THE ARTS’ POSITIVE DIALECTIC

PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF PLANET

As Bibi Omph says in the PLANET Flyer, “being fed up is not enough.” In order to be successful and long lasting, a revolution needs to be supported by a philosophy and a program. This is the reason why the PLANET Program is directly supported by The Art’s Positive Dialectic. 

Why promote a philosophy based on the arts to support a political program? The project may seem utterly utopian when confronted with the established materialism governing the world. Let us say that without language, without the possibility to exchange thoughts with others or know the thoughts of others, we would still be prehistoric creatures. But if language is a tool of communication, it is through the arts that humans express sentiments and emotions. Imagine a world without color, music, poetry, literature, philosophy, theater, fashion, cinema, architecture, the art of cooking and the art of love! Thinking of it obliges you to conclude that art is as important as language itself. That importance gives art the prerogative for the creation of a harmonious human society.

History of Art is the only history that can be told without interruption since its very first manifestations. Art survived the disappearance of civilizations because it used, from one civilization to the next, the same method of creation that was practiced by the cave people some forty thousand years ago. With a few exceptions, artists, as a social group, have always remained silent. They were never given the direction of the world. Confronted today with times that see the disintegration of their society and the organized rape of their habitat, artists are breaking their silence.

The method of artistic creation consists at establishing a dialogue among the elements that are indispensable to produce the synthesis that a piece of art is. Some of those syntheses are sometimes so successful that they will be admired, as long as there will be men to admire them.

To make it clear, let us consider a simplified example. In order to make a drawing with a pencil on a piece of paper, you need a pencil and a piece of paper. What is more important, the pencil or the paper? You will answer me that one without the other is useless. They need each other to become a drawing. In other words, one is as much important as the other. Transposing the question, we can ask: What is more important in industry, capital or labor? One without the other is useless. In other words, one is as much important as the other. But a question surges immediately: Why, then, for centuries until today, is it capital that imposes its rules upon labor?

The method of artistic creation can be applied at conceiving a society that would synthesize the needs of men and the reality of the planet, the material and immaterial aspirations of the whole humanity. This is the purpose of PLANET.

    

At that point, it is necessary to remain a little longer in the company of the word “dialectic” that received very different interpretations through the ages. In a  “modern” social context, it is absolutely impossible not to consider Hegel, the father of the dialectic that Karl Marx had to invert “because it was standing on its head” to give it a decent and workable appearance. It is, of course, also impossible to ignore Karl Marx himself whom Dialectical Materialism was followed and imposed upon half the world. Still is in the most populated and soon most powerful country in the world, China. Let us ask Hegel to make a choice among the diverse arts to help in our understanding of the Arts’ Positive Dialectic:

It is principally in painting that is made manifest the spirit of people, countries, epochs, and individuals, not only by the choice of the subject and the spirit of the conception, but also by the way of drawing, grouping, coloring, the work of the brush, the use of determined colors, etc… all this including purely subjective manners and habits.   

       The problem with Hegel is his terrible obscurity:

It is not a secret that all the statements and introductions to Hegel’s thoughts stop the reader who, then, wants to attack directly the reading of his works. But very few of these readers would be able to make a word-by-word translation of a single page of one of his works.

 (Theodore Haering)

Hegel is an idealist: everything is relevant of thought. Ontology and logic are merged as summed up in his famous statement, ”What is real is rational, and what is rational is real.” We will borrow from Paul Foulquié, in “Dialectic,” his short and excellent summary of Hegel’s thoughts:

We know by experience that our mind does not follow logical rules in its spontaneous moves. Logic is addressed afterwards. Far from proceeding from the same to the same, thought proceeds from the same to the different. It needs contradiction as a stimulant. Aristotle had already said, “Science begins where wondering begins.” And what is wondering if not having, more or less, the feeling of a contradiction? Mind seeks to identify, to link the new object to an already existing species. This work of identification supposes that these object are diversified. It means that they are at the same time similar (otherwise it would be impossible to identify them) and different (otherwise it would not be necessary to identify them). Thought needs identity and contradiction.

It is not different for nature through which the Idea is externalized. Not only can one observe a lasting struggle between contrary forces, but, even more, without that struggle nature would remain in a state of inertia close to nothingness. Reality contains both identity and contradiction. However, contradiction must be considered as deeper and more essential. For Hegel, conciliation of contradictions in mind as well as in things is what constitutes dialectic.

The ancients had already understood what is contradictory in the notion of movement and change: a moving object is and is not anymore at the place where you consider it. Heraclitus was very impressed by the spectacle of the permanent transformation of things into their contrary: hot into cold, life into death. Truth is no more stable and lasting than humans. It becomes error with the passing of time. Such an evolution, or transformation, supposes that things hold in themselves their contraries, and the fight between those contraries generates movement.

If we take the example of an egg that is brooded by a hen, we see that this egg contains a germ that will develop at certain temperature and under certain conditions. The germ will become a chicken. We can also see that there are two different forces in our egg: one tends to make the egg remain an egg, one tends to make the egg become a chicken. The egg disagrees with itself, as all things disagree with themselves.  (G. Politzer)

We must underline a last point: things carry contradiction in themselves, and opposition does not come from an exterior force. The egg wants to remain an egg, and to become a chicken at the same time.

However, we must notice that it is only by an abuse of words that Hegel, Marx, and their followers can talk about contradictions in things. Contrary does not mean contradictory. Contrary tendencies can be present in the same thing without being contradictory. We can even say that the word “contrary” is practically inaccurate. We should use the word “different.” The chicken is not the contrary of the egg. It is something different. But before going any further in the notion of “different,” we must go back to Hegel and see how he solves the problem of the so-called “contradictions.”

    

Hegel’s dialectical process involves three moments:  Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis. Hegel generally names them: Affirmation – Negation – Negation of the negation. It is known as the Hegel’s Triad. The negation of the negation constitutes a synthesis, which will be considered as a new synthesis negated in its turn by a new antithesis, and so on…

   

For the reason that contradictions are the indispensable elements of triads, it is prudent to recall what is contradiction:  the same thing cannot be and not be at the same time and the same place.

Let us take a very simple example: if one says “white” and the other says “black,” they understand each other because they are discussing the same thing: the color of an object. An examination of that object will certainly allow us to determine if that object is white or black. (Henry Lefebvre)

So far, so good… The problem is clearly defined. We are confronted with a black and white contradiction. We know that an examination of our object will easily solve that contradiction. However, we must read a little further:

Contradictions in the human mind (they are made manifest everywhere at any moment) claim the essential of the problem. They originate, at least partially, in the deficiency of the human mind to seize all the different aspect of a thing other than by breaking it (by analysis) to understand it. But this unilateral way of thinking is not enough to explain contradiction. One must admit that contradictions have a foundation inside thing themselves, a point of departure. In other words, contradictions in human mind and subjective conscience of men have an objective and real foundation.

Nevertheless, it seems difficult to admit that, if a man with a normal vision says that an object is white, another man with normal vision could declare that the same object is black. If that happens, it is because the object is effectively white and black at the same time, which is absolutely unacceptable by any method of reasoning.

Thus, according to Henry Lefebvre, contradiction is everywhere. This is the reason why he wrote, “Well conducted analysis of any reality reaches contradictory elements (for example: positive and negative, proletariat and bourgeoisie, being and nothingness, examples borrowed from diverse domains).”

We can try to solve those contradictions with Hegel’s help. His method of synthesis by negation makes it necessary to look at the definition of negation in order to give the method all its significance, Negate. Vt. To deny the existence or the truth of. (Webster’s). The first and most famous “triad” of Hegel demonstrates the method:

       BEING IS.  Affirmation asking immediately for its negation

       BEING IS NOT.  Negation that is negated in its turn to give the synthesis:

       BEING IS BECOMING.

Why is Being Becoming? This is a question that no one can answer since everyone notes the superficiality of such an affirmation. We can understand the desire of Hegel to surmount the contradiction  “Being is – Being is not” by means of a synthesis preserving both propositions. However, we can think about it as long as we want, we have no more than four solutions:

          1 – Only one proposition is true: “Being is” or “Being is not.”

          2 – Both propositions are true: “Being is” and “Being is not.”

          3 – Both propositions are false:  “Being is” is not and “Being is not” is not.

          4 – Both propositions are false but contain a part of truth: “Being is” contains a part of 

                      “Being is not” and “Being is not” contains a part of “Being is.”

According again to Hegel, that part of truth contained in both contradictory propositions allows us to perform a synthesis. We are now obligated to return to Hegel and Marx what belongs to them: the well-accepted idea that two contradictory theses are both partly true. In reality, they are not partly true, and we are overwhelmed by the most prefect confusion: presented as contradictory, it is impossible that both theses contain a part of truth. If they do, if one does not negate entirely the other, it is because they are not contradictory.

But let us go back to the example the Marxist philosopher Henry Lefebvre chose, black and white. If we temporarily agree with his allegation that contradiction is everywhere, we accept black and white as examples of contradictory elements. Then, there is no reason why yellow and blue could not be considered as contradictory elements. We prefer the more pleasant yellow and blue to try to realize a Hegelian synthesis:

     AFFIRMATION:   Yellow is the color we put on our palette.

     NEGATION:   Yellow is not true, does not exist. What exists is the blue we actually put on our palette.

     NEGATION OF THE NEGATION:  blue does not exist. What exists is a color becoming green.

In other words, when teaching a young painter how to make a green with a blue and a yellow, you have to tell him or her, “Put some yellow here. Now, watch out because this yellow does not exist. What exist is this blue. But watch out again because this blue does not exist. What exists is this color becoming green.”

It would be closer to reality (because blue and yellow still exist in green) to say, “You take that much of yellow and that much of blue. You mix them together and you obtain that much of green.”

     AFFIRMATION.   Yellow is the color we put on our palette.

     AFFIRMATION.   Blue is the color we put on our palette.

     AFFIRMATION.   Green is the color we obtain by mixing together yellow and blue.

     We replace Hegel’s negative movement:

                      AFFIRMATION – NEGATION – NEGATION OF THE NEGATION

     by the positive movement:

                      AFFIRMATION – AFFIRMATION – AFFIRMATION

If we say now that we disagree with Hegel’s method of synthesis, the Hegel-Marx conflict between Idealism and Materialism loses meaning:

For Hegel, the movement of thought that he personifies as Idea is the creator of reality. It is the phenomenal form of idea. For me, it is the contrary. The movement of though is only the reflection of reality, transported and transposed in the human mind. The means of production of material life condition the social, political, and intellectual process in its whole. The consciousness of men does not determine their existence; on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness. (Karl Marx)

So, idealism was thrown out of its shelter, the conception of history: a materialist conception was a necessity; a way was found to explain the conscience of men by their manner of conducting their life instead of explaining, like previously, their manner of conducting their life by their conscience. (Frederick Engels)

Let us put aside Hegel, Engels, and Marx because they forgot only one important thing: their system is based on negation and negation cannot be generalized because generalized negation negates everything including itself. That omission doomed by advance the efforts of Marx to provide the world with “singing mornings.” It opened the door to all possible deviations from the original thoughts of Marx. So much so that Marx once declared that he was not a Marxist.

Why should black and white be considered as contradictory colors when the sole possible contradiction would be to declare that white is black and black is white? In the case of a drawing (black pencil on a white sheet of paper), black and white are “different’ colors. They cannot exclude each other by negation    when they need each other to realize the synthesis that is a drawing. They must even be considered as “correlative.” Otherwise no drawing can exist.

     AFFIRMATION.  The sheet of paper is white.

     AFFIRMATION.  The pencil is black.

     AFFIRMATION.  Synthesis: strokes of black pencil on the white sheet of paper create a drawing.

A drawing is effectively the realization of a synthesis by a series of “relations” established between black and white. From a single black point on the white sheet of paper to a single white point left on the paper, there is drawing. With no white point left, there is no longer a drawing but a different sheet of paper, a black one. There is no contradiction: the now black sheet of paper does not pretend any longer to be a white sheet of paper. It is now a black one.

Thus, a thorough study of a drawing pertains to elements that are “different” but not contradictory. Their meaning is made precise by saying that they are “correlative” and may be used as complementary (for example: black and white, curves and straight lines, lights and shadows…). Their rapport is not a rapport between elements excluding each other by reciprocal negation. It remains a positive rapport able to display all possibilities between “opposition” (two contraries such as black and white) and “symposition” (the gray obtained by light stroke of black on white).

The fact that black and white produce a drawing rather than something else supposes a relationship between the artist’s inspiration and his/her means of expression, here a piece of paper and a pencil. The relation between artist and means of expression is really a dialectical one: a deeper and deeper unity in a constant effort. A real artist is never satisfied and always tries to surpass him/herself from one work to the next.

An artwork can also be defined as a successfully accomplished relationship between the artist’s indefinable and non-measurable inspiration, and the very tangible, measurable tools of the artist’s craft. It is impossible to consider seriously the abstraction of inspiration and the tangibility of material tools as contradictory elements excluding each other when both are indispensable for creating an artwork.

Creating a piece of art is commonly called “artistic creation.” Mathematicians refer to the beauty of an equation. A superb dish is qualified masterpiece of cooking. The philosopher Auguste Taine gives artists their credential to formulate the viewpoint of art on their contemporary society:

Everywhere the great artists are the heroes and interpreters of their people, Jordaens, Snyder, Rubens in Flanders, Titian, Tintoretto, Veroneze in Venice. Their instinct and intuition transform them into naturalists, psychologists, historians, and philosopher. They resist th ideas that constitute their race and age. The universal and involuntary sympathy that makes their genius musters and organizes in their minds, with true proportions, the infinite and crossed elements of a word in which they are included.

Proceeding by affirmations, art offers a definitive example of successive syntheses, which are sometimes so successful that they will be admired as long as humans exist. We can formulate two principles that can be considered as the bases of artistic syntheses by enlarging the limited drawing reference and opening the door to generalities. Instead of writing “Thorough study of a drawing,” we will write:

1)  Thorough of any reality must consider elements that are “different.” Their meaning is made precise by saying that they are “correlative,” and may be used as “complements,” (for example: black and white, positive and negative, producing and consuming…). Their rapport is not a rapport between contradictory elements excluding each other by reciprocal negation but a positive rapport able to obtain all possible resultants between opposition (black and white, running in opposite direction, labor and capital…) and “symposition” (two different whites, running in the same direction, social justice…).

Opposing theses remain true (or contain a part of truth). Thus, they can be related. They follow their “correlative” tendencies in the same way that the mind’s natural disposition is to seek conciliation rather than confrontation. This disposition is systematically generalized by PLANET. It implies a constant search for the part of truth contained in opposing theses or viewpoints. As small as the initial understanding may be, it is enough to establish a constructive dialogue.

2)  We must recognize the fact that reality is moving. The study begins by breaking that movement to obtain by abstraction the composing elements of that reality. It isolates those elements only to find their internal relations, and it discovers analogies among them only to perceive their differences.

Thorough study of a drawing gives us the principles applicable to the art of drawing in general (drawing is composed of… and of…) and the particular elements applicable to a specific drawing (choice of the subject, and so on…). Reconstitution of that drawing can be done, afterwards, by adding back those abstractions. Furthermore, that drawing is a perceptible moment of another permanent moving reality, art. Art is itself a moment in another moving reality, humanity.

In the same manner that we can reconstitute the creative process of art after a dissecting analysis, we can, after analysis, reconstitute the movement of the society we live in. And in the same way that an artist can modify a piece of art to the point of making its appearance and significance change, we can strive to modify society to the point of making its appearance and significance change.

A drawing, through the very simple observation that black and white are not contradictory elements refutes Hegel/Marx theory that contradiction is everywhere and directs the behavior of humanity. One single drawing is enough to refute Marxism as a viable concept of society. But, it also obliges intelligence to refuse as real and logical the “contradictions” that affect negatively the lives of millions of people in the jungle of the capitalist non-philosophical “laissez-faire,” or “free enterprise” if you prefer. Analyzing the elements that constitute the “contradictions” afflicting humanity, one can only consider those contradictions as man-made contradictions, whether communist or capitalist in name.

   

Rather than proposing cures by short-term compromises for solving immediate problems, The Arts’ Positive Dialectic is aimed at preventing the existence and recurrence of conflicts by transforming the goals and aims of society. Contrary to communism, which pretended to be a “new conception of the world” surpassing itself by negative syntheses, and capitalism “everyone for oneself” with all blows legal under the belt, a new conception of the world surpassing itself can only be generated through a positive method of synthesis. If a negative method of synthesis produces negative elements, a positive one produces positive elements to finally reach the highest form of human achievements: love.

Love does not mean weakness, but resolute and unselfish understanding of others leading to the resolution of conflicting elements. Some of its proposals may seem radical to conservative minds. They are, nevertheless, indisputably in the logic of love, which is not the logic of greed or desire for domination. If humanity wants to survive it has to learn, and fast, to live in the company of man.

Bibi Omph for PLANET