The way in which these positions differ from his earlier ones is well captured in this overall judgment of Cassirer’s: ‘The first conception of the Platonic doctrine of ideas separates the one from the multiple, the idea and the phenomenon assigning it to different worlds. We are referring, of course, to the later Plato. Here, too, we have the problem of the diairesis, or division into species. the community of supreme classes the megista gene, or in Hegel’s terminology the ‘pure concepts’. the mutual connection or implication of ideas the koinonia ton genon, i.e. Here, in a nutshell, we have all the key-concepts of the Platonic dialectic: the symploke eidon footnote 3, i.e. In other words, this is an inclusive opposition. To be itself, then, and to give meaning to its own Negative, it has to be referred to the nature of the other of which it is the negation. Its essence lies outside it, in its opposite. In fact each is simply the Negative of the other. One passes into the other, and this latter into the first. footnote 2Ī movement of pure notions, then, interpenetrating each other. ‘The notion of true dialectic’, says Hegel in reference to Plato, ‘is to demonstrate the necessary movement of pure notions, without thereby resolving these into nothing, for the result, simply expressed, is that they are this movement, and the universal is just the unity of these opposite notions’. Both opposites are negatives, in the sense that they are un-real, non-things ( Undinge)-they are ideas. The origins of this dialectic go back to Plato. Only within this unity is each term the negation of the other. Each term therefore, to be itself, implies a relation to the other term the result is unity (the unity of opposites). If in fact we wish to know what one extreme is, we must at the same time know what the other is, which the first element is negating. Furthermore, each is a negative- relation. Neither of the two poles is anything in itself or for itself each is a negative. Thus since to say a is in effect equivalent to saying not-not- a, a too, if it is to have any meaning, must be referred to the element of which it is the negation.
Just as not- a is its negation, so a is the negation of not- a. Therefore if we wish to attach any significance to not- a, we must at the same time know what a is, i.e. In itself and for itself it is nothing it is the negation of the other and nothing else. It is the instance in which one opposite cannot stand without the other and vice-versa (mutual attraction of opposites). This is traditionally expressed by the formula ‘ a not- a’. ‘Contradictory’ or Dialectical Opposition A few brief words then on the structure of the two oppositions. In the rare cases where this fact has been noted, its significance has been misunderstood, and ‘real opposition’ has also been considered as an example and an instance of the dialectic, even though it was a ‘non-contradictory’, and hence undialectical, opposition. In the overwhelming majority of cases they have not even suspected that there were two oppositions and that they were radically different in nature.
Marxists, as we shall see, have never entertained clear ideas on this subject.
The second form of opposition, on the contrary, is ‘contradictory’ ( durch den Widerspruch) and gives rise to a dialectical opposition. It does not violate the principles of identity and (non)-contradiction, and hence is compatible with formal logic. ‘Real opposition’ (or ‘contrariety’ of incompatible opposites) is an opposition ‘without contradiction’ ( ohne Widerspruch). Both are instances of opposition, but they are radically distinct in kind. I n this essay, I shall attempt to clarify somewhat a question discussed in my interview with New Left Review footnote 1-although one that is very difficult to deal with briefly: the problem of the difference between ‘real opposition’ (Kant’s Realopposition or Realrepugnanz) and ‘dialectical contradiction’.
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