funky dialectics:

hegel, marx and us here now today.

presented by christian whittall and corey katz

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• ten weeks starting 15 October 2009
• Thursdays, 7-9pm
• NEW VENUE: 1031 dovercourt rd. 'round back and up stairs.
• contact: christian@anarchistu.org

for the ancient greeks, dialectics [ dialektike ] was the art of philosophical discussion. it was the very consummation of the love of knowledge that the word 'philosophy' itself implied—and, similar to other forms of love, it required the active participation of at least two people.

this intuition that lies at the very root of western [and, incidentally, eastern] philosophy, has been largely eclipsed by the advent of grand philosophical 'systems' or 'world-views' that may compete with or influence each other, but are largely the individual products of history's 'great minds'. consequently, the words 'philosophy' and 'dialectic' have lost much their original sense of the process—and have come to denote for the most part the products—of thought; e.g., 'continental philosophy', 'the Hegelian dialectic', etc.

many factors accompanying the growth and advance of western civilization may be called in to account for this situation, but in the final analysis, entire generations of people have been asked to conform and adapt to pre-existing modes of thought, oftentimes at the expense of knowledge based on immediate, organic life experience. concomitantly, when studied merely as a 'system' or 'mode' of thought, the achievements of many of philosophy's 'great minds' have been stripped of the very life-force that originally animated them. this does great injustice to, e.g., Hegel, whose very ambition was to design a method of scientific philosophy that would resist static formulation and could be practiced by anyone regardless of their level of education or material circumstance.

seeing as the original aim of the dialectical method was to resolve or merge contradictions in one's thought and actions, its sterilization in the public sphere is a very grave issue in the face of growing and unsustainable contradictions that are arising from the western mode of life.

'funky dialektiks' has been designed in part to be a corrective to this situation. our intention is to involve the community in a radical reappraisal of western philosophy by attempting to peer beneath its apparent obsession with absolute truths and systems of totality in order to unearth an alternate tradition: one of a living, ever-unfolding process of free and cooperative philosophical enterprise. by first examining its early roots in socratic dialogue and from there tracing its trajectory through to its modern incarnations in the work of G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx, we will outline the various features and methods of the dialectical process and trace their development and elaboration over the course of history. from this basic understanding, we will examine how the process has been applied to different philosophical issues and what outcomes have been reached therefrom.

the main emphasis of this course, however, is to learn and to practice the dialectical method ourselves; building upon the tradition and adapting it for use in our own lives. to this end, study will be balanced with discussion; films, music, articles and other media will be introduced to illustrate the use of dialectics outside of the traditional sphere of philosophical texts; and, as always, participants are invited to write and present their own work to the class.

A ROUGH OUTLINE OF THE COURSE WITH POSSIBLE READINGS:

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weeks one & two

socrates and the roots of western dialectics.

plato. the laches; the charmides; the cratylus; the euthydemus.

gonzales, francisco. dialectic and dialogue.

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weeks three through six

hegel and idealism

hegel, g.w.f. the phenomonology of spirit.

film: curtis, adam. the century of self.

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weeks seven through ten

feuerbach, marx and the materialist turn

feuerbach, ludwig. the essence of christianity.

marx, karl. the manuscripts of 1844; the critique of hegelian dialectics.

film: style wars.

• funky_dialektiks.pdf