Dialectical Reading Research Articles

The Megaric Possibility Paradox

Abstract In Metaphysics Theta 3 Aristotle attributes to the Megarics and unknown others a notorious modal thesis: (M) something can φ only if it is φ-ing. Aristotle does not tell us what motivated (M). Almost all scholars take Aristotle’s report to indicate that the Megarics defended (M) as a highly counterintuitive doctrine in modal metaphysics. But this reading faces several problems. First: what would motivate the Megarics to hold such a counterintuitive view? The existing literature tries, in various ways, to motivate (M) in a way neither trivial nor absurd. But, as we will argue, the main approaches end up attributing an unsustainable position to the Megarics. Second: most historical evidence for the Megaric lineage presents the group’s philosophical practice as dialectical or negative. So why think that the claim reported in Theta 3 presents a positive, and highly controversial, metaphysical claim? This paper addresses these problems by proposing a dialectical (or negative) reading of the Megarics in Theta 3. By ‘dialectical’ we here mean a mode of philosophizing that neither seeks to establish the truth or falsity of certain theses, nor takes a skeptical stance. There are different reasons why a philosopher might want to take up such a mode; in the case of the Megarics we argue that they might have wanted to put pressure on Aristotle’s idea of possibility and the ‘test’ for possibility that Aristotle mentions in several works. Reading, as we do, (M) as (part of) a paradox about possibility and actuality, we argue that the Megarics’ dialectical approach here aims to highlight a shortcoming of an intuitive conception of possibility, which underpins Aristotle’s idea of possibility and which features in his test for possibility.

Why Professor Habermas Would Fail a Class on Dialectic of Enlightenment

Would Habermas’s “The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment” pass muster as coursework in a class on Dialectic of Enlightenment? Using this polemical thought experiment setup as an estrangement device, I critically discuss Habermas’s essay that was pivotal in his repositioning of Critical Theory in the 1980s. I argue that it is philosophically and biographically unreflective; and that he is engaging in underhanded politicking. I sketch an alternative reading of Dialectic of Enlightenment: instead of viewing it as the dead end that Habermas presents it to be, we can see as a self-therapeutical exercise in destabilizing a complacent self-conception whereby modernity is the pinnacle of moral progress—an exercise which might have a certain exemplarity for others in the ongoing quest of making use of our own understanding. The contribution is rounded off with a postscript by a second assessor of Habermas’s essay, discussing both the proposed assessment and the polemical thought experiment.

Prometheus in the Guise of Pessimism: The Tinder of Hope that Thomas Hardy Brought to his Audience at the End of the 19th Century

This paper is devoted to the substantive significance of Hardy's pessimism, mainly based on Thomas Hardy's poems and novels written in the late 19th century. Although pessimism has been recognized as an essential feature of Thomas Hardy's literary career as a novelist and poet, he refuses to admit to being a pessimist, instead enabling the use of pessimism as the first step in exploring reality and improving the soul and body of human beings. Through a dialectical reading of Hardy's works, this paper will further analyze the specific audience groups targeted by Hardy's pessimism and the extraordinary positive impact it brought to this group at the turn of the century and during the period of social change; compare it with the literature of other culture to deconstruct the contradictions of this pessimism and extract its unique value. In addition, this paper will introduce Hardy’s precise prediction of the future movement, which can demonstrate the unique value of literature compared to political and quasi-scientific discourse.

The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant's Dialectic by Ian Proops (review)

The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant's Dialectic by Ian Proops (review)

Polanyi in rural China: beyond the double movement

ABSTRACT This article clarifies the use of Polanyian theory to interrogate rural China’s historical trajectory. It critiques the use of Polanyi’s double movement concept to analyse state-socialist periods arguing that because the double movement concept was explicitly created to interrogate capitalist systems, in which land and labour were marketized, it cannot be transposed onto state-socialist periods. This article further argues that as the double movement necessarily entails the possibility of transcending a capitalist system to socialism, the double movement’s explanatory power is further undermined when used within a state-socialist context. This includes the context of Maoist China which this article explores. This article suggests using the vocabulary Polanyi employs when discussing Soviet Russia to interrogate the Maoist period. However, it supports the use of Polanyi’s double movement concept to interrogate post-1984 China as this period demonstrates increasing market penetration of society. The article further argues that when using the double movement to interrogate any system with significant market penetration scholars ought recognise the double movement’s dialectical process. This dialectical reading suggests the double movement is destructive to society and its internal contradiction creates progressive and regressive possibilities. This article explores the Chinese New Rural Reconstruction Movement as a potential progressive possibility.

Inter-imperiality: Vying Empires, Gendered Labor, and the Literary Arts of Alliance

Inter-imperiality: Vying Empires, Gendered Labor, and the Literary Arts of Alliance

The Humility of the Eternal Son: Reformed Kenoticism and the Repair of Chalcedon by Bruce Lindley McCormack, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2021, pp. xi + 316, £29.99, hbk

The Humility of the Eternal Son: Reformed Kenoticism and the Repair of Chalcedon by Bruce Lindley McCormack, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2021, pp. xi + 316, £29.99, hbk

Bridging the Conversational Chasm: White Antiracist Confrontations in Personal Spaces

AbstractIn this essay Sandra Vanderbilt explores philosophies of peace and protest through a dialectical reading of the works of Martin Luther King Jr., Daisaku Ikeda, and Paulo Freire, and considers these philosophies in relation to her own activism, specifically in the context of dealing with White postracial myths and more overt acts of racism. This essay outlines what she learned from her dialectical reading across several works by King, Ikeda, and Freire, and how these philosophies of peace and protest informed the ways in which she has been able to initiate and sustain conversations across the chasm that separates her antiracist positioning from the stance of friends and family members who deny and enact racism and White supremacy. The three theorists Vanderbilt focuses on here all point to ongoing engagement among individuals as necessary to sustaining the collective. Drawing on their work, Vanderbilt suggests that we have to begin with a critical understanding of Whiteness in our efforts to engage someone, in radically loving acts, in confrontation with their own words and behavior. Opportunities for this sort of confrontation have the potential to bridge the conversational chasm and to open discussions wherein one can practice the virtue of justice, and importantly racial justice.

Interstitial Precarity: The Romance and Tragedy of the Transnational Child Welfare System

AbstractThis article examines a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Chicago's Mexican Consulate and the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS), which obliges DCFS to provide prompt consular notification after assuming protective custody of a Mexican or Mexican American minor. Developed in 2001, this bilateral agreement also enables consular officials to gain access to child welfare cases involving their minor nationals and requires DCFS to consider placing such minors with their deported or noncustodial parents in Mexico, whenever possible. Drawing on ethnographic research collected in Chicago and Mexico from 2016 to 2019, I explore the possibilities created through the MOU, which not only opens up new opportunities for transnational family reunification in Mexico but also enables Mexican institutions to challenge DCFS's expertise. And yet, the MOU also produces what I call “interstitial precarity” for the minors it tries to help. This is a lack of belonging, stability, and recognition that results not from the denial of one's citizenship but from falling between the cracks of multiple, discordant bureaucratic systems. Accordingly, this article evaluates the MOU's potential to expand the family‐making options available to mixed‐status families through a dialectical reading of its romantic and tragic effects. [child welfare, reunification, transnational, immigration, precarity]

Thought and reality in Marx's early writings on ancient philosophy

AbstractThere is little agreement about Marx's aims, or even his basic claims, in his Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy and Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. Marx has been read as an idealist, or as a materialist; as praising Epicurus, or as criticizing him. Some have read Marx as using ancient philosophers as proxies in a contemporary debate, without demonstrating how he does so in detail. I show that Marx's dialectical reading of Epicurus's atomism aims at transcending the dichotomy between idealism and materialism; that on Marx's reading Epicurus deserves praise for thinking through atomism to its “highest” conclusion, but criticism for not embracing this conclusion; and that Marx's intervention in contemporary debates takes the form of revealing a dialectical relationship between “liberal” and “positive” philosophers. I conclude that the importance of these texts is to be located in their original stance on the problematic of the relation of thought to reality, common to what Marx finds in ancient philosophy and in his contemporary environment.

A Hegelian Dialectic Reading of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray has been the subject of analysis from a wide variety of theoretical and thematic perspectives. This study endeavours to conduct a philosophical interpretation of the renowned Wildean work of fiction. In specific, the article aims to carry out a dialectic reading of The Picture of Dorian Gray by concentrating on the protagonist and the path he takes throughout the narrative. To this end, the novel is discussed through the framework of GWF. Hegel’s dialectic triad of the thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The theoretical section of the study focuses on the Hegelian dialectic system and scrutinises the three stages with references to various texts and sources. The second part of the study contemplates to establish a dialectic reading of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, identifying these three stages within the story and exposing the vital dialectic choices the protagonist makes along his quest to preserve youth and beauty forever. The article concludes that Dorian Gray exposes the dialectic nature of human beings and highlights the significance of making the right choices through a rational and moral state of mind. In particular, it has been concluded that Dorian experiences the thesis and the antithesis but ultimately gets caught up in the antithesis and does not manage to achieve the synthesis stage, causing his early self-destruction.

Taft-Hartley and the Contradictions of Republican Anti-unionism

Taft-Hartley and the Contradictions of Republican Anti-unionism

Self-reflexivity and the Representation of The Indian Diasporic Community in Deepa Mehta’s Bollywood/Hollywood

This paper discusses Deepa Mehta’s lighthearted romantic comedy Bollywood/Hollywood as a representation of the Indian diasporic community settled in Canada. What makes this film especially interesting is that it focuses on how, for overseas Indians, Bollywood offers the possibility of accessing the home culture in a globalised world. Bollywood as an industry is synonymous with the genre of family melodrama, and when Mehta uses this term it represents, not just the Bombay Film Industry, but also the cultural iconicity of the genre, which in turn represents the film sensibility of the entire ‘mass’ of Indians located within the country and in the diaspora. At one level, the film is a lighthearted comic portrayal of the Indo-Canadian community in Toronto and its strong connection with “our magnificent Indian culture” (B/H) through the Hindi movies churned out by Bollywood. At a closer look at a number of scenes, light is cast on the way Deepa Mehta emphasizes the cultural divides through interesting narrative and visual constructions. The actual argument of the film emerges in a dialectical reading and recognition of the oppositional forces operating within and without the narrative world. What is particularly striking about this film is its self-reflexivity. It announces itself as a Bollywood melodrama and celebrates this identity. Bollywood is thus positioned as both a subject and an object of contemplation—a world of Cinema that is a part of our memory and a vehicle of history. The critique of the formula also comes from within the formulaic narrative itself. Deepa Mehta constantly uses the genre and also plays around with it in interesting ways

Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Works: A Dialectical Reading by Matthew Meyer

Reviewed by: Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Works: A Dialectical Reading by Matthew Meyer Dale A. Wilkerson MEYER, Matthew. Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Works: A Dialectical Reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. xi + 286 pp. Cloth, $99.00 Ever since Georg Brandes’ 1888 lectures on Nietzsche in Copenhagen, the problem of navigating the meandering course of Nietzsche’s full body of work has perplexed students and commentators alike. Regarding questions concerning the best hermeneutic approach to understanding the whole of Nietzsche’s output, Matthew Meyer offers a novel solution: Readers should begin with the five “free spirit works” of the middle period (1878–1884) and interpret them as a “consciously constructed dialectical Bildungsroman” that ventures out from the rudiments of Nietzsche’s most famous early publication, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), and finds its way back to them in the texts of his final period (1885–1888). As a “consciously constructed dialectical Bildungsroman” (this exact phrase is found no less than ten times in the first two chapters of Meyer’s study), the free spirit is tasked with choosing “between truth-seeking and science, on the one hand, and art and life-affirmation on the other.” In the end, according to Meyer, science and truth-seeking asceticism yield to tragedy and the parodic intentions of Nietzsche’s last works. Although unconventional, Meyer’s thesis is supported by careful readings of the relevant texts, clear and concise writing, and a straightforward architectonic structure. The analysis is divided into three main parts, preceded by a lengthy introduction that attempts to clarify “what it means for the free spirit works to be (1) best understood as a (2) consciously constructed (3) dialectical (4) Bildungsroman.” As a Bildungsroman, Meyer intends only to claim that the works form a “narrative of self-education.” As a “dialectical” narrative, Meyer draws comparisons to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment in order to elaborate the nature of the free spirit’s “self-overcoming.” (Meyer seems to prefer Nietzsche’s rare use of the German, [End Page 634] Selbstaufhebung, over his more frequent references to Selbstüberwindung, no doubt in order to lend rhetorical aid to the “dialectical” reading.) Although Meyer admits that there is no direct evidence supporting his claim that a dialectical Bildungsroman was consciously constructed by Nietzsche at the outset of the free spirit project, he also notes that no evidence exists to falsify his argument. Most significantly, according to Meyer, it can be shown that the free spirit works are “best understood” in such a manner, and a brief review of other approaches to Nietzsche’s corpus begins to demonstrate as much. In a sense, the study is designed to build out the case for the “best understood” claim. Each of the three main parts of Meyer’s analysis is made distinct with the aid of imagery found in the beginning of “Zarathustra’s Discourses” that tracks the “three metamorphoses of the spirit.” Part 1, “The Ascetic Camel,” argues that Human, All-Too Human’s chapters are arranged in a way that exhibits a “dialectical flow” aiming to tackle the “problem of opposites” in nature with the “will to truth” carried out in “historical philosophy.” The dialectical wheel of this project is propelled by Nietzsche’s intention to “overcome metaphysics” while courageously facing up to the problem of nihilism (or what Meyer calls “factual pessimism”). As the ascetic-camel, Nietzsche shuns art for these purposes because of its metaphysical commitments heretofore. Nevertheless Nietzsche has only brought the truth-seeking project of Human to an imperfect conclusion when he affirms the free spirit’s need to abstain from convictions in the pursuit of knowledge. Meyer argues that Nietzsche then seeks respite from the project’s early contradictions by turning away from the task of overcoming metaphysics and inwardly toward “the closest things.” Thus, Nietzsche’s Assorted Opinions and Aphorisms and The Wanderer seem less committed to the “will to truth” than does Human, favoring instead an Epicurean-inspired philosophy of life. This inward turn, however, only exacerbated the historical problems of metaphysics and nihilism, now understood to be responsible for the evolution of a dysfunctional spirit. Having discovered that mere...

‘The Danes are rich and live in the villas; the others live in the blocks of flats’: on the social and material character of diversity in children’s school life in Denmark

In post-structurally informed research, the answer to the widely documented ‘achievement gap’ among ethnic minorities has been a critique of educational institutions’ monocultural discourse and its exclusionary effects, thus highlighting a contingent, discursive conception of diversity. However, in this empirical article, 10- to 15-year-old students from two ethnically mixed schools in Denmark point to a much more concrete, social and material diversity that is laid out in terms of patterns of residence, leisure activities, and socio-economic resources at home. Over the school years, however, this social and material diversity is gradually transformed to a question of ethnicity that explains why students’ opportunities for educational participation ultimately differ. From a dialectical materialist reading of Hall’s concept of articulation, this article explores how this transformation is made possible in everyday school life, thus arguing that ethnic diversity is more than a contingent, discursive construction; it is closely connected to ingrained patterns of material inequity in educational practice.

Sobre a possibilidade de uma dialética dialógica da filosofia social de Hegel

The present paper intends to deal with the basis of the Hegelian theory of action as a discursive-normative ethics of social relations through some icons of recent critical research of Hegel’s work and whose readings are organized around the idea of historically institutionalized shared social practices. I will rely mainly on the interpretation made by Robert Pippin, investigating the possibility of advancing the thesis he points out to, concerning a dialogical reading of Hegelian dialectic in its connection with Platonic dialectic as interpreted by Gadamer. This will be done in view of the Hegelian structure given by Robert Brandom for the formation of a theoretical apparatus capable of sustaining the thesis that the reflective and practical possibilities of different forms of life come from the social horizons of reciprocal determination of the norms that support them. Based on this, I will demonstrate that the Hegelian social theory has its main support in interactions of a typically dialogical character in an interactive diversity of demands established by means of synchronic and diachronic recognitive clashes, thus opening the way for the emergence of new demands that aim for social recognition and political institutionalization. This community of normative discourses allows the possibility to argue that in Hegel’s thinking one is able to find the structures for a non-relativist perspectivism, whose dialectical opening is founded on this ethics of social practices. This, in turn, leads us back to some critical investigations concerning Platonic dialectic as anti-dogmatic and anti-metaphysical, investigations which establish the pillars of a social dialectic that relies on what can the called a community of logoi.

Kenneth Lonergan’s networked Bildungsromane: Howards End (2017) and Margaret (2011)

ABSTRACT This essay analyses Kenneth Lonergan’s television miniseries Howards End (2017, screenwriter Lonergan, director Hettie McDonald) and the film Margaret (2011, director and screenwriter Lonergan) as coming-of-age narratives in which tragic storylines pivot on the actions of young, middle-class women who insert themselves into the lives of other people. Deploying but departing from Marxist materialist analyses of the Bildungsroman, namely Franco Moretti’s dialectical reading of the modern novel and Francis Mulhern’s argument about the ‘condition of culture’ novel, my reading of Lonergan’s Bildungsromane elucidates the significance of the digitally-networked environment in which these media were produced. While the form of the novel is central to Moretti’s reading of the Bildungsroman as dialectic of transformation and convention, my analysis of Lonergan’s networked Bildungsromane emphasises the role of both mixed-media and connectivity in how female characters are represented. With reference to Sianne Ngai’s aesthetic-categorical reading of the ‘interesting’ as both a curious feeling and a measured evaluation, I focus on the portrayal of ‘interested’ young women in Lonergan’s contemporary screen texts in order to investigate the limits and possibilities of a feminine drive toward resolution for selves and others.

A dialectical reading of Adam Smith on wealth and happiness

In this essay I consider the relationship between wealth and happiness in Adam Smith by a close reading of a famous section of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS IV.i.8-10). I interpret Smith as presenting an open-ended dialectic between the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of happiness with the goal of contributing to his readers’ moral education. Within the dialectic Smith places some important social analysis, which he uses to stimulate reflection and synthesis. Upon reflection and observation of the tensions within the passages and the larger scope of his works, Smith pushes the reader to confront a question: given the knowledge—knowledge that one acquires upon reading TMS IV.i.8-10—that (1) people tend to be deceived into thinking that pursuing and acquiring wealth will make them happy, and that (2) acting on their deception has beneficial unintended consequences, how should one proceed in one's own pursuit of wealth and happiness?

Humans, nature and dialectical materialism

Capitalist relations are the crucial object of social critique due to their innate tendency to accelerate the metabolic rift and alienation, yet, I argue, our focus should stretch beyond capitalist relations. Indeed, both ecocidal and conservationist tendencies have occurred in multiple historical forms of social relations, including socialist societies, for example, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These are phenomena that reiterate the social, rather than purely capitalist relations as the driver of environmental destruction. Metabolic rifts occur due to malfunctioning of the human–human/human–nature relationships and it is the elimination and prevention of that malfunctioning that must be the aim of radical environmental politics and policies, not merely (the necessary) elimination of capitalist relations. This article contributes to the symposium in three complementary ways. First, it critiques the application of dialectical reading of human–nature relations as articulated in the Foster–Moore debate in its own right. Second, it rearticulates that reading through the lens of the dialectical biospheric analytics of late Soviet ecology. And third, it invokes the dialectical thought of Evald Ilyenkov.

Notas sobre a ideia de história natural, ou: sobre o calvário do espírito absoluto

This paper examines Adorno's essay Idee der Naturgeschichte (1932). Its goal is to elucidate his main theses and to delimitate the problem of the philosophy of history from an Adornian perspective. The work is part of the author's academic efforts to map the main phases of Adorno's thinking, present in his doctoral thesis. Adorno's interest in the philosophy of history has intensified, taking almost two decades of reflections, culminating in the publication of Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), a project executed at four hands with Horkheimer. The paper presents then the origins of the concept of natural history, the way in which Adorno criticizes the mystification of the perception of nature operated by the Heideggerian fundamental ontology, the concept of history as nature in Lukács and the concept of nature as history in Benjamin. In addition, it offers an interpretation of the idea of natural history of Adorno from the notion of appearance. The hypothesis that guides this investigation is that, in Adorno’s work, the natural history is thought from a moral theological category, the one of Calvary. Thus Adorno's dialectical reading of the problem of the relation between history and nature leads him to think of natural history itself as the ordeal of the absolute spirit.