Life Is A Hegelian Pendulum Swing Between Different Polarities and Extremisms -- With 'Twists and Turns' of Existential Freedom -- and Mistakes

Life is a constant Hegelian evolutionary pendulum swing - without the perfect predictictability of historical foresight, hindsight, or determinism.

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'.

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 lack of it.

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 narcissistic and/or righteous transgression. Being human, the potential for 'bending and/or breaking' our Apollonian ethical-moral values in the throes of initiating and/or reacting to an 'Erotic-Narcissistic-Dionysian Seduction' -- is always there. It is what makes us human, all too human (with full credit to Nietzsche for borrowing his words.)

The biblical reality and/or myth of Adam, Eve, and The Garden of Eden has probably been metaphorically re-created and/or replayed a hundred billion times in the history of man. Call it a biblical 'Transference Seduction and Sexual Fixation Scene' if you will -- with men and women of all races, nationalities, cultures, religions, and philosophies coming back to this Mythological and Metaphorical Transference Scene -- over, and over, and over again. Apollo may work his hardest to maintain the ethical-moral dignity and integrity of the human race, but in the end he is probably no match for the combined biological, psychological, sensual, sexual and/or monetary seduction power of Eros, Narcissus, and Dionysus (END).

I try to say this without critical or righteous judgment as all of Apollo, Eros, Narcissus, and Dionysus deserve their 'dialectic-democratic moment in the sun' -- not only in Ancient Greek Mythology where Greek authors like Homer along with Greek Artists and Sculpters, were painting human soap-opera dramas in the sky and on the earth and in 'the Raging Infernos of The World Below' -- 'projective-identifications' of what they were experiencing inside themselves -- and 'disowning' as being 'out there, not in here' (Greek Mythology -- all encompassed -- is a brilliantly creative external painting of the internal workings of the human psyche; but more so, what holds 'mythologically and projectively true' in ancient Greek Society some 2000 to 3000 years ago or more, still hold trues today. Greek Mythology still remain a briliantly creative 'soap opera' painting of the human psyche. The more things change, the more things stay the same. But don't try to 'deterministically figure this soap opera painting out. Because the permutations are endless. With all these Greek Gods whirling around in our individual and collective psyches, much like 'lobbyists' and 'special interest groups' whirling around in Washington and Ottawa, anything is possible -- but not human predictability.

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

"Professor Hegel, I have the deepest respect for your work -- for the 'dialectic model and container' that you explained and sold to the world. Your philosophical theory of evolution is superior to, precedes, and subsumes Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Furthermore, it encompasses all areas and levels of human existence -- not just the biological -- but the historical, the scientific, the medical, the artistic, the political, the legal, the religious, indeed, all aspects of human culture, even furthermore, all aspects of life. For this reason, Professor Hegel, your classic treatise, 'The Phenomenology of Mind (Spirit)' is my nomination of the most important philosophical work in Western history. And for that reason, also, Professor Hegel, you are my nomination of the most important philosopher in Western History.'

'Having said this, Professor Hegel, you had a weakness. And 'The Phenomenology of Mind' had a weakness which reflected your weakness. You were a 'rationalist' and an 'abstractionist'. In writing 'The Phenomenology', you were not 'phenomenological' as this word would come to mean. Professor Hegel, you got lost in your concepts. You operated from the 'neck up'. In 'The Phenomenology' you had 'Mind' but you didn't have 'Spirit'. Or worded otherwise, you had the spirit of a rationalist. You had the spirit of Apollo in you. But you didn't have the spirit of a Romantic. Where was Eros? Where was Dionysus? I know you were a passionate man. But where was the passion in your work? Where was your passion in 'The Phenomenology'? Locked up inside you like a Victorian woman wearing a chastity belt?"

"Professor Hegel, I have love-hate relationship with you and your work. You preached the essence and the importance of the dialectic and for this, I am eternally grateful. But there was something essentially important in your work -- that was missing. Call this missing ingredient -- or let's break it down to three actually -- 'concreteness', 'emotionality', and 'passion'. For the most part, Professor Hegel, 'The Phenomenology' was as dry as the Sahara Desert. And as abstract as -- well -- 'The Absolute'."

"Professor Hegel, I know there was an 'existentialist' and a 'phenomenologist' deep inside you, dying to come out. To my knowledge, you were the first philosopher to seriously write about and analyze the phenomenon of 'alienation' and the phenomenon of 'The Master-Slave Relationship'. But the real passion of existentialism was not quite there yet, not quite born yet. We might say that existentialism was in the 'uterus' of 'The Phenomenology'. But it was one of the many dialectic -- seemingly self-contradictory -- paradoxes in 'The Phenomenology' that were either described by you, or interpreted by your readers later. Professor Hegel, while existentialism was in the uterus of 'The Phenomenology' in the process of being -- but not quite yet -- born, you were still hanging on to 'rationalist-idealist' comments like 'The Absolute' and 'Historical Determinism' which were both very, very 'un-existential'. Professor Hegel, you were caught on one side of three of your own dialectic self-contradictions -- reason without emotional passion, abstract concepts without concrete existence, and historical determinism without existential free-will.

"So in the end, Professor Hegel, your prophecy held true. Your masterpiece -- 'The Phenomenology' -- arguably the greatest philosophical work in Western history, self-destructed under the lopsided weight of its own one-sidedness, even as 'The Phenomenology' preached both the functional evolutionary benefit and the historical inevitability of the bi-polar, dialectical interaction, negotiation, and integration of opposing 'things', 'processes', 'ideas', 'theories', and 'philosophies'."

Somebody needed to come into the picture and bring either a 'philosophical wrecking ball' and/or 'a caldron of passionate fire' to the dry, Sahara desert of Hegel's 'The Phenomenology'.

And there was no shortage of great philosophers and psychologists who came into the picture either sooner or later -- and did exactly this. Let's try these 10:

1. Marx
2. Kierkegaard
3. Schopenhauer
4. Nietzsche
5. Freud
6. Jung
7. Perls
8. Foucault
9. Derrida

And with a combined mixture of humble respect and narcissistic egotism, realizing that I haven't climbed onto any pedestal of 'The Philosophy Olympics' -- yet...

10. DGB Post-Hegelian, Multi-Dialectic-Democratic, Humanistic-Existential Philosophy.

I learned the dialectic from Gestalt Therapy and I experienced first hand what it meant to 'dialectically negotiate and integrate the bi-polarities within myself, and more broadly speaking, within us all'.

Fritz Perls was the main creator of Gestalt Therapy. And he learned from Melanie Klein and Sigmund Freud -- both dialectic psychologists. Somewhere in there also, is Carl Jung and a whole host of other dialectical psycholgists and psychotherapists. Dialectic Psychotherapy is Dialectic Negotiation and Integration Within The Self. Integrating Apollo with Eros, Narcissus, and Dionysus. Freud learned from Nietzsche (and Schopenhauer). And as much as both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer would go to their graves -- and did -- denying that Hegel had any significant influence on their work, the reality of the situation is that both were as dependent on Hegel for the content of their respective works as much as 'The Master' is dependent on 'The Slave' to get work done that The Master can't -- or won't -- do.

Now without reading too much into 'The Master-Slave' analogy, I will call Hegel 'The Master' and alternatively call each of the 10 philosophers listed above the 'alternatively introjective and rebellious students' of Hegel -- who both 'introjected Hegel's work' into their own philosophical systems (or anti-systems) and 'rebelled against it too'.

Each of the philosphers mentioned above, including myself, has used a combination of 'Introjected Hegelian Philosophy' and 'Compensatory Anti-Hegelian Philosophy' in their work. If Hegel were alive today, he might say that this is just the normal, everyday course of the dialectic at work and play.

Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions. -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus, life is a pendulum of alternating extremities searching or not searching for that perfect 'Utopian balance in the middle' - the 'middle path' in Aristotle's words - but without the perfect predictictability of historical determinism, either predicted beforehand, and/or analyzed after the fact.

Much of life is a combination of the collision between 'random chance' (or 'accident') and individual and/or collective fate. New encounters -- whether planned or 'by chance' -- offer the creative opportunity for new evolutionary democratic-dialectics. -- dgb, February 9th, 2009, updated and modified Feb. 10th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain