I was recently inspired by a question in a very classic little book, Philosophical Questions, that I was read. Today we use the word "contradiction" to talk about the difference between Eastern and Western ideas. Is contradiction objectively existent? Previously, in the Hegel series, we introduced some of Russell's critiques of Hegel's philosophy, the main ones being the criticism of the core "contradictions" of Hegel's dialectics.
Russell once said unabashedly and directly that Hegel's philosophy was almost always wrong. Because of the cornerstone and soul of Hegel's philosophy, dialectics is based on the erroneous assumption that contradictions exist objectively, but Russell denies this claim that contradictions are not the same as differences, that things can be different, but not necessarily contradictory, such as Zhang San and Li Si are completely different in personality, but they are not contradictory and can coexist harmoniously. Hegel's dialectic holds that contradictions are irreconcilable, contradictions exist objectively, and it is the opposites of contradictions that ultimately push them towards unity, but Russell believes that this is a priori hypothesis, and contradictions are illusory.
In fact, behind Hegel's idea of "contradiction" there is a more fundamental a priori hypothesis, that is, the hypothesis of "nature", which Hegel believes that everything that is connected with external things must contain in nature some connection with these external things, so that if these external things do not exist, it cannot be what they are. Just as a man cannot be what he is without the object of his knowledge, love, and hatred. He is clearly a fragment in essence, or there are incomplete contradictions within him. In other words, all things cannot exist in isolation, and the existence of things is like a puzzle, nested in each other, which is the nature of all things, because of their own inadequacies and incompleteness, and interconnected, and finally constitute a unified and harmonious whole.
And Hegel argues that this intrinsic incompleteness is the same in thought, and that in the world of thought we analyse a certain idea and find that if we forget its incompleteness, we fall into contradiction. These contradictions turn this idea into its antithesis, and in order to escape, we must find a new relatively complete idea, which is the synthesis of the original idea and its antithesis, this process is the "positive and negative union", this cycle goes on, Hegel deduces the "absolute idea", the absolute concept has no incompleteness, no opposition, and does not need to be further developed. Hegel saw this "incompleteness" as a "nature" of things, but Russell questioned this claim, arguing that it was just a false assumption. Russell believed that by thinking that something must exist, it was almost impossible to prove any conclusion a priori.
Moreover, in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, contradictions have a negativity, and with regard to this negation, Hegel says in The Phenomenology of Spirit: "The difference in consciousness that occurs between the self and the entity as the object of the self is the general negation of the difference between the two. We can think of negativity as a common flaw in both, but it is really the soul or promoter of both. It is for this reason that some ancient philosophers understood emptiness as the promoter; they certainly knew what the promoter denied, but they did not yet understand that it is itself, and if this negation manifested itself first and foremost only as a difference between the self and the object, then it is also the difference between the entity and itself. ”
The inconsistency between consciousness and the object of consciousness mentioned here is a difference, a defect, and a contradiction, a contradiction that is natural, the nature of all things. Hegel said that the direct practical existence of the spirit, as consciousness, has two aspects: knowledge and cognition arise from objectivity in negative relations. In Hegel's system of thought, "negativity" and contradiction are regarded as the driving force for the continuous evolution and development of things. In other words, Hegel believed that everything has an intrinsic motivation to pursue completeness, perfection, and flawlessness. And this dynamic comes from its own incompleteness. Russell believed that Hegel's thinking seemed correct only because he already knew it was so. Or rather, Hegel simply made many a priori assumptions to justify his conclusions.
Regardless of whether Hegel's ideas are reasonable or whether Russell's criticism is valid, in fact, Russell's criticism has inspired me that the idea of "contradiction" also reflects a difference between Eastern and Western thought. Hegel believes that contradictions exist objectively, and contradictions mean opposites, which is a typical Western binary oppositional intellectual tradition. There is also a certain duality in The Taoist thought of our country, Lao Tzu said in the Tao Te Ching: "The world knows that beauty is beauty, and evil is already evil." Everyone knows that what is good is good, and what is not good is good. Therefore, whether there is a symbiosis, difficulty and easy to form, long and short, high and low, sound and sound, and back and forth", the beauty and ugliness of the world, good and evil, are all relative. But the opposition here and Hegel's opposition are completely different, the opposition of Taoist thought only means "different", although these two differences will also be transformed into each other, just as Lao Tzu said, "The movement of the anti-Tao, the use of the WeakEr's Tao", but these two are not essentially "contradiction" or "confrontation" thoughts in it. You can carefully appreciate these two opposites in Eastern and Western thought.
In Western thought, duality is a basic tradition, idealism and materialism, essence and phenomenon, consciousness and existence, they are completely different, fundamentally contradictory, but the beauty, ugliness, good and evil in Taoist thought, are only different, relative. It should be noted that "relative" and "opposite" actually have essential differences, relative is only a difference in performance, and opposites are essentially different. Moreover, Taoist thought believes that there is actually no such "opposition" in nature, the so-called beauty and ugliness, good and evil are all man-made, nature is a harmonious unity, good and evil beauty and ugliness are relative, but they are not fundamentally different, nature is a unity, will operate repeatedly, similar to a circular movement.
The antagonism in Western thought is essentially, the fundamental opposition and confrontation, this confrontation will bring about essential changes, just like the "positive and negative combination" of Hegel's dialectic, the opposition between the positive topic and the reverse topic will eventually "merge" into a new "right topic", and so on, which is a spiraling process, which is full of confrontation and negation.
From Russell's criticism of Hegel's dialectics to Taoist thought, in fact, I feel that the so-called contradictions are actually illusory, and Hegel regards contradictions as their nature and objective existence. Russell, on the other hand, says in The Philosophical Question that the whole tendency of modern thought is increasingly to think that the so-called contradictions are illusory, not essential. Like the thousands of species of nature, although they are different, they are not contradictory in nature, but on the contrary, they are a harmonious unity. I think this actually reflects the difference between the Eastern and Western ways of thinking, in Western thought, such as in Hegel, contradiction is nature, meaning opposition or even confrontation, and in Taoist thought, contradiction is only the appearance, just different, and there is no meaning of confrontation, I don't know if everyone agrees, you can talk about your views.
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