Classical liberal analyst James Lindsay has been offering a series of podcasts on the Hegelian roots of Marxism and its various hydra-headed offspring that front the Marxist counterrevolution against modernity. In this first of this series, “Hegel, Wokeness, and the Dialectical Faith of Leftism,” Lindsay does a deep dive into Hegel’s understanding of dialectics. It is important, he asserts, to have a robust appreciation of this concept, for it is “the operating system of leftists,” a “method of worship in a broad religious movement that started primarily with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,” dated from the publication of The Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807.
The familiar formula “thesis—antithesis—synthesis,” Lindsay says, is actually a Kantian formula; Hegel instead asserts the progression is “abstract—negative—concrete.” The emphasis on negation is the foundation for the Marxist’s love of relentless critique, for all abstract understandings of reality fall short of completeness and therefore are subject to “improvement” that will now be demonstrated as a concrete (and presumably dependable) emergence.
Informing this notion is the belief in the perfectibility of reality in general and humanity in particular—what we could call the utopian temptation. The universe is always becoming and therefore whatever we perceive and hypothesize as real is always transforming. There is nothing to which we can hold; we are victims of a process we can never control. But we are entitled to rebel against this inexorability and to do whatever we can to reverse it.
Integral theory, as a “both/and” proposition, holds that the universe both is and also is evolving. To use Ken Wilber’s term, Spirit is simultaneously immanent and transcendent. This insight should humble us immediately, for like all koans the seeming contradiction is impossible to understand conceptually. As Wilber forcefully demonstrates in The Marriage of Sense and the Soul, we must be open to a different science of understanding than is available to us at orange, the current leading edge of evolution.
The Integral Model makes room for the Hegelian thesis without embracing it as absolute Truth (which Hegel would no doubt decry). We examine it and the various resulting Marxist religions as versions of Spirit unfolding Itself—as are all inquiries into the nature of reality. Still, we start an integral analysis of Hegel’s thought and influence by noting that he is writing at the very beginning of the modern period in central Europe—i.e., in first tier culture. Whether Hegel himself had an integral perspective, surely most of those he influenced did not, emphatically including Marx.
Stage Emergence is Sloppy and Violent
My hypothesis is that all elements of the counterrevolution against modernity stem partially from the natural defense that each stage of consciousness necessarily has against emergence. From Amber’s perspective, modernity’s introduction of individual identity and sovereignty threatens its very existence. Individuality absolutely undermines the hegemony of the tribe, for if its individual members can make their own way for life, what purpose does the tribe serve?
