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The Hero's Journey as a reconciliation of poles

Hegel’s Dialectic:
Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis

by Reg Harris

Copyright © 2009 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me. Citation information provided at the at bottom of the page.

Nineteenth century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is known primarily for being an idealist: what was real was not the world of material objects in which we live, but Mind, Spirit (Geist) or “world-soul.” He believed that whatever exists has it beginning in this ideal spirit, and that human history was the unfolding of this spirit through time.

For Hegel, the Geist unfolds through history following a logical process of negation. This process is known as the Hegelian dialectic. In Hegel’s dialectic, progress or greater understanding originates in the paradoxical nature of consciousness. Consciousness is intentional, discriminating. It focuses on one pole of a reality, called the “thesis.” However, as with hsiang sheng or mutually arising in Taoism, focusing on one pole provokes its negation, the discovery of a contradiction within the thesis or an awareness of its self-limiting opposite pole, the “antithesis.” The awareness of both thesis and antithesis makes the mind aware of the relationship between the two, the distinction that was created by the mind. This awareness triggers the third stage of the dialect: “synthesis,” in which the poles have become not opposites, but merely two sides of one reality. We have synthesized the “opposites,” combining the positive aspects of the two.

We may be seeing this process currently in the American public education system. In the later decades of the 20th century, with behaviorism falling into disfavor, we saw a dramatic swing toward more individualized and humanistic approach to education. In the past decade, we have seen a severe swing in the opposite direction, toward academics, standards and scripted teaching. This current approach might be the antithesis to that humanistic movement. If this is the case, we can hope to see a synthesis of the two, where we can work with children as children, not products, but still address quantifiable skills. This synthesis could balance the best of both poles.

But the Hegel’s dialectic does not end with synthesis, for the synthesis itself immediately becomes a new way of seeing things, another opinion, so it becomes the thesis in a new dialectic cycle. This process continues until, presumably, one achieves an “ultimate” truth that is so broad that it subsumes all poles.

In Hegel’s dialectic, then, each stage in growth, progress or understanding emerges from the discovery and synthesis of opposites. The dialectic reminds us that opposites do not exist in reality but are constructs of the discriminating mind.

Both the beautiful and ugly, the good and not good, have a psychological origin, being products of human consciousness and valuation, but the very consciousness and pursuit of beauty and goodness as values are accompanied by the consciousness and presence also of the ugly and not good as disvalues. Opposites, including moral and value opposites, issue from the same ground and always accompany each other. (Chen, p. 56)

In a sense, the dialectic breaks the mind free of the dichotomy the mind has created and makes us aware of the deeper unity from which the opposites appear. In the context of our study, this emergence of a higher awareness is the transformative potential in polarities. In addition, the process itself parallels the transformative process of the heroic journey pattern.

There is another important aspect of the dialectic that is worth noting: negation drives the process because it stimulates the transformation in perspective necessary for growth and change. One could infer from this that if we are to grow, we must remain open to the negations in our lives, which come to us as disagreements, criticisms, suggestions, and failures. Only by being open to the negation of our current understanding, our thesis, can we be open to the transformative power that will bring us greater understanding.

Hegel’s dialectic is usually applied to the evolution of society, but it is clearly a process of reconciling opposites similar to what we see in Taoist thought in the flow of the yin-yang, and which we can see in the expressions of polarity, including enantiodromia, hermeneutics and the complimentary poles of mythos and logos.

References:

Chen, E. (1989). The Tao Te Ching: A new translation with commentary. New York: Paragon House.

Citation information:

Author: Reg Harris

Date: 2008 (updated August 6, 2009)

Title: Hegel's dialectic: Thesis, antithesis and synthesis

Publisher: Harris Communications, Napa, California

URL: http://www.yourheroicjourney/Reading Room/ReferenceShelf/ Hegelian dialectic.htm