Life is a Hegelian Evolutionary Pendulum - Without The Perfect Predictictability of Historical Determinism

Nietzsche once said - and I will paraphrase here, maybe find the exact quote before I publish this essay but basically the idea is this - that the aim of a good writer, correct that, a great writer, is to pack twice the rhetorical punch in half the words that other less advanced writers might flounder around and use...I love reading Niezsche and I could think of no better compliment than to one day before I die, have someone say to me: 'You know what, in some of your writings -- not all of them but some of them -- you did indeed live and breath and bleed the fire and spirit of Nietzsche.'

And I did indeed, find at least one of the quotes that I was looking for, maybe two:

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'Against the censurers of brevity. -- Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novicein this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefy something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.' (Nietzsche, Assorted Opinions and Maxims, pg. 137, 1879; or A Nietzsche Reader, preface, 1977)

Marks of the good writer. -- Good writers have two things in common; they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers. (AOM, pg. 138, 1879; or A Nietzsche Reader, preface, 1977)

Marks of the great writer (DGB modifications): Great writers have two things in common: 1. they prefer first to be understood, then to be admired (I can't believe Nietzsche was trying to tell us that he did not want to be admired, yeah, right!); 2. they write with the brevity, the boldness, the power, the passion, the blood and the spirit of Nietzsche; and 3. they do not write for overly arrogant, overly knowing, overly academic, technical, and anal-retentive readers. Because that will contradict and kill the brevity, the boldness, the power, the passion, the blood and the spirit of Nietzsche in themselves as writers...

Having said this let us move on to the apparent and/or real paradox between 'historical determinism' and 'existential freedom'.

I will focus on the type of 'historical determinism' as espoused by Hegel in 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807) whereby life, philosophy, psychology, history, politics, culture, and everything else man-made is deemed to basically follow the 1, 2, 3, (thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis) pattern and start all over again at a 'higher evolutionary level of existence'.

Man always knows how to 'throw a wrench into any type of deterministic assembly-line'.

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Life is a Hegelian Evolutionary Pendulum - Without The Perfect Predictictability of Historical Determinism

Life is a pendulum swing between 'balance' and 'unbalance', between stretching in different degrees towards one particular brand of extremism, before reaching a point of judgment where one decides that one has had enough of that, and then swinging back again towards the middle, if not past the middle point and out towards the opposite polarity. This pendulum process of life never stops.

This is the Hegelian (or post-Hegelian) 'life-cycle' of thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis - then start the whole process over again, ideally at a higher state of experience and wisdom but that is certainly not guaranteed because man has a high propensity for narcissism, greed, love, sex, jealousy, envy, hate, unilateralism, power, revenge, imperialism, 'tit for tat', destruction, and self-destruction. These factors inevitably undermine the 'ideal' element in the Hegelian evolutionary life cycle, undermine the 'learning from history' factor - and, indeed, add a very common 'tragic' element to the whole process - life and death, evolution and regression, continually hanging in the balance of man's individual and/or collective, reason and/or stupidity.

There is no way of predicting whether man will learn - and/or not learn - individually and/or collectively - from his or her earlier acts of transgression and/or narcissistic/righteous stupidity.

This adds an 'existential, free-will' component to any Hegelian thought of 'predictable historical determinism'.

Life is a pendulum - without the perfect predictictability of historical determinism.


-- DGBN, Nov. 9th, 2008, updated Jan. 18th, 2009.

-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissim

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations....are still in process...

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