GADAMER ON PLATO'S DIALECTIC
This page introduces Gadamer's reading of Hegel on
Plato. It is taken from the essay 'Hegel and the Dialectic of the Ancient
Philosophers' in Gadamer's Hegel's Dialectic (1976).
Gadamer starts by introducing the classical notion
of dialectic:
The ancient philosophers developed a method of
bringing out the consequences of opposed hypotheses, though to be sure, as
Aristotle puts it, they did this without knowledge of the essence or "what"
of the things they were dealing with'. (p. 5)
Gadamer takes us here to a central issue. Greek
philosophy recognized the significance of dealing with opposed hypotheses, or
the notion of contradictions. This single idea has exerted enormous influence on
western philosophy and social thought. Gadamer draws our attention to the fact
that Aristotle realised the dialectical approach ignored the 'thisness' of
objects. Check back through the handout for references to this.
Gadamer then moves to sum up what he sees as Hegel's
approach to the dialectic and in doing so he creates a central argument with
classical philosophy:
Hegel felt the essential methodological rigor was
missing in his contemporaries' use of dialectic, and, indeed, his own
dialectical procedure is utterly peculiar to him. It is an immanent progression
from one logical determination to another which, it is claimed, does not begin
with any hypothetical assumption but rather which, in following the
self-movement of the concepts, presents the immanent consequences of thought in
its progressive unfolding of itself. Here no transitions are determined
externally. If we follow Hegel's own enjoinder, we should eliminate all
introductions, divisions of chapters, titles, and the like from the actual body
of the scientific development, for they serve only an external need. (p.5)
I will comment briefly on this passage and will then
set you some questions. Gadamer is at pains to stress the dialectic does not
start from a pre-ordained place. There is no natural starting point and this is
one of Hegel's contributions. The emphasis is on the
immanent
and the unfolding of
ideas. Gadamer finishes the above point by emphasizing that Hegel eschewed all
forms of externality within the text, i.e. everything that served an external
need. How realistic is this approach for conducting social research?
A little later we learn from Gadamer that Hegel
rejected Aristotelian analysis to return to eleatic and Platonic arguments. This
involved the dialectical scrutiny of all assumptions. Gadamer sees Hegel as
developing the principle of
immanence
to its highest point:
To be sure, Plato's dialectic too - even that of the
Parmenides - is in Hegel's view still not "pure" dialectic
since it proceeds from assumed propositions, which as such have not been derived
from each other according to an internal necessity (p. 7). We can follow this
up by exploring some further ideas on
dialectic.
If you now consider how these ideas on dialectic can
be put together you can see the importance of an immanent approach. Marx was to
reject Hegel's immanence but it was to be Adorno who would develop the contrast
between immanent and transcendent critique. It is at this point that Gadamer
points towards the "overall style of Socratic dialogue" and so
reconnects with out second theme in Gadamer's study of Plato's philosophy:
Gadamer
and style of argument in Plato
The
Plato workplace
Gadamer
on Plato's dialectic
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