beautiful article on the Negation of the Negation - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14667632
Hello Comrades!

I found this great article, I'll bold line those points which I found to be of particular interest ;


The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.
Negation of the Negation, Law of the

one of the basic laws of the dialectic, which characterizes the direction of development, the unity of progress and continuity in development, the emergence of the new, and the relative recurrence of some elements of the old.

The law of the negation of the negation was first formulated by G. Hegel, but particular features of it had previously been established in philosophy (the dialectical character of negation, the role of continuity in development, and the nonlinear character of the direction of development). In Hegel’s dialectical system, development is the emergence of a logical contradiction and its subsequent sublation. In this sense, development is the birth of the internal negation of the previous stage, followed by the negation of this negation (G. Hegel, Soch., vol. 6, Moscow, 1939, pp. 309–10). To the extent that the negation of the previous negation proceeds by sublation, it is always, in a certain sense, the restoration of that which was negated, a return to a past stage of development. However, this is not a simple return to the starting point, but “a new concept, a higher, richer concept than the previous one, for it has been enriched by its negation or opposite; it contains in itself the old concept, but it contains more than this concept alone, and it is the unity of this and its opposite” (ibid., vol. 5, Moscow, 1937, p. 33). Thus, the law of the negation of the negation is the universal form of the splitting of a single whole and the transition of opposites into each other— that is, the universal manifestation of the law of the unity and struggle of opposites. Hegel exaggerated the significance of the triad as the operative form of the law of the negation of the negation and attempted to “subsume” under it all pocesses of change and development.

In materialist dialectics, the law of the negation of the negation is considered a law of the development of nature, society, and thought. If the law of the unity and struggle of opposites discloses the source of development, and the law of the transition of quantitative changes into qualitative changes reveals the mechanism of development, the law of the negation of the negation expresses the direction, form, and result of development. The effect of the law of the negation of the negation is fully revealed only in an integral, relatively complete process of development through a chain of interconnected transitions, when it is possible to specify a more or less finished result of the process (from the point of view of the direction of development). At each particular stage, the law of the negation of the negation is usually revealed only as a tendency.

The concept of dialectical negation plays a primary role in disclosing the content of the law of the negation of the negation. If the old is not negated, the birth and maturation of the new and, consequently, the process of development, are impossible. According to the law of the negation of the negation, development takes place in cycles, each of which consists of three stages: the original state of the object, its transformation into its opposite (that is, its negation), and the transformation of the opposite into its own opposite.

Philosophers who think in metaphysical terms view negation as a discarding, as an absolute annihilation of the old (for example, the concept of the Proletkul’t [Proletarian Cultural and Educational Organization] and the ideas of some Chinese theoreticians concerning the destruction of the culture of the past and the creation of a new, proletarian culture). V. I. Lenin referred to such negation as “bare” and “purposeless.” Development takes place when the new does not simply cut off the existence of the old but takes from it all that is positive and viable. This is “continuity in the discontinuous,” or successiveness within development. In the law of the negation of the negation, this is stated as the “repetition at a higher stage of certain features … of the lower stage and … the apparent return of the old” (V. I. Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch, 5th ed., vol. 29, p. 203). A brilliant example of the analysis of such a dialectical negation is to be found in Chapter 24 of the first volume of Marx’ Das Kapital, in which the movement of property from the precapitalist to the socialist forms is investigated (in K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch, 2nd ed., vol. 23, pp. 770–73). From the point of view of dialectical negation, the transition to socialism from private property relations, which replaced primitive communal property, signified more than “an apparent return to the old”—that is, the repetition of some of the essential elements of the old on a different, considerably more developed foundation. It also meant the transition to a new cycle with essentially different internal contradictions and laws of motion.

The succession of cycles that makes up the chain of development can be represented as a spiral. “A development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis (‘the negation of negation’), a development, so to speak, that proceeds in a sprial, not in a straight line” (V. I. Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch, 5th ed., vol. 26, p. 55). In such a representation, each cycle is one turn, one twist, in the spiral of development, and the spiral itself is a chain of cycles.
Although the spiral is only an image representing the connection between two or more points in the process of development, it captures the general direction of development that takes place in accordance with the law of the negation of the negation. A return to that which has already been gone through is not a complete return: development does not repeat the paths already taken but seeks out new ones that conform to changed external and internal conditions. The more complex the process of development, the more relative is the repetition of certain features or properties encountered in previous stages.

The spiral characterizes not only the form but also the tempo of development. With each new turn, or twist, of the spiral, an even more significant path is left behind. Thus, it is possible to say that the process of development is linked with an acceleration of tempo and with continuous change in the internal time scale of a developing system. This regularity is found in the development of scientific knowledge, as well as in the development of society and of nature.

REFERENCES
Vorob’ev, M. F. Zakon otritsaniia otritsaniia. Moscow, 1958.
Kedrov, B. M. O povtoriaemosti v protsesse razvitiia. Moscow, 1961.
Domrachev, G., S. Efimov, and A. Timofeeva. Zakon otritsaniia otritsaniia. Moscow, 1961.


I was really impressed; there is much that a former Reactionary and an Authoritarian at heart can find of benefit here. Thus it is that an Atheist Soviet Union is itself subject to the laws of the Dialectic, and becomes negated, and then will reappear as an Orthodox Christian and Communist State, after Orthodoxy itself was purged of elements contrary to both Orthodoxy and the progressive forces which the Church herself gave birth to.
#14667633
I was really impressed; there is much that a former Reactionary and an Authoritarian at heart can find of benefit here. Thus it is that an Atheist Soviet Union is itself subject to the laws of the Dialectic, and becomes negated, and then will reappear as an Orthodox Christian and Communist State, after Orthodoxy itself was purged of elements contrary to both Orthodoxy and the progressive forces which the Church herself gave birth to.

You've got it, annatar. The present moment contains the embryo of the future, and the birth of the new world is always the return of the old world in a new and transfigured form. All that has been lost will be regained, in a constant process of renewal. Christ is constantly being resurrected, just as he is constantly being crucified.
#14667637
Potemkin wrote:You've got it, annatar. The present moment contains the embryo of the future, and the birth of the new world is always the return of the old world in a new and transfigured form. All that has been lost will be regained, in a constant process of renewal. Christ is constantly being resurrected, just as he is constantly being crucified.


Thank you, although I'll say that at some point the Dialectic will itself be transformed when the state of Communism itself is reached, and humanity becomes fit for resurrection bodies, as immortal autotrophic organisms.

This was the dream of Nicholai Fyodorov and others, Orthodox Christians, but who saw the upward Spiral for what it is, the Immanent Life of the Holy Spirit in the World.

I'll post further at some point on the Dialectic, noting that there is no such thing as Coincidence when you consider that after 100 years since the Bolshevik Revolution, Orthodox Easter falls on the date of all laborers, May 1st....

Btw, I would love to get, but have not found, any english language translation of the 1927 Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius, I would love to have some help finding it.
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