Reading :: Dialectics as Mode of Thought and Method in History

Dialectics as Mode of Thought and Method in History

by Manolis Dafermos

I read this book on the history of dialectics a few months ago, but have been dragging my feet in reviewing it because it’s such a massive undertaking. This review, unfortunately, won’t do justice to the book, which is lengthy (over 400pp) and covers dialectics from the ancients (Chinese, Indian, Greek) to the present. As someone who feels like he is perpetually catching up to this term and the concept(s) it expresses, I found it to be immensely valuable.

Dafermos begins in this way: “One of the most striking paradoxes of our time lies in the simultaneous intensification of the contradictions inherent in the world capitalist system and the widespread rejection of the very mode of thought best equipped to comprehend them: dialectics” (p.1). Alas, he says, dialectics has become misunderstood: “Over time, the dialectical mode of thought has been neglected, discredited or distorted” (p.2), noting two strands of objections to dialectics: Popper’s complaint that dialectics is too vague, and poststructuralist objections to “the core assumptions of dialectical reasoning” (p.2). 

Dafermos says that “These objections require careful and critical engagement. They reveal both the widespread misunderstanding surrounding dialectics and the broader intellectual climate that has contributed to its marginalisation” (p.2). The misunderstanding, he says, comes from both political motives and dialectics’ “complexity that is fundamentally at odds with the dominant culture of intellectual production—increasingly shaped by managerial logics [and] academic commodification” (p.2). To be honest, this argument does not sound like the “careful and critical engagement” that Dafermos promised: it seems dismissive to claim that people object to dialectics because they are either politically averse to it or they can’t think complexly enough. But based on other recent works on dialectics, I was not surprised by this line of argument.

Dafermos adds:

This book pursues three closely interrelated objectives:

1. To explore dialectics as an advanced mode of thought and dynamic method, with particular emphasis on its historicity—its emergence, formation, and continuous transformation across diverse intellectual traditions and historical epochs.

2. To trace the major milestones in the historical trajectory of dialectics, from its early formulations in antiquity to its diverse and evolving modern manifestations.

3. To advocate for the renewed relevance and further development of dialectics, especially in light of the complex and interrelated challenges facing science and society at the current critical juncture. (pp.3-4)

And he cautions: “Far from being a static framework, dialectics constitutes an advanced mode of thought that develops within the broader historical trajectories of philosophy and science. It does not emerge in isolation but is constantly redefined and developed in response to intellectual and social challenges, particularly in addressing complex, real-world problems.” Thus “this book traces the development of dialectics as it unfolds within the broader currents of social history” (p.5). 

Chapter 2 provides a conceptual outline of dialectics, emphasizing that “Dialectics is fundamentally distinguished by its emphasis on the relational and dynamic nature of reality” (p.13). “Beyond merely acknowledging the dynamic nature of reality, dialectical thinking positions contradiction as the driving force of change and development” (p.14). He overviews ontological and epistemological approaches to dialectics as well as characterizing dialectics as “an inherently reflective and self-reflective mode of thinking that takes thought itself as its object,” referencing Hegel here (p.15). “From a dialectical perspective, logic is not conceived as a fixed, ahistorical system of rules, but rather as a theoretical generalisation of the development of human thought and social practice in history” (p.16). And “Dialectics as a method is oriented toward processes of inquiry and knowledge generation intrinsically linked to the particular object of study, rather than applying external, formalised procedures” (p.17). He argues that “A fuller understanding of dialectics emerges only when we situate it within its broader historical trajectory—a mode of thought deeply entwined with humanity’s intellectual and social development” and “Consequently, any rigorous engagement with dialectics must itself be dialectical—responsive to its evolving nature rather than imposing fixed, external set of principles onto diverse fields of inquiry” (p.20). For someone like me, who is trying to figure out dialectics “from the outside,” this claim is mildly discouraging: Dialectics is always changing, and you can only understand it through dialectics itself. 

Dafermos covers the development of dialectics in crushing detail, detail that I won’t get into in this review, which is more like a stone skipping across the surface of a deep lake. What can I say? I can’t cover all of these details, but I’ll give you an overview of the book’s major parts and encourage you to pick it up yourself.

Chapter 3 examines spontaneous dialectic in ancient Chinese and Indian thought, while Chapter 4 turns to spontaneous dialectics in ancient Greece. Chapter 5 examines dialectic across the Middle Ages and Renaissance, while Chapter 6 connects dialectics with metaphysics during the rise of modern science. Chapter 7 gets to dialectics in German philosophy (Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Feuerbach). 

In Chapter 8, we finally get to “the pivotal shift from the idealist dialectics of classical German philosophy, notably Hegel’s, to the materialist dialectics developed by Karl Marx” (p.213), especially examining historical vs. systematic dialectics. This lengthy chapter covers the basics of Marx’s theory as well as noting “two core methodological problems —the ascent from the abstract to the concrete and the relationship between the logical and the historical” (p.254).

Chapter 9 covers rejections of dialectic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as articulated by “three major philosophical movements [that] gained prominence: positivism, neo-Kantianism, and Nietzschean philosophy” (p.259). Dafermos ties these rejections to social and political changes during this time. 

In Chapter 10, Dafermos “examines the complex and multifaceted relationship between dialectics and social transformation, with a particular focus on the intense philosophical debates that unfolded in the Soviet Union. It explores the intellectual struggle between two competing schools of thought—the Mechanists and the Deborinites—who sought to define the essence and scope of dialectics, as well as its relationship to both the natural and social sciences. ” (p.277). Among other things, he discusses Stalin’s “dogmatization of dialectics” (p.288) and argues that this dogmatization should not distract us from “the richness and diversity of intellectual currents within the Soviet Union” (p.290), covering Ilyenkov and Vaziulin in detail. He concludes the chapter at the end of the USSR: 

The collapse of the Soviet Union also catalysed a profound intellectual shift that led to the widespread rejection and marginalisation of dialectics in academic and intellectual circles. Publicly associated with the Soviet Union, dialectics was increasingly dismissed as outdated or ideologically compromised. This marginalisation is particularly striking given the unique potential of dialectical thought to illuminate the complex, contradictory and non-linear character of historical processes. (p.303)

Chapter 11 is intriguingly titled “The Adventures of Dialectics in Western Marxism,” examining Lukacs, Korsch, Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, and Althusser. Chapter 12 “offers a comprehensive examination of the complex relationship between the analytic tradition and Hegelian dialectics” (p.341). Chapter 13 gets to the postmodernist tradition “through a rigorous analysis of seminal works by Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Foucault,” arguing that “despite their repeated efforts to dismantle dialectical thinking, postmodern theorists frequently remain entangled in the very conceptual terrain they seek to deconstruct” (p.359). 

Chapter 14 “examines the revival of dialectics in the intellectual landscape of the post-Cold War era, presenting it as a challenge to Francis Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ thesis” (p.380). Here, he argues that “At this pivotal juncture in human history, the necessity of dialectics becomes undeniable” because “Despite the efforts of certain intellectual traditions—most notably poststructuralism and postmodernism—to deconstruct or dismiss it, dialectics endures as a sophisticated mode of thought and a dynamic method of inquiry” (p.383). This final chapter has a triumphal tone, arguing that the current challenges faced by the world are problems that dialectics is meant to handle.

What did I think of this book? 

On one hand, it covers a huge sweep of history and examines the development of dialectics in great detail. Dafermos understands dialectics as it unfolds and develops across different time periods and intellectual milieux, and he presents it as a relatively coherent line of thought that sometimes branches or develops along separate tracks, but ultimately constitutes a unified field. I’m deeply impressed by his breadth of inquiry and the sheer number of sources he covers.

On the other hand, this book feels like one of those dense theological texts that assure other true believers of how systematic and rational their religion is. Since dialectics is presented as “fundamentally distinguished by its emphasis on the relational and dynamic nature of reality” (p.13) and since “any rigorous engagement with dialectics must itself be dialectical—responsive to its evolving nature rather than imposing fixed, external set of principles onto diverse fields of inquiry” (p.20), dialectics ends up being a very slippery term, and one begins to suspect that it can only be applied with precision by the theologians, er, theorists who have studied it for decades. At points, I thought about challenges brought to dialectics by other lines of inquiry that also emphasize the relational and dynamic nature of reality and that also refuse to impose fixed, eternal set[s] of principles — dialogism and actor-network theory come to mind — only to wonder whether Dafermos would simply argue that they are dialectical deep down. I’ve noticed this in other texts defending dialectics as well: They tend to portray other frameworks as either secretly based on fixed, eternal principles or as being based in dialectics without recognizing the fact. I don’t find this broad dividing line to be especially useful or convincing.

Nevertheless, I found this book very useful for understanding dialectics from the perspective of its advocates. Dafermos’ understanding of it is deep and broad, and it really helped me to think through the framework in its many historical manifestations. If dialectics intrigues you as well, definitely pick up this book. 

Reading :: Mind as an External Sign

 Mind as an External Sign: A Semiotic Externalist Philosophy of Cognitive Science

by Pedro Atã and João Queiroz

I just reviewed Early Body Ornaments and the Origins of Our Semiotic Mind by Antonis Iliopoulos. Like that book, this one attempts to synthesize Peirce’s semiotic system with cognition — in this case, distributed cognition rather than MET. 

Ata & Quieroz begin by discussing the semiotic turn in distributed cognition, stating that “Mind is sign action—an emergent process of cognitive niche construction” and arguing for “a semiotic turn in distributed cognition [because t]he central problems of externalist cognitive science should be examined from the perspective of sign action” (p.1). They add, “A semiotic turn in distributed cognition asks us to understand artifacts, problem-solving tasks, and cognitive niches as semiosis (sign-in-action). The word ‘sign’, here, refers not only to the physical artifacts as such, but to the artifacts as embodiments of sign processes” (p.2). 

To make this argument, in Section I, they describe semiotic emergence, introducing Peirce and describing semiosis as an emergent process, using ballet as an example. 

In Section II, they “describe semiosis as a problem-solving process … by modeling externalist cognition as a triadic interaction between artifacts, problems, and solutions” (p.4), drawing on examples of representing a subway system and of poetry improvisation. 

In Section III, they “describe semiosis as a niche construction process” through “the emergent self-organization of semiosis in situated environments, and how agents participate in this process (authorship, experimentation in arts)” (p.6). The example here is artwork authorship.

The book is a really interesting comparison/contrast with Iliopoulos’. Both books synthesize Peircean semiotics with a materialist framework, and both review cognitivist approaches that connect mind with material environment. Both examine semiotic emergence. On the other hand, whereas Iliopoulos began with the question of body ornaments, Ata and Quieroz begin with the semiotic turn. And whereas Iliopoulos describes scaffolding across different types of signs, Ata and Quieroz describe chains of triads (p.33). And whereas Iliopoulis sticks with the case of early body ornaments, Ata and Quieroz examine a variety of much more contemporary cases. 

Reading these two books in close proximity may be rewarding to those who are interested in this question. Certainly it was helpful to me — the two different starting points led to two different bodies of literature and two different angles on the basic relationship between materiality and sociality. If you’re similarly interested, definitely read this book!

Reading :: Early Body Ornaments and the Origins of Our Semiotic Mind

 Early Body Ornaments and the Origins of Our Semiotic Mind

by Antonis Iliopoulos

I have to confess that I have tried to become interested in semiotics many times, but have failed. Perhaps it’s because semiotic systems quickly seem to get into complex details. Certainly the little I have read about Peirce’s system, with its late-19th-century-sounding terms (semisign, qualisign, legisign, etc.), has left me feeling lost in the details and impatient with the distinctions. 

Antonis Iliopoulis’ latest book has not cured me of that. But what it has done is to demonstrate how Peirce’s system can be used productively to think through how material signs came to be signs, laddering up from materials to meanings. Iliopoulis was a student of Lambros Malafouris’, and he pairs Peirce with Material Engagement Theory (MET) to develop this materialist account, focusing on early body ornaments: perforated shell beads from Blombos Cave, South Africa. The result is more complex and provides a better explanation (I think) than the hoary old distinctions between signifier and signified (Sausseure) or between tool and sign (Vygotsky and Luria), which are too simple to address the question of how materials function as signs. 

Iliopoulis begins in Chapter 1 by discussing the debate about modern human origins. What does it mean when we find evidence of human use of signs, such as a shell that has been perforated so it could be used as a bead? One interpretation is that “our body ornaments are but an invention meant to serve our personal or communal strategies” — and thus those people have “a modern mind,” i.e., a mind that expects and interprets signs (p.2). That is, “ornaments seem to be a good proxy for symbolism because they had been arguably involved in the transmission of information about their wearers” (p.3). This leads us to expect that the first appearance of body ornaments could coincide with the modern mind, and thus language: “our search for ‘the origins’ of material signification leads us to a question that we have yet to address: When did body ornaments first appear?” (p.4). Discoveries keep pushing this threshold back — currently back to 74 thousand years ago (74 kya) (p.6). But this threshold depends on an inference:

The Blombos inference is a tripartite series of inferences, according to which the perforated shells can be used to infer the use (by the cave’s inhabitants) of (1) artifacts, (2) symbols, and (3) syntactical language. (p.7)

Here, (1) shells are inferred to be beads, (2) beads are inferred to be symbols, and (3) symbols are inferred to indicate language use (p.7). He explores each of these inferences in the literature, then notes that “While there are no doubts about the artifactual nature of the shells, the symbolic and linguistic status of the beads has been questioned by an increasing minority of scholars” (p.26), arguing that

addressing the role of early body ornaments in the evolution of the human mind means addressing two main questions currently under debate:

1. How did early body ornaments convey their meanings?

2. And how did these forms and meanings come into being in the first place? (p.26).

Chapter 2 examines theories for describing the nature of past material signs, examining a range of archaeological theories, including MET. He concludes:

I ultimately arrived at the conclusion that prehistoric material signs, such as early body ornaments, will be best described through a detailed version of Peircean semiotics, especially if complemented with Sonesson’s semiotic tools [note: Sonesson extended Peircean semiotics]. Unlike linguocentric approaches, Peirce’s semiotic theory can indeed account for the materiality of material signs because it treats significative meaning as emergent from the interaction of mind and matter (besides just as mental), iconic and indexical (besides just as arbitrary), and constitutive (besides just as referential). (p.55). 

Chapter 3 overviews Peirce’s semiotic theory. I won’t summarize it here, but I’ll note that Iliopoulos classifies ten Peircean signs and relates them hierarchically in a diagram (Figure 3.2), with higher-order signs implicating lower-ordered ones (p.80). It was here that I could begin to see the promise of Iliopoulos’ work, since these relationships create a “ladder” (my term, not his) that moves from materiality to increasing levels of signification. 

Chapter 4 applies this system to body ornaments. The figures in this chapter recapitulate parts of Figure 3.2, using them as a conceptual language for describing propositions such as “signifying their wearer’s wealth” (Figure 4.2, p.98) and “Such beadworks signify their wearer’s ‘status.’” (Figure 4.3, p.100). 

Chapter 5 turns its attention to finding an appropriate theory to trace the emergence of prehistoric material signs. No surprise here, after overviewing nine major accounts, he lands on MET and discusses its theoretical compatibility with Peirce. 

Chapter 6 then brings together pragmatic semiotics and enactive cognition, developing a theory of cognitive semiotics that can account for “the scaffolded evolution of material signs” (p.145). Here’s a long quote describing this scaffolding:

it would have been a scaffolding mechanism of this sort that drove the development of material signification during the Paleolithic. It should be reasonable to assume that during the course of human evolution, significative artifacts would have first functioned in the lower-order iconic and indexical levels before ascending to and becoming parts of higher-order symbolic levels. This should not be taken as a deterministic proposition according to which ascending through these levels would have taken place in a linear and step-like manner because signs fall under different kinds, rather than degrees, of complication (Sonesson 2013a, 2013c). Nonetheless, the relations of implication in Peirce’s tenfold typology should give us a broad idea of how rituals, which can be viewed as cultural syllogisms (Argumentative Symbolic Legisigns—class 10), could have been founded on artifactual sign-vehicles with physical relations and qualities (Dicentic Indexical Sinsigns and Rhematic Iconic Sinsigns—class 4 and 2, respectively). While the links between these significative sorts are best considered to have been bidirectional (in that artifacts support rituals, and rituals dictate the form and use of artifacts), it should be reasonable to maintain that the similarity and contiguity/factorality between things would have been perceived and conceived as significative before the development of purely arbitrary concepts and cultural practices. If this was indeed the case, then the development of iconic and indexical signs would have scaffolded the formation of symbolic narratives. (p.147)

Chapter 7 applies this theory to body ornaments, describing how shells obtained through trade could have been perceived as valuable, then in being worn, transfer the quality of perceived value to the wearer. In the process, he argues, “it is early humans’ engagement with new kinds of material signs, such as ornaments, that would have catalyzed the development of personal identity and self-awareness” (p.175). 

Chapter 8 concludes with a summary and implications.

I’m not an archaeologist, so I am not able to evaluate the book as an archaeologist would. But as someone familiar with MET and affiliated theoretical approaches (Vygotskian mediation, distributed and situated cognition, extended cognition, etc.), I found it to be a carefully constructed and tightly reasoned read. The scaffolding of signification makes sense to me from a material perspective and — although I confess I still check out when reading about the 10 different Peircean signs — I can follow how this scaffolding could move us from materials to signs. From my perspective, the book is important, and well worth reading for anyone who is interested in questions of materiality and meaning. If that’s you, definitely pick it up. 

Reading :: Connecting Practice

 Connecting Practices

by Elizabeth Shove

A European collaborator suggested this book, which details “the movement of concepts and commodities,” and characterizes “processes of mutual adaptation and adjustment” by investigating “what a container ship reveals about processes of globalization, standardization and circulation” (p.1). As a practice theorist, Shove takes “social practices as primary units of conceptualisation and investigation” (p.2). Although practice theorists “tend to work with relatively bounded cases and examples” (p.2), some have examined “evidently large social phenomena,” and this book is one example (p.3). 

Shove has three reasons for writing the book. First, “it is impossible to understand significant social problems without understanding how patterns of relatedness take hold across the entire plenum of practice” (p.3). Second, she wants to demonstrate that “this book is first and foremost about how practices connect and how different types of connectivity evolve.” Third, she wants “to help embed practice theoretically compatible ways of thinking across the social sciences” (p.3). To get to these ambitions, she looks to Schatzki’s catalogue of events and processes that generate and fracture connections (pp.4-5), focusing on some of these: infusing, circulation, merging & emerging, cross-referencing, interweaving, accumulation, and division (p.5). 

Chapter 3 focuses on circulating, examining how shipping containers facilitate circulating goods around the world. She argues that “theories of practice are important not because they add detail and colour to generic explanations but because they conceptualise trade and economic life in significantly different terms” (p.27). 

Chapter 4 focuses on merging and emerging: “how previously established conventions and interpretations merge and change as practices take hold in different settings” (p.43). Of interest to me is her overview of Mazmanian’s and Duchenaut and Bellotti’s work on email: 

Rather than treating email as an innovation that arrives and that is or is not taken up, these analyses view the changing place of email as something that reflects and that is market by a series of related transformation in the spatial and temporal boundaries of the working environment, and in the.nature of office work itself. The notion of hybridisation, and of emailing as an always changing blend of practices such as writing, communicating, organizing and managing, captures this aspect but does not, in itself, account for the scale of the phenomenon. (p.47)

I appreciated this discussion, but throughout this chapter and the book, I wanted more concrete examples and arguments. It may be that this ground is well-traveled, but Shove tends to skim above it. 

Skipping to Chapter 6, Shove focuses on interweaving: “the ways in which material threads are woven through the plenum of practice” (p.73). She follows Ingold’s relational approach to (1) “recognize that the stats of any one material/object is not fixed” (p.73); (2) “distinguish between material connections as these develop over time … and synchronous forms of interaction” (p.74); and (3) “identify what seem to be repeating patterns in the material fabric of society, including those associated with the amplification of consumption and demand” (p.74). 

Skipping again to Chapter 8, Shove focuses on dividing, arguing that “practice theory provides a novel and revealing account of inequalities as outcomes of differentiated and extended textures of advantage arising from forms of connectivity of the kind I have described” (p.108). 

Overall, I liked this book. It taught me a lot about practice theory, and I appreciated how Shove scaled it up to address global flows. At the same time, I did definitely feel like someone from the outside looking in, trying to get below the surface to understand the details. I think I could understand the points much better if I were to read the sources that Shove centers throughout her chapters. Still, I recommend the book for practice theorists as well as others who are interested in sociomateriality or sociotechnical questions.