Unendlichkeit (Infinity)

This entry argues that, in his poetic as well as theoretical and scientific writings, Goethe adopts a dialectical position vis-à-vis one of the dominant philosophical concepts of the modern age: infinity (Unendlichkeit). While the concept of infinity came to be embraced by the end of the eighteenth century in literature and philosophy, as well as in the powerful tool of infinitesimal calculus, Goethe consistently emphasized the need for a dialectic between the finite and the infinite in which the internal force driving humans and nature beyond all limits must be balanced or counteracted by an equal force drawing them back towards the world of finitude. Goethe depicts this dialectic as both an inherent law of nature and an ethical and existential feature of humanity.

Tropical vibes with peoples from Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta: dialogic reflection in joint inquiries as feelthinking-doing in design practice and research

ABSTRACT Reflection as a resource and capacity in Social Transformation Design leads to understanding the nature of designing as a communal act. This article explores the polysemic use of reflection and the role that design practitioners and researchers could play in the Global South, and how their work may become a decolonial practice, transitioning from a design-led intervention approach to a collaborative process of joint inquiry. We explore how to decolonise ourselves, by reviewing work done in the past in the Colombian Caribbean shores. In collaboration with People from Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta and a team of designers, researchers and several organisations, we built a palaphitic building for cultural tourism practices.We look at what the process entailed in retrospect, to understand how to move from dialectics to dialogics. In an effort to rebuild ourselves as decolonial researchers and practitioners. In the work that we’re reviewing, we tracked four different categories of reflection. We identified two sets of intertwined results. The first set is related to transitional forms of reflection that fluctuate from design interventions to joint inquiries, and; the second set is related to the process of how people flow from a dialectical position to a participatory dialogical feeling-thinking-doing.

"We Try to Fix Things Quietly, and We Do Not Take Revenge": Christian Arab Teachers' Experiences Coping with Child Sexual Abuse Among Their Pupils in Israel.

Teachers are at the frontlines of the fight to identify and cope with child sexual abuse (CSA) among their pupils. Their methods of coping with CSA cases, both personally and professionally, are strongly influenced by their socio-cultural contexts and religious beliefs. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the experiences of Christian Arab teachers in Israel coping with the CSA of their pupils. Twelve Christian Arab elementary school teachers in Israel were recruited for the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and a qualitative thematic analysis was employed based on a descriptive phenomenological-psychological approach. Two key themes emerged from the analysis: (a) The teachers' intense emotional reactions regarding the CSA of their students and the empowerment some found in handling such difficult situations, and (b) The teachers' Christian beliefs and identity strongly affected their understanding of CSA and their approach to intervention. The findings indicated the dialectical position of the teachers' religio-cultural context, particularly the duality of the Christian value of forgiveness, a powerful resource for their coping, yet with adverse implications for children's vulnerability. This unique risk should inform training teachers regarding CSA matters. Teachers must also have systems that support them and allow them to reflectively examine their coping styles.

Solving Crime for America's “Others”: Crime Clearance and Asian American Victims

Based on the theoretical notion that racial hierarchy influences inequality in criminal justice outcomes, previous crime clearance studies have included victims’ race as a salient predictor of clearance. However, Asian American victims are seldom studied, often dropped from the analysis or combined as “other” with smaller racial groups. The unique and dialectical position of Asian Americans in the U.S. racial stratification system, simultaneously considered as “honorary White” and stigmatized as “perpetual foreigner” and “yellow peril,” should attract more research interest in the area of racial inequality in criminal justice outcomes. Using National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data, the current study examines racial/ethnic differences in crime clearance by arrest, with special attention given to Asian victims in comparison to White, Black, Hispanic, and Native American victims. The survival analysis found no statistically significant difference in crime clearance between White and Asian victims, with their clearance likelihood higher than for victims from other minority groups. The current analysis also found that the use of a simpler White/non-White dichotomy or placement of Asians in a broad “other” category risks obscuring important differences in crime clearance between Asians and other minority groups.

On investigating phenomena without losing sight of them: The dialectics of observation and the phenomenological gaze in a kindergarten setting

ABSTRACT In this article, the authors address some of the scientific challenges associated with using observation as a research method. The authors ask how researchers contextualise and understand observation in terms of its theoretical underpinnings and how it is conducted. Using a vignette in the kindergarten context, the authors explore how observation as a research method requires theoretical reflection in and on observational work. They discuss the role of the observing researcher in a dialectical position and process. The researchers discuss both the dependency on – and the critical suspension of preunderstanding that is necessary for – conducting observations. In addition to being grounded in the researcher’s own embodied position, observation is directed towards something/somebody and by somebody. The researchers are simultaneously also observed by those they are observing. The conclusion assumes that reciprocity in the understanding of observation contributes to knowledge and discussions about credibility and validity in qualitative research based on observation.

MASS LINE METHOD AND GRAMSCI’S PHILOSOPHY OF PRAXIS TO RITUAL PROPRIETY: AN OVERVIEW

Jaspers, in 1949, coined the term ‘Axial Age’, as an age in which humans apparently became more analytical and reflective. Despite this great age, humanity is arguably still balanced in continuing regression against the former axial age. The overall research objective of this paper is therefore to examine critically the contemporary socialist attempt at combatting this regression. Chinese politics is a process of image creation, that, in turn generates new knowledge in the people, while ‘politics in command’ infers the same precept that Gramsci had called the ‘philosophy of praxis’. The mass line was a systematic and enduring set of programs and policies, prescribing the optimal form of propriety between the masses and the Party’s leadership. Xunzi had written a full account of the origin of ritual propriety and its relationship to these problematic facets of human nature. The research question asks how putting politics in command could inform party leadership by means of the philosophy of praxis. The argument sets out to bring proof for the proposition that deployment of the mass line would allow the gleaning of an epistemology of ritual propriety between the superstructure and the masses. The research paradigm is a cumulative synthesis made into new knowledge, built on top of well-established research. Thus, the manuscript’s research methodology is the construction of an argument constrained within a legal narrative concerning the various facets of Gramsci’s exegeses on folklore. Without the philosophy of praxis, governments would want to eradicate any folklore that challenged the ruling party’s worldview and legitimacy, charging such challengers as having been derelict in their externally imposed duties. This kind of contradiction is thus managed in the sole interests of a ruling class, and its unintended artifact is a truncation of creativity both within and by hegemonic groups. Gramsci conceived of the resultant subaltern groupings as being deliberately created by linguistic irradiation, so creating a war of position of self-developed identities against externally imposed identities. Combatting this, the mass line establishes the dialectical position of political activity as differentiation in the superstructures, inferring that to improve quality of life, the political activity must take control of the superstructure.

Securitisation of Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) and Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD): Dialectical Positions between Upstream and Downstream Riparian Countries

Securitisation of Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) and Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD): Dialectical Positions between Upstream and Downstream Riparian Countries

Against insular liberalism: Sayyid Qutb, illiberal Islam and the forceless force of the better argument

Political liberals claim that liberal polities may legitimately dismiss the objections of ‘unreasonable’ citizens who resist political liberals’ favored principles of justice and political justification. A growing number of other political philosophers, including post-colonialist theorists, have objected to the resulting insularity of political liberalism. However, political liberals’ insularity also often presents them from being sensitive or responsive to these critics’ complaints. In this article, I develop a more efficacious internal critique of political liberalism: I show that political liberals’ own core principles of liberal legitimacy sometimes require liberal polities to engage with the objections of those who hold ‘unreasonable’, and even illiberal, views. First, I draw on the work of Sayyid Qutb, an illiberal Islamic political thinker, to argue that – contrary to what political liberals often imply – even ‘unreasonable’, illiberal citizens may be fair-minded: that is, they may be actively concerned to cooperate with others on fair and mutually endorsable terms. Second, I contend that a liberal state’s own core commitment to treating citizens as free and equal requires it to offer fair-minded illiberal citizens like Qutb deep reasons – that don’t presuppose agreement on liberal principles of justice and so can speak to them in the dialectical position they start from – for why they should accept the liberal laws with which the state coerces them to comply. By showing how political liberals’ own commitments oblige them to address even ‘unreasonable’ political perspectives, I open the door to their more robust engagement with their critics, including not only comparative political theorists but also the growing number of illiberal citizens who challenge democratic regimes.

Hegel, Haiti, and the Anti-dialectic

This work, using the case study of the Haitian Revolution, positions Paul C. Mocombe’s theory of antidialectic within Hegel’s dialectical reasoning. Mocombe posits that the antidialectical position in Hegel’s dialectic is the position of each selfconsciousness when they initially encounter each other at the onset of the master/slave dialectic. Whereas, the master seeks to move to the dialectical position in order to dominate and eliminate the original (antidialectical) position of the slave, the slave remains in this antidialectical position so long as they accept death and seek to fight against their enslavement for the purpose of maintaining and reproducing their original, antidialectical, position, which is social, political, economic, and ideological. In any other instances, they (the slaves) are either in the dialectical, seeking to maintain the status quo, or negative dialectical, seeking to integrate the status quo on equal footing with the master, positions.

Reframing violence in Corsica : cinema as mask and mirror

Corsican historical and endemical violence takes many forms (armed fight for Independence, ‘terrorist’ attacks, bombings, delinquency…) and this violence has often been overexploited by media and political discourses. What viewpoints might filmmakers in Corsica have of this violence? Is their filmic output reflective of the situation, offering original mise-en-scene to mirror and engage with the socio-historical context? Should Corsican cinema, on the contrary, take some distance to reconstitute the framework of a stereotyped, decontextualised violence, at the risk of dismissing historical reality? A new generation of filmmakers is at odds with the touristic, exotic, and truncated exploitation of the image of a sunny yet explosive island, a strange and foreign Corsica. This paper seeks to question the ethical dilemma these filmmakers are facing and analyse the dialectical position of the screen as mask and mirror. Filmmakers need to delocalise, internalise, decontextualise and reframe this violence in the specific context of Corsica to reveal the unspoken, to highlight silences, to echo clandestine testimonies, to exorcise individual memories and collective trauma.

An outline of future-oriented dialectics: Conceptualising dialectical positions, trajectories and processes in the context of futures research

The paper outlines a dialectical approach to analyse societal tendencies by emphasising future tensions, contradictions and antagonisms. First, the theoretical baseline of the approach is a commitment to the basic tenet of dialectical thinking: a perspective of the world as a process and a becoming. Second, the approach focuses on societal and socio-technical change trajectories and various dynamics in between. Third, it is based on systems and complexity thinking, particularly the idea of a societal system consisting of various parallel and contradictory trajectories. Methodologically, the approach emphasises dialectical thinking in two lenses: positions and processes. Dialectical positionality refers to basic dialectical positions as outcomes of the dynamics between the spatiotemporal trajectories in the societal system. Dialectical processuality refers to the processual nature of future-oriented dialectics, that is, the unravelling of the spatio-temporal processes and trajectories that lead to changes in the societal system. Dialectical processes are divided into two dynamic levels: trajectory and system. The paper presents stylised examples of positions and processes on these two levels.

The Harnessed Lightning, or the Politics of Apocalypse: Hegel, Rosenzweig, Derrida

What could be the common thread linking these three very different thinkers: Hegel, Rosenzweig, and Derrida? In my essay, I will argue that this link is provided by a certain form of political theology which is polemical towards Carl Schmitt’s notion of the katechon or the “restrainer of the apocalypse.” While the political theology which they propose is also based on the idea of the restraint, it takes a different form than the Schmittian postponement of the apocalyptic event. Their alternative notion is attenuation which results in the political and philosophical practice of maintaining a distance between God and the world. Neither simply restraining it, nor simply hastening, this new formula takes a third dialectical position between the katechon and the apocalyptic, which consists in “easing the lightning to the children”: the world as God’s child—weak, fragile, and exposed to the infinite power of creation and destruction—must nonetheless find a way to use the revelatory power of the eschaton for the immanent purposes.

Complexity explained: The dialectical position between theory and practice. Theoretical group analytic concepts and clinical examples

I present below an attempt to understand complexity theory and the dialectical relationship between theory and group analytic practice. These are often concepts difficult to make sense of as they are rarely illuminated with clinical material for the reader or the trainee group analyst to comprehend. After the introduction of the Kantian and Hegelian dialectic and its use to understand group analytic concepts, I move on to the complexity theory and attempt to illustrate its significance with a clinical example from a small group analytic group. Cavafis’s celebrated poem ‘Ithaka’, is used as a metaphor for the utmost importance of the splendid interpersonal and transpersonal journey in group analysis with all its challenges and gains that this brings to the individual and to the group as a whole as the emphasis is on the process (journey) rather the destination (Ithaka).

Institutionalism and Modern Socio-Economic Trends of Social Development

The life cycle is inherent in any system and its individual elements. The period from the formation of a particular socio-economic system to its death (change) is its life cycle. There is an acute need for understanding new phenomena and development challenges, assessing possible threats and risks that may accompany the transformation of socio-economic relations in transitional periods. The purpose of the article is to describe the trends in socio-economic reality that have manifested in recent decades, which allow outlining the expected features of the decades to come. The consistent disclosure of substantiated trends, confirmed by the theoretical conceptual framework and the empirical component, reflects the causal relationship of all spheres of social structure. The integration social function of institutions based on the unity of dialectical positions is revealed, where the economic system serves as an arena for interaction and expression of politics, culture, psychology, ideology and other public spheres. Large-scale evolutionary changes and the emergence of new cultural types occur subject to the transformation of technology and economics. The evolving evolutionary laws of development are mediated by both institutional influence and the systemic nature of the formation of the conditions of socio-economic relations. Institutions of society contribute to the tendencies of preservation and variability of socio-economic development and their further transmission under conditions of dynamics and staging. Determining written and generally accepted rules of behavior in society, institutions reinforce the processes of interaction between economic entities, and form, within the framework of existing informal norms, motives, incentives and rules of the relationship between political, social and economic systems.

English

Most states in Africa, due to their unique history of state formation, do not satisfy the established (western-centric) pre-requisites of statehood. This incongruity results in Africa being framed as a place of fragile states with African agency discounted in the process. The discourse on state fragility is instrumental in insidiously granting legitimacy for western governmental interventions in Africa. Meanwhile, the resulting reception of international aid and security assistance by African governments has produced an increasingly popular claim: African states have lost the autonomy to determine their affairs. An important aim of this paper is to challenge this assumption and re-insert African agency into the discussion by revealing how African state-elites have made strategic appeals to notions of African weakness and state fragility to convince donors to finance their governments and assist in the elimination of rivals for continuing their (sometimes) illiberal rule. Subsequently, speeches, interviews, newspaper articles and donor reports from Uganda will be subject to critical discourse analysis (CDA) to demonstrate this point. On a theoretical plane, studying how African actors’ interactions with discursive structures have granted them room for agency, a dialectical position is taken in understanding the structure-agency debate. Key words: Africa, agency, fragile states, discourses, Uganda.

The Match of ‘Ideals’: The Historical Necessity of the Interconnection between Mathematics and Physical Sciences

ABSTRACT The problem of ‘applicability’ of mathematics to modern physical sciences has been labeled as an ‘unreasonably effective’ and unexplainable ‘miracle’ by prominent physicists such as Eugene Wigner and Paul Dirac. Philosophers of science from contending traditions have also contributed to the debates at large. While some have tried to trivialize the problem, others, in particular those with a phenomenological orientation, have attempted to eliminate this riddle, claiming that the two domains are ‘identical’. This paper, while challenging some of these interpretations, proposes a solution from a dialectical materialist position. Drawing on Evald Ilyenkov’s concept of the ‘ideal’ as the objectivized form of human activity in social nature, it is suggested that the two realms are necessarily interconnected as schemata of human activity which aim for a highly quantified conceptualization of reality.

SUICIDE PREVENTION EDUCATION WITHIN YOUTH WORK HIGHER EDUCATION

Child and youth care practitioners are likely to encounter issues of suicidality. Practitioners play an important role in the well-being of youth; thus, mental health literacy, and suicide prevention education in particular, should be an integral part of child and youth care pedagogy and curricular practices in higher education programs. With the aim of explicating a social process of learning and applying mental health literacy, this grounded theory study examined how a curriculum specifically designed for child and youth care practitioners is subsequently applied in suicide or mental health interventions. Thirteen students enrolled in youth work courses at a large university in Eastern Canada participated in the 18-month study in 2015 and 2016. Informed by critical and social literacy theories, conceptualizations of mental health literacy, and experiential pedagogy within higher education, analysis of the data identified a process of becoming and being in youth work comprising two subcategories: struggling to become a youth worker, and being a youth worker. Conditions, such as particular pedagogical strategies and specific content, served to shape and influence the process and, consequently, participants’ movement therein. The inclusion of a suicide intervention learning activity was a condition that influenced participants’ learning processes, yet also reflected a struggle with the dialectical position of presence and procedure. Recommendations and insights are discussed with the aim of enhancing pedagogical approaches to suicide intervention within child and youth care higher education programs.

Galperin revisitado desde el pensamiento complejo

El presente ensayo analiza los aportes de la teoría de Galperin que nos hablde las posturas y visiones dialécticas complejas presentes en su obra que pueden ser sistematizads atendiendo a las exigencias actuales de la construcción del conocimiento propuestas por el enfoque de la complejidad. Entre esos aportes: la observación minuciosa de lo que ocurre en la zona de desarrollo próximo; el papel de la regulación del habla interna; la diferenciación entre las características psicológicas primarias y secundarias; la interpretación de la autonomía como característica secundaria; entre otras de interés para una integración compleja de los conocimientos

Debate académico de puertas abiertas como herramienta para estimular el pensamiento crítico y la orientación científica: una experiencia piloto

This paper aims to present a pilot experience conducted during the spring of 2018 in the Jardí Botànic (Botanic Garden) of the Universitat de València. The experience brought about 24 students from the degrees of Sociology, Primary School Education and Psychology in the same university (6 students from each degree), and 6 students from different academic backgrounds, including Master´s Degree students and one PhD student. The main goal of the pilot study is to analyze the perception and effectiveness of an academic debate seminar made outdoors and including students from different academic backgrounds. It was organized in three sessions of three hours each, with a pre-established distribution of roles between moderators and participants was pre-established. Clear rules of the functioning were also set up. The debate was structured in different parts, the duration of which had been previously established, as well as the time allocated to each intervention. Mutual trust and respect were also promoted and different dialectical positions and arguments were encouraged. At the end the students assessed the experience and had the opportunity to explain the extent to which the experience was fruitful in an individual essay, highlighting especially two positive aspects: the outdoor environment and the possibility to interact with students of other careers.

Traditional Internalism and Foundational Justification

Several arguments attempt to show that if traditional, acquaintance-based epistemic internalism is true, we cannot have foundational justification for believing falsehoods. I examine some of those arguments and find them wanting. Nevertheless, an infallibilist position about foundational justification is highly plausible: prima facie, much more plausible than moderate foundationalism. I conclude with some remarks about the dialectical position we infallibilists find ourselves in with respect to arguing for our preferred view and some considerations regarding how infallibilists should develop their account of infallible foundational justification. In particular, I provide an account of how propositions that moderate foundationalists claim are foundationally justified derive their epistemic support from infallibly known propositions. This is possible when a foundational proposition is coarsely-grained enough to correspond to determinable properties exemplified in experience or determinate properties that a subject insufficiently attends to; one may have inferential justification derived from such a basis when a more finely-grained proposition includes in its content one of the ways that the foundational proposition could be true.