René Berthier
ON DIALECTICS
Translation : Jesse Cohn

cel-gl@orange.fr

Article mis en ligne le 5 novembre 2021
dernière modification le 10 novembre 2021

par Eric Vilain

Any discipline that aims to analyze social phenomena can hardly do without dialectics : social reality is multi-dimensional by nature and cannot be reduced to a single determination. The links and contradictions between different levels of determinations can hardly be grasped without a dialectical approach, conceived as the demolition of any preconceived concept and as
the desire to capture the reality in process. If dialectic is not the art of sterile discussion, however, it is certainly speculative : it aims to break up frozen concepts.

(...)

The dialectic has been used for all purposes, most often served to hide a false knowledge. People took cover behind the “dialectic”, and especially behind those who spoke of it, in order to avoid reflection and to give the illusion of a knowledge that one did not possess. Faced with contradictory social phenomena, one confined oneself to explaining that this contradiction was “dialectical,” which allowed one to avoid examining the factual causes.