Unnecessary Confusions (part2) Use and abuse of the Hegelian Dialectic, from 1) disinformation, to 2) proper use, to 3) specific application in medicine, vaccination, immunology
(1) What it isn’t, (2) what it is and (3) how it apply it to medical conundrums, such as vaccination and immunity
If you’ve got the original source for the memes and quotes that I question below, please reply to the newsletter email or add in the comments below; otherwise I’ve got to call this as I see it.
The Hegelian Dialectic is a useful philosophical-psychological tool for discovering options and reconciling differences, but —for some reason (eg, ignorance) or reasons (eg, trying to keep people confused and ignorant)— it is horribly misrepresented in the memesphere of the popular internet.
Ironically, such horrible misuse and misrepresentation of the Hegelian Dialectic by people presumably trying to inform the public (woke?) is distracting them from the true meaning and use of this tool, thereby ironically or intentionally misdirecting people away from a better understanding of the concept.
Over the past few years, I became interested in this topic because I saw so many memes that claimed to represent Hegel’s idea but were completely off the mark, such as the ones sampled below.
Gallery of Errors and Misrepresentations of the Hegelian Dialectic
SOURCE1: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
INACCURATE QUOTE FROM THE INTERNET (similar to the memes above) states: “…the framework for guiding thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead to a predetermined solution. This is accomplished by manipulating consciousness into a circular pattern of thought and action. The synthetic solution to these conflicts can’t be introduced unless those being manipulated take a side that will advance the predetermined agenda.” — George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Hegelian Dialectic
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2010 Edition makes no mention of such a quote or any of these ideas: https://plato.stanford.edu/archIves/spr2010/entries/hegel/
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Hegel’s Dialectics First published Fri Jun 3, 2016; substantive revision Fri Oct 2, 2020 likewise provides no support for the quote above: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-dialectics/
All of the above “Errors and Misrepresentations of the Hegelian Dialectic” are easily debunked and deflated by a simple reading from a legitimate philosophy textbook, as I have cited below from my personal library—Philosophy: History and Readings 8th (Eighth) Edition.
Pro tip from DrV: When in doubt about any idea in any topic, consult an authoritative source (or 2 or 3…). When you see a bunch of stuff on the internet, before you accept and internalize it, make sure it is accurate.
SOURCE2: As you can see from the sample pages below from Philosophy: History and Readings 8th (Eighth) Edition, the 3 parts of the Hegelian dialectic are very clear and are not represented in the torrent of memes available on the internet.
SOURCE3: Oxford Handbook of Hegel
Oxford Handbook of Hegel appears to make no mention of the quote above, nor even have any section dedicated to politics: https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/28104
SOURCE4: Hutchings, K. (2014) in The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, 1–12
A chapter dedicated to Hegel in The Encyclopedia of Political Thought makes zero mention of any direct political application of the Hegelian Dialect and does not support the apparently inaccurate quote above.
SOURCE5: I’ve seen the claim that the political interpretation of Hegel (represented in the inaccurate quote and memes above) are derived from Marx and Engels, making the quote and interpretation even less reliable, given that Marx-Engels couldn’t even figure out their own philosophy, let alone anyone else’s.
One website1 tries to provide a (pseudo?)Christian interpretation* of the supposed Marxist reinterpretation** of the posthumous re-interpretation of Hegel*** through a post-Nazi and post-WW2 lens.**** …um…yeah… that’s probably not going to work out very well.
That’s ****FOUR***** layers of interpretation away from the author’s original work.
This video below again claims to frame the Hegelian dialectic in an application to social problems and politics, but actually makes no cited mention of Hegel.
“They want you confused about everything so that you’ll be unable to participate effectively in your life and in your society.” DrV
![VIDEO [spontaneous 88minutes] What is the target-goal of the Global Conspiracy of Orchestrated Economic Collapse, Forced Isolation, Constant Disorientation, UPF, and Forced Medicalization?](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1300,h_650,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-video.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fvideo_upload%2Fpost%2F139623906%2F5c49c065-56fa-46a3-8add-9352ec5f41e5%2Ftranscoded-262571.png)
https://christianobserver.net/what-is-the-hegelian-dialectic/